Bishop of Rome

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.” The first evangelist of our Christian faith, Paul, wrote those words in his letter to the church in Corinth. The church in Corinth was thriving and growing in leaps and bounds. Up in Athens, not so much. When Paul had ventured to the Aereopagus, where people gathered to illuminate the issues of the times, Paul’s message was received, but the response was small change compared to what happened in Corinth. Those apostolic journeys of Paul and other early evangelists planted the seeds of Christian faith. As time passed, those seeds were spread around the entire world. Through different stages of history, the “Church” of Jesus Christ assumed many different forms, within an historically constant expansion that manifested in Europe during the middle ages as the Catholic church. When I was a child, living in Jackson, Mississippi, I attended a Catholic child, because my mother, a Catholic, made provision for me and my siblings by sending us to Catholic school, in our Catholic parish. As for my father, he was not religious. He had rejected religion, but he did love my mother and he allowed her all the decisions regarding the youthful life of me, my two sisters and my brother. The true development of my Christian faith began in 1978 when my life’s goals disintegrated into shards of failure and disappointment. I hopped into my VW, drove about 500 miles, took a rest stop in Texas, which, as it turned out, became the starting point of my new life in Christ, as I was born again, just as Jesus had said I—or any man—must be. That was a long time ago. Many, many waters have passed beneath the bridges of this life. I think it was 2013. . . when our son and daughter happened to be in Rome when a new pope was being selected. They were there at the Vatican, being tourists, when the white smoke ascended from the chimney.

I notice, in the background, Michelangelo’s artwork on the walls of that room. . . the Sistine Chapel I think it is. Pat and I had visited the place, back in ‘03. when our daughter had been studying in Florence, through the auspices of UNC study abroad. Now in 2025, that Catholic world that I had been baptized into as an infant, is now keeping eyes on the Vatican as the cardinals gather, although I do observe, with mild curiosity, from a theological and geographical distance. Curiously enough, as life panned out for our son, our grand-daughter attends a Catholic school, even though our three young’uns attended Christian school and public high school. Catholic school was good enough for me, back in the ‘50’s-60’s, as well as for my wife, and now for our grand-daughter. All’s well that educates well. And, as a Christian, I can heartily wish and hope that the Catholics choose their best man for the proclamation of Christian faith, throughout the world, in this hour of Faith and fate in the history of the Christian religion, and in the fate of our world, which seems to totter on the edges of apocalyptic insecurity. May the Lord be with you. May the Lord bless you and keep you, and make His face to shine upon you. King of Soul