The 69-year-old Chicago-born missionary who spent his career ministering in Peru and belongs to the Augustinian religious order caught the world by surprise when he was elected to be the 267th pope.
While Trump attended Francis’s funeral, he and JD Vance have clashed with U.S. bishops in general and Francis in particular over the administration’s hard line stance on immigration and its efforts to deport migrants en masse.
Following the funeral, preparations began in earnest to launch the centuries-old process of electing a new pope, a conclave that will begin on May 7.
This issue of A Public Witness offers short highlights from four reflections by Catholic writers on Pope Francis and his papacy.
Francis demanded his bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks, pressed the world to protect God’s creation from climate disaster, and challenged countries to welcome those fleeing war, poverty, and oppression.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is ending a half-century of partnerships serving refugees and migrant children, saying the “heartbreaking” decision follows the Trump administration’s abrupt halt to funding.
The report serves as both a theological and data-driven refutation of the president’s campaign pledge to enact ‘the largest deportation in US history.’
The USCCB says the administration has violated various laws as well as the constitutional provision giving the power of the purse to Congress, which already approved the funding.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” Francis wrote in a letter to U.S. bishops.
The first week of the new Trump administration was filled with attacks on the religious liberty rights of Episcopalians and Catholics. Over the weekend, another Christian group found itself in crosshairs: the ELCA.