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Chester County awoke on Easter Monday to the sad news that Pope Francis, who many residents revered and who had travelled to Philadelphia to see celebrate Mass in person 10 years ago, had died.
“Today we mourn the passing of the Holy Father, Pope Francis,” read a message on the web page of St. Joseph’s Church in Downingtown, the largest Catholic parish in the county. “Surrounded by the beauty of the Easter season, we are reminded that in death, we find Victory in Christ. Let us join with our brothers and sisters worldwide today in prayer for his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed.”
The church added a quote from Francis: “Even death… can be experienced as the ultimate call to faith.”
Francis, history’s first Latin American pontiff who charmed the world with his humble style and concern for the poor but alienated conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change, died at 88.
The mayor of Downingtown, Phil Dague, said the people in his community would treat Francis’ death “not just as a world leader, but in the same manner that they would as if he were a member of their own family.
“I believe that at his core, Pope Francis was an incredibly good man,” said Dague. “He exemplified compassion and kindness towards all, and was a role model for all of us, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. His humility was something that we should all aspire to.”
Francis visited Philadelphia in September 2015 and attended the World Meeting of Families, met with prisoners and their families at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, and celebrated an open-air Mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
One of those who attended the service was lifelong devout Catholic Dan Castaldi, who spoke about the pope on Monday and remembered seeing him in a small Fiat “Pope Mobile.”
“He was a good man, a really good pope,” Castaldi said. “I just think he cared about everybody. He was good for the church. He was good for the world. He was really ‘the people’s Pope.”
U.S. Rep Chrissy Houlahan, whose 6th district includes the county where more than 160,000 Catholic adherents live and more than 25 churches are located, also added thoughts on his passing to her social media account.
“Pope Francis was both an incredible man and an inspiring leader,” Houlahan said. “May his example of compassion and grace encourage us all. Rest in peace, Pope Francis.”
Bells tolled in churches from his native Argentina to the Philippines and across Rome as news spread around the world.
“At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell said from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lived.
Francis, who suffered from chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14, 2025, for a respiratory crisis that developed into double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the longest hospitalization of his 12-year papacy.
He made his last public appearance on Easter Sunday — a day before his death — to bless thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, drawing wild cheers and applause. Beforehand, he met U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
Francis performed the blessing from the same loggia where he was introduced on March 13, 2013, as the 266th pope.
From his first greeting that night — a remarkably normal “Buonasera” (“Good evening”) — to his embrace of refugees and the downtrodden, Francis signaled a very different tone for the papacy, stressing humility over hubris for a Catholic Church beset by scandal and accusations of indifference.
The Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio brought a breath of fresh air into a 2,000-year-old institution that had seen its influence wane during the troubled tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, whose surprise resignation led to Francis’ election.
But Francis soon invited troubles of his own, and conservatives grew increasingly upset with his progressive bent, outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and crackdown on traditionalists. His greatest test came in 2018 when he botched a notorious case of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, and the scandal that festered under his predecessors erupted anew.
And then Francis, the crowd-loving, globe-trotting pope of the peripheries, navigated the unprecedented reality of leading a universal religion through the coronavirus pandemic from a locked-down Vatican City.
“We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented,” Francis told an empty St. Peter’s Square in March 2020. Calling for a rethink of the global economic framework, he said the pandemic showed the need for “all of us to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.”
World leaders on Monday extolled Francis’ commitment to the marginalized. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is largely Catholic, wrote on X: “From Buenos Aires to Rome, Pope Francis wanted the church to bring joy and hope to the poorest. … May this hope forever outlast him.”
Flags flew at half-staff in Italy, and crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square. When the great bells of St. Peter’s Basilica began tolling, tourists stopped in their tracks to record the moment on their phones.
Johann Xavier, who traveled from Australia, hoped to see the pope during his visit. “But then we heard about it when we came in here. It pretty much devastated all of us,’’ he said.
Francis’ death sets off a weekslong process of allowing the faithful to pay their final respects, first for Vatican officials in the Santa Marta chapel and then in St. Peter’s for the general public, followed by a funeral and a conclave to elect a new pope.
Reforming the Vatican
Francis was elected on a mandate to reform the Vatican bureaucracy and finances but went further in shaking up the church without changing its core doctrine. “Who am I to judge?” he replied when asked about a purportedly gay priest.
The comment sent a message of welcome to the LGBTQ+ community and those who felt shunned by a church that had stressed sexual propriety over unconditional love. “Being homosexual is not a crime,” he told The Associated Press in 2023, urging an end to civil laws that criminalize it.
Stressing mercy, Francis changed the church’s position on the death penalty, calling it inadmissible in all circumstances. He also declared the possession of nuclear weapons, not just their use, was “immoral.”
In other firsts, he approved an agreement with China over bishop nominations that had vexed the Vatican for decades, met the Russian patriarch and charted new relations with the Muslim world by visiting the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.
He reaffirmed the all-male, celibate priesthood and upheld the church’s opposition to abortion, equating it to “hiring a hit man to solve a problem.”
Roles for women
But he added women to important decision-making roles and allowed them to serve as lectors and acolytes in parishes. He let women vote alongside bishops in periodic Vatican meetings, following long-standing complaints that women do much of the church’s work but are barred from power.
Sister Nathalie Becquart, whom Francis named to one of the highest Vatican jobs, said his legacy was a vision of a church where men and women existed in a relationship of reciprocity and respect.
“It was about shifting a pattern of domination — from human being to the creation, from men to women — to a pattern of cooperation,” said Becquart, the first woman to hold a voting position in a Vatican synod.
Still, a note of criticism came Monday from the Women’s Ordination Conference, which had been frustrated by Francis’ unwillingness to push for the ordination of women.
“His repeated ‘closed door’ policy on women’s ordination was painfully incongruous with his otherwise pastoral nature, and for many, a betrayal of the synodal, listening church he championed. This made him a complicated, frustrating, and sometimes heart-breaking figure for many women,” the statement said.
The church as refuge
While Francis did not allow women to be ordained, the voting reform was part of a revolutionary change in emphasizing what the church should be: a refuge for everyone — “todos, todos, todos” (“everyone, everyone, everyone”). Migrants, the poor, prisoners and outcasts were invited to his table far more than presidents or powerful CEOs.
“For Pope Francis, (the goal) was always to extend the arms of the church to embrace all people, not to exclude anyone,” said Farrell, the Vatican camerlengo, who takes charge after a pontiff’s death.
Francis demanded his bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks, pressed the world to protect God’s creation from climate disaster, and challenged countries to welcome those fleeing war, poverty and oppression.
After visiting Mexico in 2016, Francis said of then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump that anyone building a wall to keep migrants out “is not Christian.”
While progressives were thrilled with Francis’ radical focus on Jesus’ message of mercy and inclusion, it troubled conservatives who feared he watered down Catholic teaching and threatened the very Christian identity of the West. Some even called him a heretic.
A few cardinals openly challenged him. Francis usually responded with his typical answer to conflict: silence.
He made it easier for married Catholics to get an annulment, allowed priests to absolve women who had had abortions and decreed that priests could bless same-sex couples. He opened debate on issues like homosexuality and divorce, giving pastors wiggle room to discern how to accompany their flocks, rather than handing them strict rules to apply.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
