How Pope Francis kept the faith

As timing goes, a pope simply can’t do better than to die just after Easter Sunday. The moral of the thing hardly needs saying. Francis died in Christ and will share His Resurrection. In fact, that’s exactly what several bishops have been observing today. But Francis also had his Good Friday. He was desperately ill in the Gemelli hospital in February, being very close to death in particular on 28 February. But he pulled through with all the drugs and therapies possible, and went triumphantly on.

For that’s what he did. That popemobile trip round St Peter’s Square yesterday, the meeting with J.D. Vance, the Easter blessing, the composition of his Urbi et Orbi message – which bore his unmistakeable stamp in the stuff about migration and war, though it was read by a cardinal – it was all him. For a man who really, really hated assisted dying and euthanasia, his last message was that we’re valuable right to the end, even when you’re dying on your feet – or rather, in a chair.