More than anything else, these days have reminded me that I am a member of God’s own family.

As a young priest, I fell in love with parish life. Whether baptizing babies, witnessing weddings, sharing meals in homes, or having the solemn privilege of laying loved ones to rest, I received the gift of entering the lives of so many families. I was sad to relinquish that gift when assigned to study in Rome. Our loving Father always has a plan, though, and throughout this first year here, He has shown, again and again, the gift of living and studying at the heart of the Church. I’m surrounded by so much of our Catholic faith’s history and holiness: Peter, Paul, the martyrs, the churches, the artistic masterpieces. But since the passing of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, I realize even more deeply that what I experienced at the local level in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, I can now experience at a universal level.

When Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father, He promised He would not leave us orphans. God is so generous that not only did He send us the Holy Spirit, He also chose men to be the vessels through which His Fatherhood would tangibly radiate to the world. He chose apostles and assigned Peter as the head. After Peter, we’ve had Linus, Cletus, Clement, all the way down to John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. God gave us fathers to reflect His own Fatherhood. More than anything any of these chosen men do or say, their very office reminds us of God’s continual Fatherhood.

Thus, even if we never met him, losing a pope is like losing a father. And so, on that morning of April 21, 2025, the whole earth-bound family of God mourned the death of Francis, our pope. In the following days,

God’s children from around Rome, Italy and the world came to say their goodbyes to the man who was their Holy Father for 12 years. Day after day, we lined up outside St. Peter’s Basilica in a hushed calm, passing through Bernini’s colonnade as through an embrace of outstretched arms. And on April 26, hundreds of thousands of our family members gathered down the Via della Conciliazione, all the way to the Tiber River, offering prayers to our heavenly Father on behalf of the man who was our father on earth.

I stood with priests from all around the United States, North and South America, Australia, Africa, and Asia. Turning, I saw thousands of teenagers who planned to see their brother, Bl. Carlo Acutis, canonized but, instead, faithfully stood by their father as he passed from this world. The young and old, men and women, people from all over the world—this is our family. And so, the Mass was read in Latin, the Church’s universal language, with one reading in English and one in Spanish; petitions in Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, and Chinese; and glorious funeral chants in Greek and Arabic by our Eastern brothers.

It was a day of mourning, yes; and we continue to pray for Pope Francis’ eternal rest. But, it was also a day of great consolation. Our Father in heaven gathered us into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, and He will never forsake us.

Fr. Jacob Lindle, ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in May 2022, is presently studying for a Doctorate in Patristic Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

This article appeared in the June 2025 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click