With the death of Pope Francis on April 21, the world lost a path-breaking and courageous religious leader. While some Mennonites might have reservations about honoring exalted figures — particularly those identified with a tradition that persecuted early Anabaptists — Francis’ pontificate marked a significant moment in Mennonite-Catholic relations that should not go unappreciated. 

For much of the past 500 years, the relationship between Mennonites and Catholics has been distant, if not hostile. It was, after all, Catholic theologians who described the early Swiss Brethren as “Anabaptists” (rebaptizers) — a polarizing and hostile label that associated the movement with the ­Donatist heresy and a fifth-century canon law that made the baptism of anyone who had been baptized as an infant a capital offense. 

On the basis of that argument, the Imperial Edict of 1529, issued by the Catholic emperor, Charles V, called for the execution, without trial, of anyone teaching or practicing rebaptism.  

The radical reformers, for their part, did not hesitate to denounce the church of Rome in harsh language. Thieleman van Braght, compiler of the Martyrs Mirror, referred almost casually to “Romish priests . . . and their self-invented idolatry.” Menno Simons warned of a coming judgment for the “abominations” of the papal system, which he summarized as “pride and pomp, excess, gluttony, tyranny, bloodthirstiness, adultery and fornication,” the likes of which “no heart can conceive, no tongue express, no pen describe.”   

Although today the term “Anabaptist” has lost its scandalous connotations, the theological divide that opened between the radical reformers and the Catholic church — reinforced by the memories of persecution — made it possible for generations of Mennonite historians to virtually erase medieval Christianity from their collective memory. 

In that version of our narrative, the Anabaptist story begins with the early church and then jumps directly from Constantine to the 16th century, as if the intervening 1,000 years of church history never happened. It comes as no surprise that the Mennonite Encyclopedia article on “Catholicism and Anabaptism” concludes its overview of relations between the two groups with the laconic summary: “There are unbridgeable differences between Catholicism and Anabaptism.”  

In the past 50 years, those differences have narrowed considerably.  Historians of Anabaptism now recognize how deeply Anabaptist piety — including the concept of Gelassenheit, or yieldedness — drew on currents of late medieval Catholic spirituality. We now understand how formative the Catholic monastic tradition was to Anabaptist understandings of the church as a disciplined, voluntary community that shared its possessions.  

In 2003, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity and Mennonite World Conference concluded a five-year dialogue with a document titled “Called Together to be Peacemakers.” Those conversations, and a later trilateral dialogue on baptism that included representatives of the Lutheran World Federation, did not result in reconciliation. But they did model serious engagement on significant points of theological agreement and differences, while recognizing the painful realities of Anabaptist beginnings and the complexity of historical memory. 

In the meantime, many Mennonites in North America have been deeply shaped by liturgical practices and spiritual disciplines borrowed from the Catholic tradition. Some have joined with Catholic pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago. The Bridgefolk initiative has brought Mennonite and Catholic lay people together, building ecumenical friendships in gatherings that often conclude with a ritual of footwashing.  

Pope Francis Embodied qualities Mennonites could affirm. He valued simplicity over pageantry, eschewing elaborate red vestments for a simple white cassock and receiving visitors while seated in a wooden chair rather than a golden throne. He washed the feet of prisoners and the poor, took delight in children, was sharply critical of global economic inequities and, though not an absolute pacifist, worked tirelessly to reconcile warring factions.

As MWC prepared for its 500th anniversary commemorations, we received signals from the Vatican that Francis was open to offering a video greeting to the MWC General Council and to those who will gather for worship in Zurich, Switzerland, on May 29. Although that is no longer possible, Mennonites around the world can pray that the foundations of understanding that have emerged between our two traditions and the gracious engagement modeled by Pope Francis will flourish in the next pontificate.