Once upon a time, in the slums of Buenos Aires in Argentina, a young boy must have been running around, playing with toys and his playmates as little boys his age do. There is a time to be born and a time to die. Persons who truly know me have often commented that I do not attend funerals. I will make the confession today – it is true. I have an aversion to attending funerals and please do not ask me why, because even I myself, I still do not know. However, I often wonder if it is an attempt for me to run away and remain in denial, about the cycle of life because I find it harder to attend the funeral of those closest to me or if it is a little bit of everything society has come to peg onto burial ceremonies. For instance, could it be that the ostentatious mode of burials (MOB) we do as Nigerians put me off.
Furthermore, does the contortion of the truth people embark on at funerals in the name of “do not speak ill of the dead’ irritate me? I think it does. The way you see a man who did not pay school fees for his children being praised at his funeral for being the best father since after Adam ate the famous apple in the Garden of Eden is a turn off for me. The question though, is what would we have such children say? The truth? Are there some truths that should be best left unsaid? If unsaid, is there closure for the persons (in this case, the children for example) whose lived experience is impacted by the dead? Well, I do not have the answers. Maybe this is why I just avoid the drama that is funerals.
Back to the young boy from Buenos Aires, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, little did his parents know he would become a Jesuit Priest, and I am sure, they never imagined he would become the first non-European to become a Pope. As the world welcomed the 266th Pope of the biggest religious denomination on the planet, the Roman Catholic Church, in 2013 after the ‘smoke turned white’, I was elated he picked the name Francis who was my late father’s most beloved Saint, Francis of Assisi.
Growing up, my father would tell me all he read and knew about the man originally known as Giovanni Francesco Bernardone, the son of a rich Merchant father and a devout Christian mother from Assisi in Italy. A musician, party goer and soldier in his youth, it is recorded that he himself once said that in those years, ‘he lived in sin’ and he squandered his father’s money until he had a ‘Damascus experience’ following a severe illness. After this, Francis started to meditate more and spend more time with God.
It is said he went off to a cave and wept for his sins. He became a mystic and semi hermit, wearing rags, renouncing wealth, accepting stark poverty with unexplained joy and becoming the living example of loving others like one’s self while embracing all of God’s creation including animals. It is documented how he embraced lepers, converted an Egyptian Sultan, spoke to animals and gave his all to other people. His following of what people at the time considered crazily happy people frolicking in a simplicity dedicated to poverty grew over the years to become the Franciscan Order, which is one of the four remaining mendicant orders of the Catholic Church. Till date, one of my favourite prayers is one my father got me to memorise and reflect on, when I was only about ten years old. It is the Serenity Prayer by St. Francis of Assisi which for me, embodied the summary of his 45 short years on earth “Lord, grant me the strength to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
So you can imagine my joy, when the little boy from Buenos Aries, became the first Pope to take the name of St. Francis whom he described according to the Catholic Telegraph in 2013 as “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation,” adding, that he “would like a Church that is poor and for the poor,”. Pope Francis exemplified the name of the Saint he chose in his service of humanity. He shunned a lot of the opulence of Papacy and preached world peace by encouraging us all to build bridges and not walls. At the risk of sometimes being misquoted and negative media propaganda, Pope Francis preached non-partisan love with value for all of human life. He was never afraid to tell the world leaders and all of us, how we are at the Mercy of God and we all belong to the same human family with duties to, as well as a shared responsibility for our common home – which is the planet.
88 years after his sojourn on earth, at nearly double the life span of the Patron Saint Francis whose name he took, the young lad from Buenos Aires said goodbye to us all on Easter Monday after his appearance doing his Holy Papal duties on Easter Sunday. If you ask me, that was another first – what better day for a Pope to translate into eternal rest and glory than on an Easter Monday, the second day of Eastertide also called Monday of the Angel? On Saturday the 26th of April, as I watched the funeral of Pope Francis, the simple wooden coffin caught my attention. All I could see was the simple wood.
Traditionally, Pope’s were buried in a nestling 3-in-1 coffin, with one placed inside the other. There is an inner cypress coffin that represents humility, a middle coffin made of lead to preserve the body and store documents of value then an outer coffin from elm or oak to symbolise papal dignity and strength. Unlike other Popes before him, Pope Francis requested a more modest burial. In 2024, he changed the longstanding burial rules that required three coffins and made a new rule that popes can now be buried in a single coffin made of wood and lined with zinc as well as allowing burial outside the Vatican, if a Pope so choses. Even in death, the young boy from Buenos Aries maintained his track record of firsts. His coffin was transferred to the Basilica of St Mary Major, a church outside the Vatican’s walls, where he had asked for a simple tomb in the ground. Francis will be the first pope to be buried there since the 1600s, and the first in more than 100 years to be buried outside the Vatican.
The boy from Buenos Aries who became the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, with approximately 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, was until five days ago, the head of the largest branch of Christianity, with about 50% of all Christians being Catholics. He was a world leader in his own right as evidenced by the roll call of names of Presidents and Governments present and represented at his funeral. As he was being laid to rest, all I could see was the wooden coffin. The more I watched the proceedings, the more I reflected on the message of Pope Francis to the world even in death. The wooden coffin was speaking to my Nigerian heritage and the reason I do not attend funerals.
In more recent years, funerals in my home country have evolved to become jamborees and spending sprees, where depending on their age and status in society, vulnerable children of the dead are fleeced or siblings do competition on who gets the award of the biggest spender during the burial of a parent. We celebrate the dead at the expense of the quality of life of the living. Sirens on hearses are in better working conditions and people obey them more than sirens on Ambulances. Coffins and the exquisite designs as well as the materials from which they are made, reflect the societal status of the dead. It is almost as though, the material one is buried in, will determine what becomes of one, in the afterlife – after all, it began in Egypt our sister African country thousands of years ago.
By all means, if you want to be buried in a golden casket, go ahead and plan for it. However, my principle is that one must leave a mark on humanity, worth ten times the weight of the golden casket – one must conquer self. Pope Francis and Francis of Assisi before him, have shown that despite their human imperfections, they conquered self. The many imperfections of the Catholic Church cannot be wiped away by this singular act – true. None the less, the wooden coffin is a sermon from the grave for us to reflect on our role in the humanity we all share. The simplicity of Christ is hard to find. But the simplicity of Pope Francis, within the world we find ourselves today and the role he occupied is not disputable. In his perfect imperfections, he did his bit. May the wooden coffin speak to us, each in our own unique way!
Adieu to the young boy from Buenos Aires in Argentina, who canonised Mother Theresa. May God, grant me the strength to accept things I cannot change like your death, the courage to change the things I can, like what I do for humanity, how I view the poor amongst us, and the wisdom to know the difference between what I can change and what I cannot change”
Dr Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor is Author of the book, My Fathers Daughter
