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SharePARIS: As the news of Pope Francis’s death broke, Christians and non-believers alike made their way towards churches across the world, paying tribute to a pontiff renowned as a champion of the vulnerable.
In India, the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata placed Francis’s portrait next to that of the institution’s founder, Mother Theresa, the candlewick burning down as the congregation sang in tribute. “Pope Francis had a great admiration for Mother Teresa ... as he himself was a great lover of the poor, as was Mother (Theresa).... So there was a bond of this love for the poor that connected them,” said Thomas D’Souza, Archbishop of Calcutta. “Those who are poor, migrants, refugees, people in any situation of disaster... his heart was there,” D’Souza added.
Ho, a Catholic in Seoul, was grateful for Francis’ prayers for South Korea after the Sewol ferry disaster that killed 304 people in 2014. “When the world is facing complex challenges, the Pope always cares about that, and I always feel deepest gratitude in my heart for him,” he said.
Korean student Kang Ian said he had a “personal connection” with the Pope. “My cousin has a disability, and the pope personally baptized him on the forehead like this,” the 19-year-old said, a stone’s throw from Seoul Myeongdong Cathedral.
A reformist Pope
Paris’s Notre Dame — whose reopening following a devastating fire Francis famously snubbed — was packed to the recently renovated rafters for the first of two special masses in his memory. “I’m an atheist ... but I was touched because I found he was very much a pope who put forward interesting reforms,” French businessman Guillaume Georget said outside the French capital’s iconic cathedral.
Francis’s reputation as a hard-working pontiff who worked to help the world’s worst-off likewise rang true to Madeleine Bomendje, who pointed to the pope’s visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023. “I know that he was a man of integrity — impartial, altruistic, who cared about others, who cared about us, especially our country,” the self-described devout Catholic said, standing near the capital Kinshasa’s Our Lady of Congo.
Fellow worshipper Justin Kambale agreed, pointing to Francis’s tireless advocacy for peace — including in the eastern DRC, where the government is locked in conflict with a Rwandan-backed armed group. “When he spoke to the world, he never failed to mention the war in the DRC, the war in Sudan, the war in Palestine, the war in Ukraine — he never stopped talking about that,” Kambale said. At noon in Rome, bells tolled at St Peter’s Basilica and a silence descended on the crowd. “We saw him here, he was just driven by in the car,” said Letizia Bartocci, who works in a jewelry shop near the square. “It was shocking news this morning.” — Agencies
