Monday Octave of Easter
Memorial Mass for Pope Francis
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
April 21, 2025
Sadness Coupled with Gratitude
All of us woke this morning to the news of Pope Francis’ passing from this life. While we all knew that the Pope was in frail health, somehow his passing seemed sudden and surprising. Pope Francis has become so much a part of our lives and so much of a citizen of the world, that his death leaves us feeling bereft. A voice of hope and compassion has been stilled. We feel there are too few such voices in the world.
If our first reaction was sadness, let our second be one of gratitude. In his providence, God raised up Jorge Bergoglio to lead his Church. For these past thirteen years, Pope Francis has led the Church with courage and love. He challenged the Church not to be inward looking but always to “on mission”, intent on spreading the Gospel. Indeed, Pope Francis brought to his ministry as priest, bishop, and Pope the same zeal for the Name and Message of Jesus Christ that we saw in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Just as Peter led the Eleven in proclaiming the Gospel, so too Francis, as Peter’s successor, led the world’s bishops, as successors of the Eleven, in proclaiming the Gospel. Like the Apostles, Pope Francis made clear that Jesus is unlike anyone else who walked the earth, the Incarnate Son, who vanquished sin and death by his Cross and Resurrection. And In the power of the Spirit, Pope Francis brought the Good News to everyone, including and especially the poor, the afflicted, and the marginalized.
Let us continue striving to heed Pope Francis’ call to missionary conversion and discipleship here in the Archdiocese of Baltimore by orienting all we do— every parish, every ministry, every form of service – to the all-important mission of proclaiming the Gospel and enabling those we serve to encounter Christ within the Church. Pope Francis challenged us to create, in the power of the Holy Spirit, communities where Christ is more readily encountered, where people are listened to and accompanied in their struggles, where the poor are loved and the afflicted are ministered to. One of the best ways we can honor Pope Francis’ memory is to rededicate ourselves continually to the mission of evangelization and to the service of the poor and marginalized in our community. We are to be at once a beacon of hope and a field hospital for the wounded. Amid the darkness, let us “a light brightly visible”.
Synodality
Pope Francis also taught us that an outward-looking Church will be a church that listens, a church that journeys together in facing the decisions and difficulties that we inevitably encounter on mission. To be sure, Pope Francis did not readily deal in abstractions. He was down to earth and focused on the realities at hand. Pope Francis taught us to look such challenges in the eye and to face them, not merely with our limited resources and strategies, but to understand and address them in the light of the Gospel. He also insisted that we address them, not in isolation, but together.
Thus, he lifted up the notion of synodality, “journeying together”. For while the Church has a God-given structure, it is one family of faith, we owe it to one another in Christ to abstain from the “sound and fury” of the world, so that we may reflect on God’s Word & listen to one another in the Holy Spirit.
The Pope’s call to synodality is being embraced in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. For example, the Seek the City to Come process was, at its core, synodal. It involved consultations and conversations with nearly 6,000 people and the new configuration of parishes was recommended to me by working groups of some 200 people from across the city and its environs. While no such process can ever be perfect or please everyone, it is beginning to bear fruit, a tribute to the wisdom of Pope Francis and the goodness of our fellow Catholics.
Common Home / New Politics
Pope Francis, building on the teaching of his predecessors, emphasized the duty that is ours to protect the earth. It is God’s gift to us and humanity’s common home. Pope Francis helped us understand the interconnectedness of creation and our need not only to protect the environment but to ensure that environments exist for human flourishing. Thus Holy Father built on the Church’s teaching on human dignity and the requirements of a just society.
The Pope extended those themes in his encyclical “Fratelli tutti” where he called for greater dialog and understanding among leaders & citizens, a “new kind of politics” that transcends partisan and ideological bitterness. Perhaps in death his voice will be heeded more than in life.
Jubilee of Hope
As we know, Pope Francis declared 2025 to be an extraordinary Holy Year, a Jubilee of Hope, a time of prayer and grace to deepen on our hope in Christ. Indeed, he called us to be pilgrims of hope, who journey resolutely, even amid the sadness and setbacks of this world, towards the Heavenly Jerusalem where Christ is seated at God’s right hand. The heart of hope is the death and resurrection of Christ. And it is in the midst of the Church’s celebration of Christ’s victory over death that Pope Francis passed from this life to the next.
Pope Francis left us as a pilgrim of hope. Yesterday, against his doctor’s orders, he made one last public appearance, riding through the crowds in his Popemobile and appearing on the balcony of St. Peter’s. It was as if he were saying farewell to us and urging us one last time to be men and women who fix our hopes not on power or possessions but on the surpassing joy of knowing & proclaiming Christ as Lord and Savior.
May this great pilgrim of joy and peace and hope safely reach his destination, the joy of the Kingdom of God that he proclaimed so insistently and effectively. Even as we pray for Pope Francis, may he pray for us that we may proclaim with similar conviction the joy of the Gospel in every community of this Premier See. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, may his great soul rest in peace!