Having family near Greenfield, I read the Greenfield Recorder news item: “‘A pope of hope’: Local Catholic community remembers Pope Francis,” (Recorder.com, April 21). As a Roman Catholic myself, I was saddened to hear the news of the recent passing of Pope Francis at age 88. He was indeed a kind and compassionate Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. The word ‘pontiff’ literally means “bridge builder.” He was. Pope Francis reached out with the hand of friendship to everyone. I hope the voting members of the College of Cardinals would selected a successor in the same vein or mindset. If the pendulum swings back toward a rigid, dogmatic pit-bull style of Benedict the 16th, the worldwide Catholic Church would suffer a throwback to the ugly dark ages. Pope Francis knew he had a royal mess to clean up. The clergy sex-scandals which cost the sale and foreclosure and bankruptcies of dioceses was appalling. In my view, the faithful parishioners who attend a church Mass should not have their tithes (or investments from tithes ) to pay-off wrongdoing. The guilty priest or bishop who abused or covered-up needs prison-time. The other major scandal that was on the road to being fixed was the dubious Vatican Bank, which had amateurish priest running the show with sticky-fingers and shoddy accounting procedures. Millions of euros were unaccounted for from Rome to London. Francis was a breath of fresh air. Continue that.

James A. Marples

Longview, Texas