Dear John,
It is with deep sorrow that we mark the passing of Pope Francis, who died peacefully on Easter Monday at the age of 88.
Just hours after delivering his final Urbi et Orbi blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica — his voice frail but unwavering — Pope Francis completed a life spent in service to the margins. He died as he lived: quietly, humbly, and with extraordinary resolve.
His final public act was to offer hope. His final private act, fittingly, was to offer challenge.
On Easter Sunday evening, he met with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, whose hardline immigration agenda Francis had openly condemned. It was a brief but deliberate encounter, not of ceremony but of conscience. Though ailing and exhausted, the Pope chose to speak once more of mercy to a man whose policies, Francis believed, betrayed Christian love.
This was Francis’s papacy in essence: not content to preach compassion from afar, but determined to confront power with gentleness face-to-face.
His legacy spans continents: from his nightly calls to the Christian families sheltering in Gaza, to his reforms within the Church, to his global insistence that the poor, the displaced, and the forgotten are not burdens — they are the heart of the Gospel. He was the first pope from the Americas. The first Jesuit pope. And now, the first in a century to be buried outside the Vatican: in the Basilica of St. Mary Major, by his own request.
In recent weeks, we witnessed something rare: a man who knew death was close, and still insisted on doing good. Francis had lost his health, but not his purpose. Until the very end, he worked to pass it on — even to those least inclined to hear it.
May his memory be a blessing. And may we, in his absence, be a little more merciful, a little less hardened, and a little more courageous in the face of cruelty.
With love and sorrow,
The No Dem Left Behind Team
