Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago who minister to and advocate for immigrants were inspired by Pope Francis’ words and actions, from visiting Lampedusa, Italy, to mourn migrants lost at sea in the opening months of his pontificate, to celebrating Mass at the U.S.-Mexico border, and urging members of the U.S. Congress in 2015 to find an immigration policy that would be “always humane, just and fraternal.” But Francis’ influence on immigration ministry runs deeper than the example he set as pope, said Elena Segura, senior coordinator for immigration-national ministry. Segura led the archdiocesan immigration ministry in 2010 when it began Pastoral Migratoria, a parish-based immigrant-to-immigrant ministry. It expanded to dozens of parishes in the archdiocese, and now is expanding to other dioceses around the United States, including New York; Baltimore; and Stockton, California, among others. “Pope Francis is the founder, the creator, he is the leader, he is the visionary of what Pastoral Migratoria is,” Segura said. The ministry is based on the theological underpinnings of what has become known as the Aparecida Document, the concluding document of the fifth general conference of the Latin American bishops, which took place in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007. Then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was chosen to lead the committee that drafted the document. It calls for laypeople to be “disciples and missionaries,” emphasizing that lay Christians have a responsibility to bring their faith to social and political issues. “We created, we founded, we opened Pastoral Migratoria, an immigrant social ministry based on Aparecida,” Segura said. “If we didn’t have Aparecida, we wouldn’t exist. Thanks to Pope Francis we exist. He gave us the framework of Catholic social teaching in Latin America. The focus is on grassroots leadership. Anybody — any human being — is called to respond to their baptismal call with service and leadership.” Steven P. Millies, director of Catholic Theological Union’s Bernardin Center, said that Pope Francis’ trip to Lampedusa — an Italian island closer to the coast of North Africa than Europe where more than 8,000 migrants arrived the year before the pope’s Mass — set the tone for the way he responded to the global migration crisis. The pope’s trip to Lampedusa came in response to a shipwreck in which migrants died, one of many that occurred in the area. “That early trip to Lampedusa — he was responsive to the global migration crisis, instantly, pastorally, and was from that time consistent about it,” Millies said. His pontificate intersected the presidencies of Donald Trump, Millies pointed out, who “has so much to say about migrants” and may have raised the profile of migration as an issue, especially for Catholics in the United States. At the same time, Pope Francis saw its relationship with other theological and pastoral issues. “This migration crisis touched in interrelated ways all three encyclicals of the Francis pontificate,” Millies said. With “Laudato Si’: On Care for Common Home” (2015), Pope Francis was “calling attention to the fact that our planet is crying out in agony from how we have abused it,” and how the effects of that disproportionately affect poor people and compel them to migrate, Millies said. “Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship” (2020) said “we are all really responsible for one another. That’s a fact from a Christian point of view,” Millies said, and it extends to the care of immigrants and migrants. In “Dilexit Nos: On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ” (2024), “he has, in a more spiritual way, drawn our attention through the image of the Sacred Heart to the way we are expected to respond. That response is something we saw in Lampedusa. Going with a pastor’s heart to the place where it happened. Responding with his presence. This relationship that Francis has had to the situation pf migrants and immigrants is a thread that is woven through his pontificate.”
People with disabilities felt seen, loved by Pope Francis Pope Francis lived the passage of Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel that talks about the obligation disciples of Christ have to care for the poor and vulnerable members of the community, said Father Joseph Mulcrone, director of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s St. Francis Borgia Deaf Center.
Ecumenical and interreligious impact of Pope Francis I was awakened on the morning of April 21 by a text, stunned out of sleep as I read a note of condolences from a Muslim friend on the passing of Pope Francis. Even in death, Pope Francis was revealing his impact on interreligious relations.
Local iconographer adds Pope Francis to Catholic heroes series In the days after Pope Francis died, Chicago-based iconographer Joe Malham recalled the moments that, for him, defined Francis’ papacy: washing the feet of women in a prison, embracing a man who suffered from a disfiguring disease, inviting a young girl with Down syndrome to sit on the stage next to him after she had wandered from her parents.