The Pope of Mercy

Our Editorial Director, Andrea Tornielli, reflects on the late Pope Francis' insistence on mercy, which became an underlying theme of his 12-year-long pontificate.

By Andrea Tornielli, April 21, 2025

"God’s mercy is our liberation and our happiness. We live for mercy, and we cannot afford to be without mercy. It is the air that we breathe. We are too poor to set any conditions. We need to forgive, because we need to be forgiven.”

If there is a message that has most characterized Pope Francis’ pontificate and is destined to remain, it is that of mercy.

The Pope passed away suddenly on Easter Monday morning, after giving his final Urbi et Orbi blessing on Easter Day from the central Loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, following his last round through the crowd to bless and greet them.

The first Argentine Pope in the history of the Church addressed many themes, particularly regarding his care for the poor, fraternity, care for our common home, and his firm and unconditional “no” to war.

But the heart of his message, the one that undoubtedly made the most impact, was his evangelical call to mercy, which is precisely the closeness and tenderness of God toward those who recognize their need for His help.

Mercy, he said, is “the air we breathe,” meaning that it is what we need most, without which it would be impossible to live.

The entire pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio was carried out under the banner of this message, which is the heart of Christianity.

From his first Angelus on March 17, 2013 at the window of the papal apartment he would never live in, the late Pope Francis spoke about the centrality of mercy, recalling the words of an elderly woman who came to confess to him when he was the newly appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires: “The Lord forgives all things... If the Lord did not forgive everything, the world would not exist.”

The Pope who came “from the ends of the earth” did not change the teachings of the two-thousand-year-old Christian tradition, but simply put mercy at the center of the magisterium in a new way, thus changing the perception many people had of the Catholic Church.

He bore witness to the maternal face of a Church that bows down to those who are hurting, especially those wounded by sin.

He showed a Church that takes the first step toward the sinner, just as Jesus did in Jericho, inviting Himself to the house of the despised and shunned Zacchaeus, asking for nothing, with no preconditions. And it was because Zacchaeus felt for the first time to be seen and loved in this way that he recognized his own sinfulness, finding in the gaze of the Nazarene the motivation to convert.

Two thousand years ago many people were scandalized to see the Master enter the house of the tax collector in Jericho.

Many people have been scandalized over the years by the gestures of welcome and closeness from the Argentine Pope toward all categories of people, especially toward “undesirables” and sinners.

In a homily he gave during one of his morning Masses in April 2014, Pope Francis said: “How many of us perhaps deserve a condemnation! And it would be just. But He forgives! How? With mercy that does not erase the sin: it is only the forgiveness of God that erases it, while mercy goes beyond that. It is like the sky: we look at the sky, so many stars, but when the sun comes in the morning with so much light, the stars are no longer seen. So it is with God’s mercy: a great light of love, of tenderness, because God forgives not with a decree, but with a caress.”

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