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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.

Having family near Athol, I read the article: “‘A life to celebrate’: Hawley residents hold ceremony to remember late President Jimmy Carter” [Recorder, Jan. 11]. There was great optimism in 1976, our nation’s bicentennial year. But by 1980, inflation and hostages held in Iran were sad points for the Carter administration. At that time, there were only two ex-presidents alive, and that was Nixon and Ford.