The choice wasn’t particularly hard.
The name came to me naturally—a sure sign, in my mind, of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I was a student at Georgetown University and was nearing the date of my confirmation, and the time had come to choose a confirmation name. Among the entire communion of saints, who in particular would I ask for intercession before God? Who would I take as a model? Whose name would I add to my own? Almost as soon as I asked the question, the answer sprang into my mind: Francis.
I thought of the humility, the gentleness, the love of the poor, of peace and of God’s creation with which St. Francis of Assisi lived his life. I desired to emulate St. Francis’ example in the decisions I make and the way I treat other people. But I also thought of another person on whose way of proceeding I wanted to model mine, the one whose choice of papal name pointed me to St. Francis’ example: Pope Francis, who passed away in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta on April 21, 2025.
Among my first clear memories related to the Vatican is sitting in the back seat of my parents’ car in New Haven, Conn., one March day in 2013, hearing an NPR newscaster speak—not without some measure of wonder—of a new pope who had just stepped out onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in a plain white cassock and asked the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square to pray for him. Soon after, I heard that he had chosen to live in the relatively austere Casa Santa Marta rather than the ornate Apostolic Palace. I heard that he had observed Holy Thursday by washing convicts’ feet in an Italian prison. I heard that his first pastoral visit outside Rome was to the island of Lampedusa, to visit immigrants and refugees who had risked everything to reach Europe and that, in a further sign of his humility, he had attempted to book his own flight in coach on Alitalia. Even at the age of 12, I could tell that Francis was a man of genuine, Christlike faith, preaching the Gospel by the way he lived his life.
For many Catholics older than me, Francis represented a cultural shift from previous pontificates. Although I have some hazy childhood memories of hearing about Pope Benedict XVI, Francis is the only pope I’ve known. My entire experience of conscious, chosen faith has been set against the backdrop of his ministry as the Holy Father.
Pope Francis presented himself not as a reigning monarch, but as a companion in the Christian life. For years the bio on his Instagram page bore a simple message: “I want to walk with you along the way of God’s mercy and tenderness.” Indeed, his papacy was a walk with us on our earthly pilgrimage, the walk of the shepherd in the fields with his flock. The shepherd who smells of his sheep, the doctor in the field hospital that is the church, rather than commander in a fortress. The call to reach out and embrace “Todos! Todos! Todos!”
In my mind, this is simply what the papacy is. I dimly remember how revolutionary his disposition seemed in 2013—how pleasantly astonished those voices on the radio sounded at his early gestures, how breathlessly my Irish Catholic relatives spoke of our new spiritual father at family reunions that spring. But while older people may still retain that sense of wonder at the change he embodied, for me the Pope Francis approach is simply Catholicism.
And this approach worked on me as a means of evangelization. Francis’ model of love, kindness and gentle pastoral ministry drew me fully into the church after years of post-baptismal disaffiliation (although falling in love with Ignatian spirituality through James Martin, S.J.’s The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything certainly helped as well). In Francis’ papacy, I found healing from the afflictions of the world.
At many points during my adolescence in the late 2010s, I fell into despair over what I saw to be the triumph of meanness and cruelty around the world, particularly here in the United States. Ripping immigrant children away from their families at the border was official state policy; the worst sort of bullying was encouraged, rewarded and perpetuated at the highest levels of public life; and often, when I logged on to social media, I found nothing but “owning” and “destroying” despised Others in posts and comments, as far as the eye could see and the thumb could scroll.
I did find one consistent ray of hope, however: The (almost impossibly, it sometimes seemed) decent and gentle man in the Vatican. He, and by extension the Catholic faith he led, was the antithesis of all that distressed and disheartened me. Francis spoke of reaching out with love and care to those on the margins of society; of fostering right relationships with God’s creation and with all the creatures in it; of war as the ultimate evil; of bearing witness to the Gospel in our lives through our compassion for others.
He continued to speak out strongly even when he himself was weakened. Shortly before his extended hospital stay, he exhorted American Catholics “not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters. With charity and clarity we are all called to live in solidarity and fraternity, to build bridges that bring us ever closer together, to avoid walls of ignominy and to learn to give our lives as Jesus Christ gave his for the salvation of all.” How different Francis’ message was from that of the prevailing political current today! Everything might have gone off the rails here, I sometimes thought to myself, but as long as Pope Francis was still preaching the Gospel in Rome, I had hope.
In the face of the exaltation of callousness, Francis showed me that it was not only possible but obligatory to care, deeply and unashamedly, about other people. Being a young person in the United States during the 2010s and 2020s can, frankly, be incredibly hard at times. How providential that, even though I came of age in a time of rancor, rising extremism and demagogic politics, I had the example of Pope Francis to model for me faith, hope and love, to show me what goodness on earth looks like.
I never met Pope Francis, but for me he was almost a spiritual director, asking me to look deeper, to find God. He was a companion in times of distress. The attraction of his example brought me to regular attendance at Mass, and eventually into the adult initiation process at Georgetown University to receive sacraments I had missed as a child. I owe my renewed Catholic faith to him.
One of the happiest moments in my life remains the sweltering Sunday morning in June 2023, 10 years into his papacy and mere days before he would be hospitalized for abdominal surgery, when I saw him as he led the faithful in the Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square. Although it was my first time visiting Rome, as I laid eyes on him I felt as though I had come home. Reflecting on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, he asked:
Do we bear witness to God-as-love? Or has God-as-love become in turn a concept, something we have already heard, that no longer stirs nor provokes life? If God is love, do our communities bear witness to this? Do they know how to love? Do our communities know how to love? And our family, do we know how to love in the family? Do we always leave the door open, do we know how to welcome everyone—and I emphasize, everyone—as brothers and sisters? Do we offer everyone the food of God’s forgiveness and Gospel joy? Does one breathe the air of home, or do we resemble more closely an office or a reserved place where only the elect can enter? God is love, God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and he gave his life for us.
The Catholic faith, as I witnessed it modeled by Pope Francis and as it drew me in as a young person searching for meaning, is not primarily a concept, a program or an ideology; it is an encounter with a loving God who longs to give us new life. Francis’ papacy stirred and provoked new life in me.
Thank you, Pope Francis, for everything. May God receive you in his loving embrace.
