A Letter To My Homeboy, The Pope

by Darryl L. Fortson, MD

Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV

00120 Città del Vaticano, Vatican City

Dear Your Holiness,

Greetings from America, the nation of your birth! I am certain that you are aware of the excitement generated here by your ascension to the papacy, but it is impossible for you to know how excited so many Americans - especially American Catholics, Chicagoans, and yes, Black people - are about it. Although I no longer live in Chicago, I was born and raised there, attended a Jesuit high school there, and I lived for several years in your hometown of Dolton, Illinois.

I am no one you know, nor am I of any station that you should know me, and yet I write you boldly. My boldness is not borne of arrogance or disrespect, but quite the opposite; rather, humility to the message, a compelling unction in my spirit to relay it, and a profound respect for your dedication to the cause of Christ in the world since you were a boy.

I confess that I have been afraid to write you - my status as a common man and mortal sinner prevented me from doing so. But I had to get past that because the message is too important and the need is too great, and so I speak now to you boldly, both as your brother in Christ, your “soul brother,” and as your “homeboy.” Perhaps you too fear - perhaps the failures of omission and commission of the past by the leaders of the "Church Universal" give you pause sometimes. But we both are going to have to transcend our fears, if for no other reason than Scripture teaching us that perfect love doesn’t have any. Like the Israelites in aftermath of the infamous "golden calf," or the German nation in the wake of Nazism and World War II, we are going to have to confront and transcend our sin, our shame, our fears, move forward with a repentant heart, and in doing so, teach each others to do the same.

I have found that many people are looking for an opportunity and the requisite courage to mobilize their basic dignity and kindness, and nothing is more effective in doing this than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But it has to be preached in the right season and in a way of power and authenticity by people who are seeking to live that same Gospel. I have dedicated myself to living that Gospel in spite of myself, but I need your help. Actually, the whole world needs your help. 

These are surely the most disheartening times in my life that I ever remember living in - stressful, outrageous, with so many people seemingly competing to "out-evil" each other. We have a plethora of world leaders who want to nurse at the bosom of men’s souls, milking them of hope, their meager financial resources and self-determination, and their joy in living and the Lord - but this is not new. The Philistines and the Amorites, Pharoah, Haman, King Nebuchadnezzar, Hitler, the Confederacy, and even Saul of Tarsus did such. But you have the standing and the potential to help turn that dark tide. This isn’t about ignoring past wrongdoing or sweeping anything under the rug concerning the sins of the Roman Catholic Church, or any other church or denomination for that matter. That is not to be done anymore. It is about rising above and shining the light on that very same rug so that we all can see how valuable that rug is even as we pull it back and sweep away the dust. The people don't need a babbling, milquetoast Gospel of platitudes strung together by a litany of moral tropes. We need the quiet, searing power of the Holy Ghost embedded in a message not only of hope and deep, powerful meaning, but of consequence to those who work to quash both. I ask that you continue to lead in re-introducing the world to the “Spirit fruit” of lovingkindness as you have done thus far, and that you also reintroduce the arrogant and the merciless to the reality of Hell; a place many seemingly pay no mind to based on how they engage their bodies, their hearts, their words, their neighbors, and the Lord.

Martin Luther King inspired Catholics to faith in action and he wasn’t even a Catholic. Even Mahatma Gandhi strengthened Catholicism with his passion for righteousness and he wasn’t even a Christian. So too in reverse can you enlarge the territory of Christ beyond the borders of Catholicism itself with a compelling word in season. So please be the bold, effective Martin Luther King of our time, Your Holiness. Be our Rev. Billy Graham. Invite the Holy Ghost spirit of the Azuza Street revival to Rome. Preach man, preach!

Mention no names of the deeply faulty leaders of this world unless profoundly compelled - but speak boldly of their foul spirits. The people will know of whom you speak. And confront the spirits of the citizenry as well, and their collective spiritual disintegration as we slowly, as a human society, bend the knee to the greenback, A.I., and self - false gods all. The people know in their hearts that their hearts are not altogether well or right, but we need to see our true selves reflected not in the mirror of the world, but in the mirror of that Living Word you are called to preach. 

Help lead the world to a collective repentance. The whole world owes God, his or her neighbor, and our planet a heartfelt apology for the way we have treated them of late. We even owe ourselves an apology. The White man with missing teeth, sitting in a double-wide trailer in Alabama needs to hear from you. The Black man teeming with simmering fury as he drives his car, gangster rap music blasting, does too. So do the Latin Kings gang members, and the cotton field overseer of the Muslim Chinese Uyghurs, and the scammer farm chieftain in Myanmar, and the man in the Syrian refugee camp, and the itinerant Mexican berry picker and the C-suite health insurance executive, the Notre Dame undergraduate, all those writhing in the Festivus of Hate that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and me - we all need a "Quotidian Gospel," preaching what my blog that this post is from is about -  bringing forth the relevance of an ancient faith in modern times.

Finally - this. I love you. I have never met you, but I love you. I attended a Catholic high school, but I am not a Catholic, but I love you. You are, more than the world might care to admit, my ancestral Black “soul brother,” and I love you. Finally, you are my divinely chosen "homeboy," and I love you. I certainly am not your equal among men, but I am your brother in Christ, and I love you and deeply appreciate your work on behalf of the Kingdom of God and its people thus far. 

And so I send you, with this message, my honor and my love in Christ for you - a love of infinitely transformative power that, not by my nature but by God's, has no equal or superior; therefore, whatever I may or may not be, that love is sufficient to change the world in favor of the Kingdom of God. I am confident you will work under that power to do your part, and I will work under that same power to do mine.

Sincerely,

Darryl L. Fortson, M.D.

Las Vegas, Nevada