May 15, 2025
Dear Pope Leo,
I am just one of your sheep, one among the 1,400,000,000 on those Baptismal scrolls. Every ancestor I have as far back as I know has been one of your flock…Beyond my great-grandmother, I don’t know if this was helpful or hurtful. But, my stardust bones feel that this Belonging was one of the ways we miraculously survived all these many, many generations. I don’t know if this lineage will continue; my daughter has a wild desire for something different, something I don’t quite know. I do trust in God’s ongoing Revelation, and I have faith she will feel held in Love’s womb no matter her spiritual home. And her stardust bones will too always know from where and whence they came.
Dear Pope Leo,
Today, May 15th, is the memorial of the Nakba. That past rages into the present, as your Gazan children starve unbearably, only because of the perpetually repeating sin of Cain. Leo, help us please to imagine a new way.
Dear Pope Leo,
These nine days are the novena for St. Rita, the patron saint of impossible cases. Perhaps, Leo, Rita should be your patron saint, for you sit lonely on that impossible throne of moral leadership. Such a paradox in this impossible human moment that bioethicist Gregory Stock describes so perfectly as: the time when “the gulf between what could be and what is has never been wider.”
Dear Pope Leo,
My baby is not a baby anymore. She is 9, and she doesn’t want me to show my love like I did when she was small. She wants me to get out of her way. And I understand that this is a wonderful sign that she feels safe and ready and confident in the world. But I am scared of school shootings, and wildfires, and fentanyl, and rising rates of childhood cancer. Leo, I want to be like a hummingbird and fly to her edges, letting her lead and only swoop in when she needs me. But, Leo, I am scared, because our world is so broken.
Dear Pope Leo,
I hear my patient sobbing in their hospital room. They are on a FaceTime call speaking in a language I don’t know, but I understand all the same. Leo, ChatGPT gave my patient details on their diagnosis. They would have asked their compassionate doctor instead of AI, but the office visit time was too short, as dictated by insurance billing rules. Leo, this patient survived war and asylum-seeking and now will die from a rare cancer far too young. Could this cancer be from the chemicals that exploded in the bombs that fell around their childhood? Or could it be from our country’s toxin-laden landscape, a land of plenty to which they fled? Leo, this patient is one of so many. And I am in a tango with Despair.
Dear Pope Leo,
I was in my grandmother’s womb for 5 months, as an egg within my mother’s developing body. And likewise, my granddaughters rested in my womb for 5 months, while my daughter grew inside of me. Leo, the moment feels so uncertain. Will my baby’s babies have a chance to breathe this beautiful air and feel this beautiful ground?
Dear Pope Leo,
Mahmoud Khalil sits in an overcrowded prison 1,200 miles from his wife and newborn son. In prison for no crimes with all rights suspended and no idea of what will come or when this hell will end. But Leo, he is not broken. He somehow understands that “loving [his son] is not separate from the struggle for liberation.” These are parts of his wholeness that cannot be unbraided. Leo, how does one hold such a paradox? Teach me, please. I am thirsty for that understanding.
Dear Pope Leo,
Can you help me? Can you help us? Grief and joy wrestle within me, echoing Jacob’s struggle with the angel. I have a wild hope that you can help, and I am restless with desire for God’s Kingdom here in our broken world.
Love always,
Your ewe Sarah
