Michael Leach is the head of Orbis Books, the publishing group of the Maryknoll order in the US. He lets his imagination go and dreams a dream—what if he were Pope?

If I were Pope I’d have a ball. I’d be ‘Happy Pope,’ and smile a lot. I’d stand on the balcony and stretch out my arms in a great embrace and tell everyone I love them and, even better, God loves them, no matter what.

I’d tell everybody wherever I went that nothing can separate them from the love of God, not death, not sin, not anyone or anything. I’d tell that to my worker bees in the Curia before reducing it by half and encouraging every priest under sixty to join the missions.

I’d tell that to sinners, saints, and fools, to liberals, conservatives and confused, to Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews. I’d preach God’s unconditional love to God’s children in every country, to those with AIDS in Africa, to those in prisons and in hospitals, to those who are divorced and remarried, to everybody everywhere. They would know that I meant it, and that it was true, even if it was hard for them to believe.

Someday, if I said it well enough and often enough, and most of all proved it with my life, other leaders in the church would do it too, and the children of God wouldn’t have to believe—they would know.

I can’t wait to be Pope! I’d live in the Vatican two months a year to catch up on paperwork, but the rest of the year I’d live in parishes throughout the world—the one by the Cabrini Greens public housing project in Chicago, the one under suspicion in Bejing, the one high in the Alti Plano of Peru.

I’d be like Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath: ‘A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, so I’ll be everywhere, wherever you can look. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and where people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build. I’ll be there too!’

Yup, that’s where I’ll be when I’m Pope. I’ll be in Israel and Palestine, in Bosnia and Afghanistan; I’ll sleep in a favella in Brazil, a high-rise in Manhattan, and a houseboat in the bay of Hong Kong.

And wherever I am, I’ll preach nothing more and nothing less than the incredible, overwhelming love of God that is ‘closer to us than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet’.

I’d like to write more about when I’m Pope but I’ve got to go now and practise my embrace.

The way I see it, even if I don’t get to be Pope, it’s important to become that kind of person wherever and whatever I happen to be.

What if YOU were Pope?

We invite Australian Catholics readers to let their own imaginations fly … Write your own reflection: ‘If I were Pope …’

Send us a maximum of 200 words on this theme. We will publish a selection of the best. Email us your story

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