His Holiness Pope Francis rip
Solemn Mass for the happy repose of Pope Francis
is celebrated in
St Mary’s pro-Cathedral Dublin
Friday 25th April at 10.30am
Principal Celebrant: Most Rev Luis Mariano Montemayor – Apostolic Nuncio
Homilist: Bishop Paul Dempsey
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Jorge Mario Bergoglio was Born to Italian immigrants on December 17th 1936 in Flores, Buenos Aires, Argentina, his mother being Regina -Maria (b1911) and his father Mario-Jose (1908-1959). He was the eldest of five siblings, Alberto Horacio, Marta Regina, María Elena, and Óscar Adrián. His Grandfather, Giovani (1884- 1964) had chosen to emigrate from Piedmont in north-eastern Italy. In 1927 he bought a ticket for himself, his wife and his son to Argentina, aboard the SS Principessa Mafalda. That voyage from Genoa would end in tragedy off the coast of Brazil, when the Principessa Mafalda sank, killing hundreds, in a disaster that would see the ship referred to as the “Italian Titanic.” But the Bergoglios, the grandparents and father of the man who became Pope Francis, were not aboard, as at the last moment they had to defer and rebooked for a later sailing.
Francis is predeceased by his parents and brothers. His only surviving sibling is María Elena, who lives in Argentina and leads a private life supported by her two sons. Francis’ niece is an artist who lives in Spain.
Before entering religious life, Jorge worked as a nightclub bouncer and as a janitor. He later trained as a chemist and took a job in a factory, where he worked closely with Esther Ballestrino, a human rights campaigner who would later be kidnapped and murdered during Argentina’s military dictatorship.
Jorge Bergoglio eventually joined the Jesuit order, studied philosophy, and went on to teach literature and psychology. He was ordained a priest of the Jesuit Order in 1969 and served as the Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina from 1973 to 1979. In 1998, he became the archbishop of his hometown Buenos Aires before Pope John Paul II made him a Cardinal in 2001.
When elected the 266th Pope on 13th March 2013, after Pope Benedict XVI resigned two weeks earlier because of his advanced age, he chose his papal name in honour of St. Francis of Assisi, and also decided to keep the motto he chose when ordained bishop ‘ Miserando atque eligendo’ (having mercy, he chose him). Francis became the first Latin American, the first Jesuit, and the first from the Southern Hemisphere to become Pope. Most strikingly, when asked who he is by an interviewer soon after becoming Pope, Pope Francis replied ‘I am a sinner’.
Renowned for his humble and accessible approach, and for his advocacy for the poor and marginalized Francis placed great value on action, seeing it as more important than just words. As Pope, Francis chose to live in a simple apartment within the Vatican, close to people, and relentlessly advocated for the poor, immigrants, and refugees, as well as environmental protection and interreligious dialogue. He issued the papal encyclical ‘Laudato Si’, addressing the climate crisis and advocating for environmental stewardship, made historic apologies to survivors of clergy sex abuse, and worked towards reforms within the Church, building the reforms Pope Benedict had begun.
Francis drew on his own family background as migrants from Mussolini’s Italy to good effect, making an important and impassioned plea for today’s world to behave with more compassion and humanity.
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***Please see below Archbishop Farrells words on the death of Pope Francis
Statement of Archbishop Dermot Farrell on the Death of Pope Francis
With all his heart, and with all his understanding, and with all his strength…(Mark 12:33)
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)
Right to the very end! With everything he had! Last Thursday—Holy Thursday—Pope Francis visited Rome’s Regina Coeli prison. He was too weak to wash the prisoners’ feet, but even in his weakness, he found the strength to be with those who are of little value in the eyes of the world. On Sunday—Easter Sunday—he would summon the strength to greet the faithful from the Balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, and afterwards find the generosity of spirit to greet the crowd in St Peter’s Square itself. From his first appearance on the balcony of St Peter’s the night of his election, to his last, hours before his death, his was a papacy of radical presence to all God’s people. His was a living out of the prophecy of the Lord: “there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10:16) And people could feel this: we could feel his connection with us and his concern for us, his welcome for his brothers and sisters.
Pope Francis’s life has been a radical dedication to the gospel. Throughout his pontificate, he modelled and preached God’s good news of justice, mercy, and forgiveness. Being a child of immigrants, he knew first-hand the hardships facing those forced to leave their homeland, and his papacy became one of compassion, commitment, and action for migrants and those facing disadvantage worldwide: after one of the many tragic drownings of migrants in the Mediterranean, a few weeks after his election, he insisted on going to the island of Lampedusa: “I felt that I had to come here today, to pray and to offer a sign of my closeness, but also to challenge our consciences lest this tragedy be repeated.” (Lampedusa Homily, 9 July 2013)
His “challenge to our consciences” did not stop with those people would prefer to ignore, but in his very South American way, he read beneath the surface (see Luke 5:4), and sought to open the ears and the hearts of world to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor: “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combatting poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature,” he would argue in Laudato Sì, his ground-breaking encyclical of 2015 (here paragraph 139). The climate crisis and the crisis of our humanity go hand in hand. The living God is the God of the poor. Francis had come to see this, and he strove that the whole Church might see it too. His heart and his imagination were spiritual and pastoral in equal measure. Only a pastor would or could describe the Church as a “field hospital.” Only someone truly grounded in the Spirit could invite the priests and people to contemplate the words of a mid-century central European poet of Jewish heritage, speaking of “the mysterious and indissoluble sacramental union between the divine Word and our human words …. How can we fail to reflect on the words left us by the poet Paul Celan: ‘Those who truly learn to see, draw close to what is unseen.’ ”
(Letter on the Role of Literature on Formation, No 44. 17 July 2024)
With the Synod on Synodality (October 2022–October 2024), he led the Church in plumbing the depths of its renewal that began in the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). His Ignatian spirituality with its emphasis on the need for discernment—and indeed his own shortcomings in leadership in his early life as a Jesuit—brought home to him the need for people to journey together in our search to follow Christ and serve our neighbour. His way of leading—profound humility matched with deep conviction, spreading the practice of discernment and synodality in the governance and life of the Church—is moving the Church in unprecedented ways. For the first time a pope gave synod-voting rights to members of the Church other than bishops. Importantly, he has given not only a voice, but real executive power to women within the structures of the Roman Curia. We see the same movement in the nomination of new voices to the College of Cardinals, voices from younger, smaller Churches, voices from the margins.
Once again, his way was not just words and hopes, but action. Genuine empowerment is life-giving: when people are truly empowered, the Church becomes more fully the sacrament of our Risen Lord—the “flame divided but undimmed, [the] pillar of fire that glows to the honour of God,” as we sing in the Exultet, our Easter song of wonder and praise.
Beyond the Church too, his way was one of seeing, judging, and acting. “I have experienced your gift of friendship and wisdom, for which I thank the Lord,” he would write to his close Jewish friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Buenos Aires. He was remarkable in reaching out to Islam, seeking common ground. One thinks especially of his meeting with the important Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah al Sistani during his visit to Iraq in 2021.
Pope Francis’s death comes during the Jubilee of Hope which he inaugurated on Christmas Eve last. In his acceptance of people as they are, and by his constant going out to encounter the other in their own place (see Mark 1:38 and John 12:27), he himself became the great pilgrim of hope. In his preaching and teaching he has given the Church a rich treasury from which we will be drawing sustenance long into the future. From the outset he insisted on sharing the “joy of the gospel” and put those on the periphery at the centre of his ministry. The Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium—the Joy of the Gospel (2013), established the horizon, and set out the programme for his papal ministry. The joy of the gospel, and its hope, came to shape his life and ministry, and was the centre of his teaching: “Rather than offering the healing power of grace and the light of the gospel message, some would indoctrinate that message, turning it into dead stones to be hurled at others.” (Amoris Laetitia, n. 49). Witness to the acceptance, healing, and hope of Christ is what the Church is really about, and Pope Francis gave himself to it with every fibre of his being.
His was a life is marked by numerous profound changes. All that he became was rooted in his deep prayer, in his trust in the journey of Jesus, and in his abandonment of himself to the will of God. He has now set out on the final stage of his pilgrimage to God. For him, death “will allow us to participate, with sublime emotion, in the infinite and blissful exuberance of God’s creative act, whose endless adventures we will experience first-hand.” (24 August 2022) At the end of almost every audience and address, he would assure those present of his prayers, and ask them—with great simplicity—to pray for him. As we give thanks for the extraordinary gift he was and is for us all, let us do the one thing he asked for himself, let us pray for him. Eternal rest, grant unto him, O Lord. May he hear those words addressed to the good and faithful servants, “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. May Pope Francis rest in the peace of Christ.
