Appreciating Pope Francis

Our dear Holy Father, Pope Francis, was called home to the Father’s house on Easter Monday, April 21, in the 12th year of his pontificate. 

The death of a pope is always an extraordinary moment in the life of the Church. All Catholics spontaneously cherish a special appreciation(replaces love) and filial devotion to the Holy Father as the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of Saint Peter, and so it is no wonder that so many Catholics poignantly mourn the passing of this pope. 

This ecclesial moment offers us the opportunity to consider the work of God in and through those he has called to serve him and his people. Over the past few weeks, I have been reflecting upon the life and ministry of the late Holy Father, Pope Francis. 

Pope Francis, from the first moments of his papacy, chose to utilize prophetic gestures as a means of expressing his universal pastoral ministry. While both of his immediate predecessors were intellectually inclined, having been scholars and professors, Pope Francis used the witness of his actions even more than his written teaching to proclaim and bear witness to the Gospel. 

I don’t mean to discount what he did write, which reveals a depth of faith and wisdom, but I believe each of us can think of striking images through which Pope Francis bore witness to the mercy, the closeness and the tenderness of God. I recall, for example, the poignancy of his solitary prayer inside a cavernous and empty Saint Peter’s Basilica during the throes of the COVID pandemic when gatherings were not permitted. 

Pope Francis was a shepherd for whom the Church’s witness to the world was at the forefront of his mind. His special pastoral concern for the marginalized, the disenfranchised and the excluded in society always was first and foremost when proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world. 

The late Holy Father believed that if we are to announce the Gospel to the world, we must do so by beginning with those whom society would rather ignore. His attentiveness to social realities and global challenges such as care for creation and migrants was entirely for the sake of the credibility of the Church’s proclamation of Christ to the world.

He charted the course of his papacy with the publication of his 2013 post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation called “The Joy of the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium). Here, he introduced many of the themes that he would develop in the subsequent years of his pontificate. 

He writes about the need for a renewed proclamation of the Good News of Christ’s incarnation, passion, death and resurrection. He calls for this kerygma to be always at the center of the life and the witness of the Church. He describes how this looks within the Church and for the Church as a vital force within society. 

The entirety of Pope Francis’s ministry, writing and teaching can be read through the lens of this document as he called the Church to an ongoing pastoral conversion.

There is a poetic beauty and fittingness that God called Pope Francis home to the Father’s house on Easter Monday during the Jubilee Year of Hope, which he inaugurated. In a certain sense, Pope Francis began and ended his service of the Petrine Ministry with the theme of hope.

In his inaugural Mass as pope, Francis invited the entire Church into a bold witness of hope: “Today too, amid so much darkness, we need to see the light of hope and to be men and women who bring hope to others. To protect creation, to protect every man and every woman, to look upon them with tenderness and love, is to open up a horizon of hope; it is to let a shaft of light break through the heavy clouds; it is to bring the warmth of hope!” 

Pope Francis was a shaft of light announcing Christ to the world and calling the Church toward a more integral and Christlike witness in society. He leaves us as a parting gift the Jubilee of Hope so that we might be fortified and encouraged in our proclamation of Jesus Christ to a world sorely in need of his Good News.

We give thanks to God for the gift of Pope Francis. We pray for the repose of his soul, and we pray for the universal Church in this time of transition. 

Assured always that it is Christ who is himself the Good Shepherd who faithfully guides his flock through the pastures of history, we entrust ourselves anew to the Lord and seek to receive and be guided by the shepherds he provides for us. 

With gratitude for his ministry, we bid our prayerful farewell to Pope Francis and commend him to the Lord. We also turn with great confidence to the Father of mercy and pray for the one whom he will choose to shepherd the Church as our next pope, the Vicar of Christ and Bishop of Rome. 

Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.