When Francis ascended to the papacy in March 2013, he crossed several frontiers. He was the first Jesuit Pope, and the first Pontiff to take his name from St Francis of Assisi, who is often associated with a pastoral approach to evangelism, his love of the created world, his simple lifestyle and his work with the poor. This name choice reflected the kind of Pope that Francis wished to be, and indeed did reflect his priorities throughout his pontificate. He was also the first modern Pope from the Global South, hailing as he did from Argentina. Indeed, in his first, brief speech as Pope, he quipped that “the duty of the Conclave was to give a bishop to Rome. It seems that my brother Cardinals have come almost to the ends of the Earth to get him”.
In keeping with his own sense of border crossing, the first time he left Rome after becoming Pope was to visit Lampedusa in July 2013, where he prayed for migrants and refugees drowned off its coast, and in a homily challenged what he saw as the “global indifference” to their suffering, asking “has anyone wept?” This question was to become painfully relevant in a UK context in coming years, as increased global displacement and tighter and tighter border controls have forced more people to make a treacherous journey across the Channel, and some lost their lives in the process.
He also offered a challenge to the political context that was to allow this to happen when he exhorted his listeners to heed two questions God asks in Genesis: “Adam where are you?” and “Cain, where is your brother?” At the heart of this speech are themes that would be at the heart of Francis’ theological and pastoral work throughout his papacy: our universal human kinship with and therefore duty of care toward, the stranger; and the conviction that, if we have lost our sense of connection with the stranger, we have lost ourselves. Indeed, this theme was central to Francis’ own identity as Pontiff, as he explained in Evangelii Gaudium: “Migrants present a particular challenge for me, since I am the pastor of a Church without frontiers, a Church which considers herself mother to all”. This theme of kinship was, later, to give title to his third encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, to which the situation of refugees was fundamental. But perhaps most important to Francis’ reflection on refugees was his sense that, in them, we most particularly encounter Christ. Accordingly, Francis saw forced migration as a ‘sign of the times’ – that is, in Ignatian thought, a key to understanding the moment we inhabit in human history. This theme was also in Francis’ February 2025 letter to the bishops of the United States where he suggested we were in “a decisive moment in history to reaffirm…our faith in a God who is always close, incarnate, migrant and refugee…and the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person”. In this letter, he also expressed concerns about identifying irregular migration status with criminality, characteristically calling for love for migrants and refugees to play out in law and policy.
It is impossible to overstate his emphasis on the dignity and value of migrants and refugees; and his concern for their rights was perhaps the single most recurring theme across his thought and work as Pope. Solidarity with migrants and refugees, and the duty to provide sanctuary, is a firmly established principle of Catholic Social Teaching. Francis made it core to his ministry to make sure the world knew this.
In 2015, in response to the huge forced displacement suffered partly due to the war in Syria, Francis made a bold call for every parish across Europe to host refugees. This was one of myriad ways in which he fundamentally shaped JRS UK’s own work: responding to the call, JRS UK opened a hosting scheme, At Home, for destitute refugees refused asylum in London. Since then, the scheme has grown and developed and navigated the intense challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic; we have now opened Emilie House, to accommodate destitute women refused asylum, and Amani House, to accommodate destitute men refused asylum. All of this is rooted in Francis’ call.
Francis’ emphasis on refugees and migrants helped to shape a wider Catholic approach to the issue. His views and concerns are closely echoed in Love the Stranger, a response to Migrants and Refugees from the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales that calls clearly and powerfully for a radically welcoming approach at a time when the government was seeking to all but extinguish the right to asylum in the UK. Francis’ thought also specifically helped to shape JRS UK’s own in so many ways. His theology of migration and refugees heavily influenced JRS UK’s own theological approach, feeding among other things into Being Human in the Asylum System, a JRS UK report on the asylum system in light of refugee experience and Catholic Social Teaching which has shaped JRS UK’s response to the government’s assault on refugee rights.
Drawing on his emphasis on universal human kinship, Pope Francis was committed to encounter, and this was manifest also in his extensive work to strengthen relationships with leaders of other faiths and other Christian traditions. Shortly after his election as Pope, he called for increased interreligious dialogue, and he frequently met with leaders of other faiths including the British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who was hosted in the Vatican in 2015. The importance of encounter and mutual exchange is again reflected at JRS UK, in our commitment to serving people of all faiths and none, and in our diverse staff team.
Francis’ emphasis on encounter not only reflected JRS UK’s own concerns with a participative, listening, and human approach, but helped to deepen them, manifesting, for example, in initiatives to bring members of different communities together in our local East London context. Perhaps most importantly, his defence of and love for refugees reflected a commitment to human dignity and human community when so much of our political context sought only shrill division.
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Pope Francis led with gentleness and care. He urged us to care for each other, and observed how the pandemic had underscored our interdependence. Relatedly, he was also a tireless advocate of vaccination, which he saw as another way of caring for each other and so an “act of love”. His insistence on the importance of COVID-19 vaccination, and equal vaccine access, was mirrored in JRS UK’s vaccine clinics, which helped to get the vaccine to migrant communities who would otherwise have struggled to access it.
Another core theme of Francis’ papacy was care for the environment, and human interdependence not only with each other but also with the wider created world. His second encyclical, Laudato Si, not only demonstrated his deep concern for this issue at a time when our global climate emergency remained, and remains, too often overlooked or downplayed. It also caught the imaginations of a wide audience determined to find solutions to the crisis. In particular, it was used as an advocacy tool and a rallying point around COP 26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow in 2021. In a recorded message, Francis exhorted global leaders to take “radical decisions” to avert climate change.
In line with his focus on interdependence, Francis clearly saw connections between the climate emergency and forced displacement, noting in Laudato Si “There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation. They are not recognized by international conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they have left behind, without enjoying any legal protection whatsoever”. In this, he had the insight to identify an issue that will only grow in significance over the next several decades and is becoming key for JRS offices across the world.
Pope Francis was a champion of refugees and migrants. He unrelentingly reminded the Church and the world not only of its duty to care for the stranger – but also, and even more, of the kinship that binds us all, and of the way that migrants and refugees particularly bear the image of God and show us the face of Christ. As we pray that Pope Francis may rest in peace and rise in glory, and give thanks for his life and work, we must continue to look for Christ’s face where he did.
