The tears of a pope

The curious grief, sadness, and burden of leadership in the election of Pope Leo XIV.

“I have often spoken about the gift of tears, and how precious it is…”

-Pope Francis

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If you ever find yourself in the Sistine Chapel, facing the alter, you’ll notice a small door to the left of your gaze that is almost always locked and rarely entered.

The Italian Catholic clergy call this room “Stanza delle Lacrime.” We English-speakers call it, “The Room of Tears.” No, this is not a room for the grieving, or a confessional booth; this is a room for a new pope to change clothes. It is a small space, but its significance is massive. A few cassocks hang, a few boxes of shoes, and other vestments that such a position affords. After all, such a transformation requires a little room.

Upon his election, the pope is asked to accept the call and then asked what name he will take as he begins his pontificate. Then, he needs to change clothes. The traditional and bold Cardinal red is exchanged for the papal vestments of white, including a sweet new hat. As he enters this room, he is left alone to change. To do this, he will enter the Room of Tears.

Why would a leader weep upon their election to the highest religious office in the world? Isn’t this the time to assume your power and begin your administration? You’ve got keys to the palace and the ear of billions of people—it’s time to smile with pride, not put your face in your hands.

But this is the distinction of Christian leadership apart from any other kind. Christian leadership is leadership of tears. It involves a wrestling with God, a release of our human will to the will of God, a kind of liberating constraint where our “yes” to God’s call on our life means a “no” to ours.

There is a long history of a “call” to ministry leadership. Some traditions emphasize this more than others, but this is our way of talking about God’s often uninvited activity in our life. This “call” is often met with resistance from the one being called into leadership.

The disciples were fishing when the Lord Jesus announced to them: “Follow me…I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). Upon their “yes” to Jesus, we are told they “immediately left their nets” behind (Matthew 4:20). Their “yes” to become fishers of men meant a “no” to a life on the sea. Moses famously (and repeatedly) protested the Lord’s asking of him to lead the people out of Egypt (Exodus 3:11-6:12). Jeremiah didn’t stand a chance when “The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah” (Jeremiah 1:2), claiming the “call” on his life to lead as a prophet of Israel was upon him since his time in utero. Ezekiel was asleep at the Kabar Canal when “the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet” (Ezekiel 2:2). Reluctance, reticence, and wrestling all seem common when receiving “the call.” Entering public ministry leadership is not a cause for celebration, but renunciation. This one “yes” will mean a million “nos.” It’s rare for someone to accept with glee.

When Pope Leo XIV would have been ordained as a Catholic priest in the order of Saint Augustine, he would have laid flat on his stomach as he took his vows to poverty, chastity, obedience, and the rest. To be ordained is a kind of death. Tears often accompany the “yes” to leading in Christ’s church.

And let’s not forget this saint. When Augustine, the church father for whom Pope Leo’s order is named, entered the Christian ministry, he was set out in a monastic order, fine to live a quiet, solitary life. His life was Scripture, prayer, and serene solitude when he visited Hippo Regius on the North African coast. A large crowd seized him and forcibly ordained him a priest. He would beg the city for time to further study, which he got in the later fourth century before being conferred as their bishop (something he also resisted).

Pope Leo XIV, the evening of his election on the balcony of Saint Peter’s Square

Christianity: the faith of tears

Much of this was swimming around in my mind as I watched Pope Leo XIV ascend the balcony at St. Peter’s Square. He held back tears—tears I’m sure he cried in the room reserved for them just moments before. He struck me as a man who understood the Christian nature of leadership: that the enormous responsibility will always outweigh any temporary rewards.

There is something distinctly Christian about naming the pope’s changing room “The Room of Tears.” This is because Christianity is a faith of tears. The famous prophecy of Christ, spoken by Isaiah, was that he would be “a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). And he was. Jesus wept over the death of his friend, Lazarus (John 11:35), wept again over the spiritual condition of his nation (Matthew 23:37-39), and cried along with sweat as drops of blood in the garden of his arrest (Matthew 26:36-46). Christianity is soaked in tears.

And so, leadership in Christian life is often met with the grief. We know that to participate in the leadership style of Jesus Christ will be to have fellowship with his sufferings.

In nearly every other job and in most every area of leadership, it would be desired to have someone who wants to be there. But in Christian leadership, the reluctance reveals the passing of a test, the cleansing of the heart’s nasty motives, and the death of the very self we constantly try to protect. Tears reveal one who has made peace with this kind of ending that is also a new beginning.

And yet, all of us in leadership still said “yes.” We answered the call. As much as we fight pastoral work, we also desire it: “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Timothy 3:1). An interesting observation here by Paul: all ministry leadership begins with desire. So which is it? Is it good to want to be a pastor (or a pope?) or not?

The motives of leadership: reward or responsibility?

I wrestled with this question a lot over my pastoral ministry: am I a pastor for the right reasons? Why would any one “desire” the “noble task,” to quote Paul—and why would I? I was asking this question when my friend Ryan Ingram gave me Patrick Lencioni’s little book, The Motive, which explores this precise question. Essentially, Lencioni argues, there are two major reasons why people want to be in leadership.

The first category of people are those whose motive is “reward.” They love thinking about what they will get out of the next level: the financial perk of the promotion, the status, the title, the company car, stock options, whatever. This is, predictably, a terrible motive to foster in leadership. It almost always leads to ruin.

The second category of people are those whose motive is “responsibility.” The Catholic he is, Lencioni says the best leaders are in their position because they desire the significant influence leadership comes with in order that they might use that to bless and benefit others. Good leaders desire leadership for the sake of others.

The reason that Christians answer “the call of ministry” in tears is because they are aware of its profound responsibility and unfathomable cost. “You’re messing with peoples’ lives,” my friend and mentor Jon Furman said to me long ago when I was starting out. This can be a great thing and a terrible thing. Messing with peoples’ lives to lead them to humility and love, or messing with lives through manipulation and shame. Unfortunately, church leaders can do either.

Leadership as the end that is also the beginning

All of us, nevertheless, take on any position of authority with a mixture of these two motives: reward and responsibility. This, also, might be reason for tears. We don’t know ourselves and we’re not always sure if we will be strong enough for the things leadership demands of us. We will need to say things that will be so hard to say, we will need to make decisions we feel unfit to make, we will hurt people we never intended to hurt, and we will be constantly misunderstood, misrepresented, and overlooked. After all, the Jesus whom we follow was, so why wouldn’t we receive similar treatment?

It is rare for a pastor to want their church to shrink. I have never met a pastor who desires their sermons to never be heard, or to only be heard by two people. No pastor wants their church to have zero impact. My point is, we leaders have desires. And the desire for a larger church, a more influential church, is a tricky thing. We probably have a mixture of reward and responsibility—of self and selflessness.

This is why I often tell God this in my prayers. I admit, God, I do not know how much this request is clouded by ego or self-protection or whatever, but I am asking you because I trust you to 1) hear my prayer 2) answer it as you see fit and 3) cleanse my motives in the process.

Another reason for tears. We are in the midst of a kind of leadership that involved crucifixion, mortification, renunciation. It’s not like we leave all our sins at seminary graduation. I think this is why Paul’s prayer at the end of Galatians has been haunting me for the last two years:

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

- Galatians 6:14

As we say “yes” to leadership in Christ’s church, we say yes to a “cruciform” way of leadership, wherein the world is constantly dying to us and we are constantly dying to the world’s ways. And in that messy, unpredictable process, we learn to trust God with tears.

Another good reason to have a room for it.

There, in the room of our leadership transformation, there is a death. The pope experienced this last week as he entered the Room of Tears. He will never live the same life. His past and his future are changed. He’s not the same and nothing else will ever be like it was. This is why Pope’s change their names. In Christian leadership, you go in as “Robert” and you come out as “Leo XIV.”

All of us in leadership join in the great tradition of name-changing in the Bible. God’s call transforms our identity. Simon becomes Peter. Saul becomes Paul. Abram becomes Abraham. I love the slight changes because it speaks to the reality of gospel leadership. You’re still you…you’re still made and loved by God…but you’re also someone slightly different. This difference becomes the environment of our crucifixion and the reason for our tears.

What I loved about that moment on the balcony of Saint Peter’s Square last week, was Pope Leo’s tears filling the corners of his eyes. In that moment, my own tears met his as I got the slightest glimpse into the mantel he now carries. After all, we are watching a man greet a crowd moments after his own death. There will be tears. In just understanding maybe 1% of what he must be feeling, I, too, remembered the “gift of tears,” as Pope Francis called it.

And yet, Pope Leo XIV brought those tears to bear in front of all of us on that balcony, as if testifying to us what our Lord Jesus did: tears are not the end. Death, after all, is not the end. The tears Jesus cried at Lazarus’ grave only served as the introductory material to a new life. Likewise, the tears at Gethsemane are now understood as the precursor to the glory of resurrection. Tears are radically reinterpreted in Christ—the one whose tears are shed as a strange and mysterious marriage between loss and gain.

When Jesus receives word that Lazarus is sick, he guarantees his survival, saying, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” (John 11:3). But it did. Lazarus did die. Except Jesus was also right: his story did not “end in death.” And such it is with the tears of the leader. Despite the sickness of our own ego, misgivings, sins, foolishness, and inabilities—despite our very tears—these things are really not the end, but the beginning. For we know as we die to our own selves we will suddenly feel the rush of resurrection life in our bodies. We even may change our names and clothes and our titles only to find that this very transformation has led to our liberation: to die is the live, after all.

Such a transformation requires a little room.