Living Faith writer, Kate Wicker, shares a poignant memory…
I have a loved one who is very important to me who now considers himself an atheist. He is also one of the best human beings I know—kind, unselfish, generous, and so, so, so good—so one of the most comforting memories of Pope Francis’s papacy for me was when he comforted a little boy who asked if his atheist father who had just died would go to Heaven. Pope Francis embraced the crying boy and comforted him, assuring the child his father was a good man (based on his son’s humility and vulnerability and, that, despite being a nonbeliever he’d gotten all of his children baptized). And that “God is the one who decides who goes to Heaven.” Every time I see that clip I sob because Pope Francis doesn’t explain, he just comforts and loves and shows us that there is so much about God that we cannot comprehend—especially the scope of his Mercy and his Love.
