Leo XIV Canonizes Francis For The Third Time

There is something almost obscene about the way Leo XIV keeps speaking of Francis as though the judgment of God were already public property. On the first anniversary of Francis’s death, Leo did not ask the faithful to pray for his soul or commend him to divine mercy. He announced instead the “birth into heaven” of “our dear Francis,” then immediately tied the future of the Church to the continuation of Francis’s program: joy, mercy, fraternity, and the rest of the postconciliar vocabulary that has already done so much damage.

Words about the dead are important. The Church has always known that. Catholics pray for the dead because judgment belongs to God and because purification after death is real. The old reflex is intercession. Requiem Masses. Black vestments. Dies Irae. Suffrages. Rosaries for the departed. A certain holy restraint. Leo has chosen another register entirely. He speaks as though Francis’s place in glory were obvious, as though the case were closed, and as though one of the most scandal-ridden pontificates in modern history had passed straight from confusion on earth to vindication in Heaven.

That is why the tweet is theological theater. It functions as an informal canonization. No decree has been issued and no miracle has been examined. No heroic virtue has been tested by the Church’s formal process. None of that seems to matter. Leo keeps acting as though the canonization has already happened in the court of his own affections, and the faithful are expected to follow along.

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