“I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.”
Pope Francis
Bishop of Rome (1936-2025)
At the Conclave of 2013, following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, rose to speak. In his short speech, he said that the main problems facing the Church did not come from outside but from within: a kind of spiritual narcissism and ecclesial introversion. An evangelizing Church, he said, goes out of itself—to the margins and peripheries, both geographical and existential. He was subsequently elected pope, taking the name Francis.
The choice of his name was evidently significant. From the beginning, this appeared to indicate a mission. St. Francis, after all, was the saint who set out to reform the Church by recalling it to the memory of the poor man, Jesus. Pope Francis immediately set a new papal tone through his personal gestures of humility. But the influence of St. Francis was most evident in his pastoral agenda and teaching, which gave priority to mercy, care for the poor, the cause of peace, and most significantly, “care for creation.”
In keeping with his Jesuit roots, Francis placed high emphasis on discernment, substituting what he called a “laboratory faith” with a “journey faith”—a call to meet God along the way, in history, relationships, and experience. This supported his promotion of a “synodal way” of being Church: a model based on walking together. Through his words and actions, he modeled the Beatitudes, which he called a Christian’s “identity card.” His passing on April 21, 2025, the day after Easter, at the age of eighty-eight, was mourned throughout the world.
Robert Ellsberg’s Blessed Among Us: Day by Day with Saintly Witnesses; Volume 2 is now available from Liturgical Press.
