We share in the world’s mourning of our Holy Father, Francis, who entered into eternal life today, April 21, 2025. We offer our individual and collective prayers for the repose of the soul of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

At Catholic Charities, we have drawn strong guidance of our work and ministry from the continuity of our previous two Popes. Pope Benedict XVI reminded us in Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) that the “Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God…, celebrating the sacraments…, and exercising the ministry of charity… These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being” (no. 25).

Often utilizing common imagery and words, Francis sought to call the Church out of herself and to go to the peripheries, especially to those who are poor, marginalized, and forgotten. He called the Church to deeper social action.

“It is not enough to offer someone a sandwich unless it is accompanied by the possibility of learning how to stand on one’s own two feet. Charity that leaves the poor person as he is, is not sufficient. True mercy, the mercy God gives to us and teaches us, demands justice, it demands that the poor find the way to be poor no longer. It asks — and it asks us, the Church, us, the City of Rome, it asks the institutions — to ensure that no one ever again stand in need of a soup-kitchen, of makeshift-lodgings, of a service of legal assistance in order to have his legitimate right recognized to live and to work, to be fully a person” (Visit to the Astalli Centre, 2013).

From his first travels to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2013 drawing attention to the plight of migrants and asylum seekers to his February 2025 letter to the U.S. Bishops, Pope Francis reminded us of the Church’s special concern for migrants and refugees. It is an area of service that we are especially proud to share in.

As the Church transitions to our 267th Supreme Pontiff, we at Catholic Charities give thanks for the privilege of sharing in the Church’s sacred work of charity both in direct service and social advocacy.

It can well be said of our Holy Father today: “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).