By Filipe Domingues, Director of The Lay Centre
The first Pope to take the name “Francis,” inspired by the poor saint of Assisi, concluded his mission on Earth after 12 years of pontificate. The Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, died on April 21, 2025 at the age of 88.
The announcement was made by the Camerlengo, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, from Casa Santa Marta: “At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and the Church.”
From encounters with the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned to the defense of the environment and the structural reforms he initiated in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis sought to promote the “joy of the Gospel” through both words and deeds. In his first programmatic document, the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, published in November 2013, he wrote: “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus.” His greatest critique was of individualism, the “isolated conscience,” which he believed led to sadness and indifference.
A “Church That Goes Forth”
The Archbishop of Buenos Aires was elected Pope on March 13, 2013, succeeding Pope Benedict XVI, who had resigned. Francis was the first Latin American Pope in history and the first Jesuit to ascend to the throne of the Apostle Peter.
The lengthy period between Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation on February 11 of that year and the conclave that elected Francis allowed the Church to openly discuss the qualities needed in the new Pontiff. What was sought was a reformer Pope. Francis’s greatest reform, however, was to make the Church “go forth,” as he himself described it.
He firmly believed that the Church needed to reach out to everyone, wherever they were, especially in the human realities of greatest suffering.
Cardinal Bergoglio, then 76 years old, was elected to reorganize the structures of the Roman Curia, making it more service-oriented and collaborative with the global Church. More than that, the goal was to revitalize the proclamation of the Gospel in a strongly secularized and fragmented world.
A speech he gave during the general congregations on March 9 of that year—meetings of both voting and non-voting cardinals before the conclave—was decisive in leading to Bergoglio’s election. On that occasion, he said, “The Church is called to come out of herself and go to the peripheries, not only geographic but also existential: the mystery of sin, pain, injustice, ignorance, and the absence of faith, the areas of thought, and every form of misery.”
While some knock on the Church’s door to enter, and do not always find it open, “the self-referential Church claims that Jesus Christ is within her and does not allow Him to go out,” he said. Such a Church believes it has its own light rather than reflecting Christ’s light into the world.
In his first Mass as Pope, celebrated with the cardinal-electors in the Sistine Chapel on March 14, 2013, Francis spoke of three essential movements: walking, building, and confessing. A “Church that goes forth,” he indicated, is a Church in motion, one that does not remain frozen or fixed, one that continues to read the signs of the times.
“Always walk in the presence of the Lord,” he said. Yet, it is also a Church built on Christ, “edified,” with strong roots in history and tradition. Finally, it is a Church that “confesses Christ,” living and promoting the faith, praying, and contemplating, because “if we do not confess Christ, we will become a charitable NGO,” he often said.
Apostolic Zeal
In all he did as Pope, in every speech, Francis promoted this missionary dimension of the Church. He used many other images and metaphors to define it, such as the Church as a “field hospital,” open to healing the wounds of anyone, wherever they may be. He spoke of geographic and existential peripheries, criticized the “throwaway culture” and the “globalization of indifference.”
“I see clearly that the thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and warm the hearts of the faithful, closeness,” he said in an interview with La Civiltà Cattolica in September 2013.
“I see the Church as a field hospital after a battle. It is useless to ask a seriously wounded person if they have high cholesterol or elevated blood sugar! You need to heal their wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds… And you have to start from below.”
Using simple language and drawing close to society’s “discarded,” Pope Francis lived up to his name. Strengthening the ancient tradition of Popes who offer charity to those in need, he reached out to those on the margins: the poor, the sick, the homeless, the elderly, indigenous people, prisoners, people with disabilities, migrants, and refugees.
From the first day, he presented himself to the world as the “Bishop of Rome,” a priest and pastor. In a general audience in 2023, he declared, “Apostolic zeal is never a mere repetition of an acquired style but a testimony that the Gospel is alive here, for us, today. Being aware of this, let us look, therefore, at our time and our culture as a gift. They are ours, and evangelizing them does not mean judging them from afar or standing on a balcony shouting the name of Jesus, but going down to the streets, to the places where people live, frequenting the spaces where they suffer, work, study, and reflect, inhabiting the corners where human beings share what gives meaning to their lives.”
Prioritizing this pastoral zeal, he also sought to heal wounds with welcoming gestures for those who felt alienated from the Church, including people in second unions, members of the LGBTQ community, abuse victims, and others. Without changing Church doctrine on faith and morals, he applied Christ’s approach to the “lost sheep.”
The image of the Good Shepherd, he said in a general audience in May 2016, is that of “the shepherd who carries the lost sheep on his shoulders” and represents “Jesus’s care for sinners and God’s mercy, which does not accept losing anyone.” Christ’s closeness to sinners, Francis said, “should not scandalize us but rather lead us to a serious reflection on how we live our faith.”
In a bid to spiritually renew the Church and the world, Pope Francis declared a Jubilee Year of Mercy from 2015 to 2016. “Forgiveness is the most visible sign of the Father’s love, which Jesus wished to reveal throughout His life,” he wrote in the apostolic letter Misericordia et misera at the conclusion of the Extraordinary Jubilee. “Nothing a repentant sinner places before God’s mercy can remain without the embrace of His forgiveness.”
*Originally published at ‘O São Paulo’ newspaper
Photo: Vatican Media
