The renowned anthropologist Mircea Eliade once issued this warning: No community should botch its deaths. He’s right. Death washes clean and only after someone is gone can we fully drink in the gift that he or she was for us and the world.

On January 22^nd the Christian community, and the Catholic Church in particular, lost someone who had been a gift to us for a long time. John Allen, the editor-in-chief of Crux, died in Rome at the age of 61. He had been battling cancer since 2022.

John Allen was one of the most prominent (and important) English journalists commenting on religious issues, particularly on ecclesial issues and the shifting demographics of religion in the world. He worked out of Rome as a Vatican correspondent and out of the USA as editor-in-chief of a news site that helped keep us abreast of what was happening religiously in the world.

A number of things made John stand out as a journalist. He had a talent for having his finger on the pulse of things, not just in what was happening in the churches, but also what (in his words) were the mega-trends in the world. For those of us who didn’t have time to scan the news every day and read the numerous articles in religious magazines and websites – well we could read John Allen.

But, even more important than his talent for having his finger on the pulse of things was his always fair-minded, balanced commentary. John Allen did not fall into either of the current ecclesial categories of liberal or conservative. He was both, and neither. He was comfortable in both liberal and conservative gatherings, comfortable with Popes John Paul II and Benedict and with Francis and Leo. He had devotees and critics on both sides of the ecclesial spectrum. That speaks well of him. If I may use a time-worn cliché, he was too conservative for some liberals and too liberal for some conservatives. He didn’t have a full home with either of them, even as he was at home with both. Moreover, he was never accused of being unfair, even by those who disagreed with him.

Then, beyond the journalist, there was John Allen the man, the friend, the one who forever brought lightness, warmth and humor into the circle. I was privileged to get to know him (and his favorite restaurants) during my years on our General Council in Rome. He befriended our Oblate community and we befriended him. Our friendship continued after my return to Canada and the USA and John accepted invitations to speak at various symposia and conferences at our school and at other Oblate sponsored events.

And he was always memorable, not just for his solid content, but also for his color and humor. He would introduce himself to the audience by sharing that he came from Hill City, Kansas, where, in his words, “there is no hill, and sure as hell no city!” The local bar there, he said, had a sign in the men’s restroom: Please don’t gut your ducks in the sink! He carried that earthiness into his presentations and no one ever left wondering what exactly he was talking about. He didn’t only bring balance and fairness, he also brought color, humor, and wit.

John carried that into his life in general: insight, balance, and color. My image of John is this: a cigarette in hand, a drink in front of him, sitting with a group who are holding forth on every kind of issue, with John providing colorful banter along with keen insights from his wide world experience. I remember a story he shared at just this kind of gathering, about how he was with his family inside a mall in Minneapolis when his phone rang. He looked at the number and then told his family he needed to step outside to take this call. It was Pope Benedict. How do you tell your family in a shopping mall in Minneapolis that you just had a phone call from the pope?

As Eliade says, no community should botch its deaths. In his discourse at the Last Supper in John’s Gospel, Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples that they will only be able to receive his spirit after he dies. Like Eliade, he is warning them not to botch his death. They didn’t.

After his death, his first disciples, for all their misunderstanding and infidelities while he was alive, didn’t botch his death. In the light of his death, they were able to grasp, fully for the first time, his person and his message.

We lost a giant in John Allen and we shouldn’t botch his death.

We need to drink in his spirit so that, among other things, we might be more fair-minded, not fall into any one-sided ecclesial ideology, and always bring warmth and wit into a room.

John Allen, RIP, you were always the good Hill City man who was far too sensible to ever gut your ducks in the sink.