A Pope in a Poncho: The Gospel of Fragility

by Johnson Kotaram 

It was not the papal cassock, the golden cross, or the solemn gaze from a palace balcony that marked April 10, 2025.

Instead, it was a fragile old man in a striped poncho, worn black trousers, and oxygen tubing, rolling quietly through the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica.

No proclamation, no camera crews, no ceremonial fanfare. Just a tired pilgrim in the skin of a pope, moving slowly toward the restored chair of Peter and the tomb of Saint Pius X.

To some, it was a scandal. To others, a shock. And to a few—perhaps not many—it was a moment of profound, unscripted holiness.

Because it was not the Vicar of Christ clothed in tradition but something far rarer: a leader without costume, a priest without performance, a man who dared to embody the Gospel in raw, human skin.

In an institution where clothing is language—the cassock, the skullcap, the ring—all speak of office, succession, and sacred continuity—Francis chose a language older than vestments: the language of presence.

In his beige Argentine poncho, he wasn't signalling authority; he was invoking memory—of his homeland, of the poor, of the Jesus who walked dusty roads with no sceptre, throne, or robe worth envying.

Some saw an older man too frail to dress appropriately. Others saw disrespect for ritual. But to those attuned to the undercurrent, it was something else entirely: a gesture of undoing, the kind that refuses to uphold a performance when the soul is calling for honesty.

He didn’t come to be venerated that day. He came to be.

And in doing so, he reminded the Church—perhaps unintentionally—that the robes, collar, rituals, and relics are only bridges. They are not the water beneath.

When we strip away the grandeur, what remains is a question the Church must confront more often: What happens when the sacred no longer looks impressive? When authority arrives in a wheelchair, with sunken eyes and no cross on its chest?

Whether deliberately or by accident, Francis exposed the quiet truth: the real scandal is not the poncho, but how much we’ve come to rely on appearances to sustain our reverence.

We want our popes upright, glowing, and draped in theology. We don’t want them too human, too frail, too much like us.

But isn’t that precisely the paradox at the heart of Christianity?

Today, when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a colt, his official representative on earth is wheelchaired into the most ornate church on earth, dressed in an Argentinian poncho reminded us that fragility is not the opposite of faith—it may be its most honest form.

That perhaps, in a moment like this, the Church caught a glimpse of what Jesus meant when he knelt to wash feet instead of issuing commands.

This was not the Pope as prince or priest. This was the Pope as a person, as a pilgrim, as a reminder that grace may arrive not dressed in white but in weakness.

And maybe, just maybe, that is the Church we need to become.