Meeting of the Parliament 22 April 2025
I am very grateful to have the opportunity to express on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats our profound sympathy and our sorrow at the passing of the Holy Father.
In his words from the balcony of St Peter’s basilica in 2013, on his election, Pope Francis told the packed square below:
“You all know that the duty of the conclave was to give a bishop to Rome. It seems that my brother cardinals have come almost to the ends of the earth to get him.”
Born, as we have heard, in Buenos Aires, Pope Francis was the first non-European Pope in modern times—there had not been one since the year 741—and he was a radical pontiff. He railed against what he termed the “pathology of power” and those in the church who, he said,
“feel themselves ‘lords of the manor’—superior to everyone and everything”.
He urged his church, instead, to
“come out of herself and go to the peripheries”.
His vision was a
“church of the poor for the poor”.
Over the next decade, he put front and centre traditional Franciscan themes, which above all valued humility, compassion and solidarity with the poor. He was determined to favour that humility over grandeur. After greeting the crowds on the day that he was elected, the new Pope shunned the papal limousine and decided instead to share the coach that was taking his brother cardinals home. Throughout his time as Pope, he stayed true to those values of simplicity and became known for it, becoming the first Pope who lived not in the Vatican’s apostolic palace but in the modern block next door, which had been built as a guest house.
Pope Francis always sought to foster peace where there had been conflict. He worked to heal the rift that had existed with the Eastern Orthodox Church for more than a thousand years. He worked with Lutherans, Methodists and Anglicans, and persuaded the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to join him to pray for peace. After attacks by Muslim militants, he said that it was not right to identify Islam with violence. At the time, he said:
“If I speak of Islamic violence, I have to speak of Catholic violence”,
too. He was clearly guided by the prayer of St Francis of Assisi:
“where there is hatred, let me sow love”.
A great internationalism and concern for the natural environment featured throughout his papacy. He appointed more than 140 cardinals from non-European countries, and he passes on a church that has a more global outlook than it did when he was first elected.
Today, we acknowledge the profound loss that a great many people across Scotland and around the world feel. On the mace before us that rests in our well are inscribed the words that are so familiar to all of us in the chamber: wisdom, integrity, justice and compassion. Each of those words defined the papacy of Pope Francis. As we reflect today, therefore, let us commit to standing up for what is right, caring for others and holding on to the values that Pope Francis sought to embody. May the Lord bless him, may the Lord keep him.