As the story goes, the time had come to ease the suffering of an old family dog, and the parents of the family thought it best to have their boy on hand to say good-bye. When the deed was done, the boy seemed unusually calm, particularly when the conversation turned to why dogs’ lives are so short in comparison to that of human lives.  The little boy said he knew why, and of course, the adults in the room leaned in hoping to learn something, themselves. “People are born,” the boy said, “so they can learn how to live a good life, like loving everybody and being nice all the time.  Well, dogs already know how to do that so they don’t have to stay as long.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

Back in 2014,  Pope Francis set some tongues wagging in the Vatican, mostly among old school Catholics who’d been taught that animals are soulless and can’t enter heaven, when he met a young boy grieving at the loss of his dog. “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creature,” the Pope told the child.

All Popes are not alike. In the nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX was the first pope to officially declare animals soulless and thus unable to enter heaven. Pope John Paul II went the other way. In 1990, he is reported to have said animals must have souls, as they were “created by God’s breath.”  Then, almost 20 years later, Pope Benedict XVI said God only gives access to heaven to humans.

We shouldn’t have been entirely surprised by Pope Francis’ statement. He did, after all, chose the name, “Francis,” after St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and ecology.

We won’t venture into theological debate, though we tend to side with Will Rogers who said,“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”

As for the photograph, it was taken in an address at St. Peters Square where the Pope met a dog training group who were accompanied by officials from the Italian Federation for dog sports – and yes, the Pope met a Puli.