To adapt the words of Our Lord, we know not the day nor the hour when Pope Francis’ health will be restored, and he will return to his papal post leading Holy Mother Church.

At this writing, the signs have turned to the good for recovery from the lung afflictions that have kept him in hospital for almost two weeks. But those signs have been a sine wave of peaks and troughs. Last week, for example, the news was positive – until it was critical.

More recently, the daily medical briefings indicate the 88-year-old pontiff is “improving” though not, even factoring for doctorly precaution, out of the woods quite yet. A small sliver of certain grace is that no one, thankfully, has begun speaking publicly about the need for Francis to follow his immediate predecessor and step down as pope. 

We hope that’s a function of common decency mixed with awareness of his fiery Argentinian temper if such as imprudent and impudent speculation ever reached his ears. 

Even in the midst of such literal life and death uncertainty, however, two important points recommend themselves for reflection. One is the reminder that, to paraphrase the title of the great Willa Cather novel, death comes even for the archbishop. High clerical office – high office, period – is no refutation of the God-given reality that from dust we were made, and to dust we shall return. It’s a darkly beautiful memento mori for all of us whatever our station or vocation in life.

Francis himself notes in the opening of his just released autobiography Hope that his own existence is owed to the historical fact his grandparents and his father were unable to board a ship from Italy to South America in the 1920s. The ship, for which they had tickets but could not reach in time to sail, went down at sea with horrendous loss of life. Francis refers to it as “the Italian Titanic.” Had his family been aboard, there very likely would have been no Jorge Mario Bergoglio to become the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013. Did we mention not knowing the day nor the hour?

But the very fragility of life embodied in that origin story, as much as in the Pope’s current health crisis, illustrates the importance of the second point for reflection: the force released in response to Francis’ condition, namely the irresistible power of Catholic prayer. 

Since the pontiff entered hospital, Catholics around the world have been praying for him to recover his health, yes, but also to move their lips, to raise their voices, to sit, kneel or stand in solitude as well as gather in crowds to pray for him as a human being, a man, a child of God. Cardinals, those princes of the Church, have led the prayers of the faithful in St. Peter’s Square each evening just as other clergy have done in metropolitan archdioceses and small, remote Catholic parishes alike. 

When the time arrives for Francis’ successor to be chosen, the secular world will regard the succession process as it does so much else: more jockeying and grasping by the ambitious for power. Pseudo-revelations will be shouted from metaphorical rooftops about the state of the Church that he left behind. Debate will arise about whether this, that or another reform failed; about how much more deeply Catholics are divided than they were before 2013 (as if any group of 1.39 billion human beings in history has ever been immune from failure and division).

What will be lost, except on Catholics, is that the heart shaped purpose of the “process” is not power but prayer. Our Pope, after all, is the successor to Peter, to the apostolic lineage that has carried to us Our Saviour’s promises, teachings, examples, wisdom, words, and above all, His prayer to Our Father.

Just so, it is prayer that wells up around Pope Francis in his hour of trial, the outcome of which we cannot know in advance but which we cannot, as people of faith, doubt for an instant will be heard by God and answered according to His will.

We at The Catholic Register join our voice in that welling up of prayer for the Holy Father that he may be comforted, that he may return to lead us as long as the Heavenly Father grants, and that he may enter joyfully into Heaven at the end of his hours and days on earth.