The World’s Spiritual Director

First Things, 22 April 2025

St. John Paul II, as a young priest, was renowned for telling his penitents, after thoroughly examining the question at hand: “You must choose.” That is suitable for the confessional, not for a papal document.

Pope Francis died early Easter Monday, less than twelve hours after the last evening Masses had been offered in Roman parishes. On Easter Sunday evening, the assigned Gospel passage is from Luke 24, in which the disciples on the road to Emmaus meet the Risen Jesus. When the late Holy Father’s body is transferred to St. Peter’s Basilica on April 23, Emmaus will be read again at Masses offered there, the assigned passage for Easter Wednesday. 

All very fitting, for Emmaus was the biblical passage par excellence for the pontificate of Pope Francis. Men who were dejected, even despairing, having given up hope, were departing from the capital to return, perhaps, to some peripheral village of no significance. The Holy Father’s heart was not for the heroic, but for the broken. He looked for those who, along the pathways of life, were disappointed—with the worldly Romans to be sure, but also with the clerical authorities of the day, and even with Jesus, or at least who they thought Jesus should be.

No other passage was more often cited by those enthused by the approach of Pope Francis. Jesus was accompanying the disciples, walking alongside them, not in triumph, though freshly risen from the grave, but simply another passerby on the way. The three were, in the lexicon of Francis, “walking together.”

Jesus speaks harshly on that road to Emmaus: “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe.” The admirers of Pope Francis usually left that part out, but the Holy Father himself did not. He relished speaking harshly, whether about abortion (“hiring an assassin”), the world of finance (“this economy kills”), the arms trade (“the profits that move the puppet strings of war”), or gender ideology—(the “ugliest danger” of our time).

Harsh accompaniment is not a familiar model of pastoral care. Catholics in the pews don’t get that from their parish priests or bishops, though in some circles it is fashionable to catalogue the sins of those not present. It’s delightfully harsh, but not actually accompaniment. 

Pope Francis was not really, at heart, a pastor. The pope is the universal pastor of the Church, but just as parish priests cannot meet all the demands of their charge, even more the pope must choose which aspects of the Petrine office to emphasize. Pontiffs may devote themselves to preaching, worship, teaching, legislating, theological reflection, philosophical engagement, diplomacy, financial administration, ecclesial governance, ecumenical relations, even public spectacle. The Holy Father had to do all of that from time to time. He did some of it well, some of it less so.

Pope Francis chose instead to be the world’s spiritual director. Therein lay a paradox at the heart of his papacy. The spiritual director does not preach to the congregation from the pulpit, let alone pontificate to the city and the world. He speaks privately, even intimately, with a soul in the confessional, at a retreat house, in a rectory sitting room, walking along the path. His presence is a comfort, but his words can be harsh, delivered within a bond of personal trust. A spiritual director may well say to a soul, “You are being foolish.”

Thus when Pope Francis writes an encyclical inveighing against air conditioning, there arises criticism about the impracticality of it all. How else to work in Dallas or Dubai or Delhi? But comfort seeking is a spiritual danger, and wastefulness can be a sin, so why not turn down the AC, or why cool unused rooms in empty buildings? It is not hard to imagine a spiritual director suggesting that. 

Spiritual directors are not policy advocates. Senator Robert Taft, a trade protectionist in the 1940s, proposed dealing with potential economic pain by suggesting that Americans “eat less.” That marked the end of his presidential ambitions. It was lousy economics and poor politics, but spiritual directors advise people to eat less all the time, fasting for penance and growth in virtue.

On several occasions, Pope Francis caused global consternation for castigating as selfish those who preferred pets to children. Some undoubtedly are, but there are simply too many different circumstances to make such a blanket statement without hurting many people unintentionally. It also invites tu quoque retorts when the celibate parish priest has a dog, or your predecessor was fond of cats. A spiritual director might easily instruct someone that treating pets like children in the annual Christmas letter lacks proper proportion. A private correction is not the same as a public condemnation.

The great controversies of the pontificate, Amoris Laetitia and Fiducia Supplicans, were written with the heart of a spiritual director. Pope Francis wanted to accompany couples in “irregular” situations with encouragement and compassion. Yet spiritual direction, which makes allowances and might be gradual in teaching the fullness of the truth, is rather different than magisterial teaching.

A pastor, especially the universal pastor, must maintain theological coherence and sacramental integrity as general principles. How those principles are applied in concrete, individual circumstances by spiritual directors can be difficult and messy. St. John Paul II, as a young priest, was renowned for telling his penitents, after thoroughly examining the question at hand: “You must choose.” That is suitable for the confessional, not for a papal document.

“We have been called to form consciences, not replace them,” Pope Francis wrote in Amoris Laetitia. Magisterial formation of consciences requires clear principles. Yet in Amoris and Fiducia, the principles were so confused as to produce conflicting interpretations. In spiritual direction, that can be tolerated, as different souls can be given different advice in apparently similar situations. As a magisterial exercise, it is disastrous, as the Vatican learned when the African bishops, en masse, rejected the same-sex blessings envisioned in Fiducia. 

Outside of formal teaching, the rhetoric of Pope Francis was that of a spiritual director. Last September, when meeting Catholic youth in Singapore, he suggested that when speaking to their non-Christian friends, they ought to affirm what is good in the beliefs of others. In such spiritual conversions, it could be imagined that saying that “all religions are a path to God” is fitting. For the supreme teacher of the Catholic Church to say so is a problem.

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