Catholics mourn ‘lost voice for the dispossessed’

ON HIS last day — Easter, the holiest on the Christian calendar — Pope Francis doubled down on the defining theme of his papacy: mercy. After a private audience with US Vice President JD Vance, who represented an American administration which Francis had taken to task for its migrant crackdown and aid cuts, the pope's final speech was read aloud in St Peter’s Square as the pontiff, in his wheelchair, struggled for breath.

- ANTHONY FAIOLA, STEFANO PITRELLI and CHICO HARLAN

“How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalised and migrants,” the text said, the words read by a surrogate, given Francis’s fragile health.

“I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear,” a later passage read, without mentioning names or nations.

Francis’s death ends a historic chapter for the world’s largest Christian faith, silencing a champion of the marginalised at a time when nationalism, a concept long held in contempt by the first Latin American pope, is once again surging in the West.

The church now finds itself at a crossroads, plagued by divisions and competing visions after the death of a spiritual leader who called out religious hypocrisy as he sought to throw open the faith’s doors, as he put it, to “everyone, everyone, everyone.”

“He still was a voice — a moral voice, moral in the sense that he stood up for peace and justice and the dignity of people,” said Brigitte Thalhammer, an Austrian nun who was standing next to a fountain in St Peter’s Square on Monday afternoon. “And I wondered: Who can be that voice now?

“My hope and prayer is that the church will be really different than what's going on with the world leaders, where the bullies are on the top,” she said. “This is my prayer, that in the conclave they will find someone who can continue this way.”

During his 12-year pontificate, Francis shifted the focus of the church away from debates about bedroom topics, such as divorce, homosexuality and contraception, and engaged more with modern issues, including climate change, immigration and artificial intelligence.