Statement on the Death of Pope Francis April 21, 2025
Concerned Lay Catholics together with our fellow Catholics, and people of goodwill throughout the world, express our deep sadness at the death of Pope Francis. We give thanks to God for giving us a leader who was courageous, humble, wise and compassionate.
For so many people around the world, the news of Pope Francis’ death was a devastating loss, especially for most Canadian Catholics, including those of us who have been involved with the preparation for the Canadian national synodal event taking place this June in Waterloo, Ontario (synodalchurch.ca).
Pope Francis was a source of inspiration on so many levels. The practice of synodality that he shaped and fostered as a new way of being a listening Church, is groundbreaking. It is an exercise in collective discernment, in listening to where the Holy Spirit is calling us to live out the Church's mission in a contemporary world. As Michael Higgins, author of The Jesuit Disruptor: A Personal Portrait of Pope Francis says, “The church as verb is the church Francis is birthing for our time". This discernment in the Spirit is geared to function respectfully while maintaining the structures that enable the administration of the universal Church. It is Catholicity as universality - both the voice of all - todos, todos, todos - called to witness by virtue of their baptism and the voice of the universal Church that resides worldwide.
As lay people committed to living out our baptismal call, Francis affirmed that we have an important- even a critical role to play in the life of the church in the Third Millennium and its mission to the world. He invited lay people to attend the Synod on Synodality and for the first time, accorded them full voting rights along with the bishops. In this way, Francis modeled an inclusive approach to church governance that saw the laity not merely as passive recipients of church decisions- but as partners in shaping them.
We are for the most part only at the beginning of this new way of being Church in Canada.
Pope Francis' Laudato Si is another deep source of inspiration in its evocation of "Integral Ecology" - that everything is interconnected in our relationship with the planet, each other and God; that society, the economy and the environment are intertwined. It embodies all the core principles of Catholic Social Teaching, including the dignity of the human person, the preferential option for the poor, the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity. Pope Francis represents ethical values that have resonated well beyond the Church he leads.
Pope Francis often referred to himself as a sinner. And as such, he understood the importance of penitence. This was never more evident to Canadians than when in 2022 he made a ‘penitential pilgrimage’ to our land to apologize to Indigenous peoples for the Church’s role in Canada’s tragic and brutal residential school system, knowing it would not be enough but that it would be a start.
Francis also could learn and grow and admit mistakes. Some felt he was slow to accept the extent and depth of the clergy sexual abuse crisis; but as he did, his response, as always, was both personal and institutional. He met with victims and listened to their pain. And he put in place mechanisms to deal with offending clergy and hold bishops accountable for how they handle allegations.
His humility, openness to interreligious dialogue, wisdom, and clear articulation of his faith-inspired moral vision have had a profound impact beyond religious and ideological boundaries. It is also true that a "Disruptor" Pope breaking new ground in how the Church relates to the world will inevitably have detractors.
For us at Concerned Lay Catholics in Canada, we are filled with gratitude for this extraordinary man and leader. His death only serves to reinforce our commitment to continue embodying and promoting his vision of synodality, integral ecology, and birthing the church for our time. Pope Francis is the one who has picked up most firmly the baton held out by Pope John XXIII at Vatican II and taken us to a new level of “aggiornamento".
We pray that his successor will continue the path Pope Francis has traced for the Church.
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Concerned Lay Catholics is an independent group of concerned, committed Catholics, formed in Canada to affirm the laity’s role of co-responsibility in the Church. Our vision, mission, and values flow from the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, the vision of the Holy Father Pope Francis, and the call of the Canadian Bishops for healing, reconciliation and transformation.