Title: What Jesuits Will Miss the Most About Pope Francis

On April 21, Pope Francis died at the age of 88. 

Along with his legacy of mercy, inclusion and social justice, Pope Francis was known for being the first Jesuit pope in Catholic Church history.

Pope Francis entered the Society of Jesus in 1958 and was ordained in 1969. When he was elected Pope in 2013, he carried his Jesuit roots with him, from the words he used to his focus on the poor and marginalized.

“I would be hard-pressed to imagine what a better Jesuit pope would have looked like,” said Peter Folan, S.J., an assistant professor at Georgetown.

As Catholics and people around the world grieve Pope Francis, we asked Jesuits at Georgetown what they remember about the first Jesuit pope — and what they will miss most about him.

On Forming ‘Big Hearts’

Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president for Mission & Ministry, met Pope Francis twice during his pontificate, first in 2013 and again in 2023 (above) when he hosted a conference on the Catholic Literary Imagination in Rome with artists from around the world. 

I had the good fortune to meet the Pope twice during his pontificate. The first time, in 2013, he had only been pope for a few months. He was speaking to a mostly European group of Jesuits, students and administrators of Jesuit schools — from grade school to university. 

Francis was full of life. During the Q&A, he was asked what he thought the essence of a Jesuit education is all about. He said, ‘It is about nurturing a magnanimous heart and putting it at the service of one’s intellect.’ I was so moved by the simplicity and yet depth of that response: We must form big hearts in our students and faculty so that they will have big ideas that can serve the common good of all.  

Personally, Pope Francis confirmed my vocation as a priest and Jesuit. Over the years, I would read Francis’s writings and homilies and see the Ignatian insight he was offering to the Church — to find God in all things, to foster a culture of engagement and enculturation, to live a faith that does justice. I was always moved by the gestures of love and compassion he showed to others.

I think his legacy will be both a personal one — he will always be known as the ‘People’s Pope,’ and a universal one — the Church is engaged with the hopes and dreams of the world and can play a part in extending our human flourishing as the people of God.

On His Authenticity

Peter Folan, S.J. is a priest and an assistant professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.

It’s odd to say this about someone I’ve never met, but I really loved the pope. He struck me as having a wonderful and unusual combination of warmth, charm, humor, intelligence, cleverness, generosity, honesty and self-knowledge. 

In other words, he was authentic. He was authentically himself, and at the end of the day, I think that is what God is calling each of us to be: to be in touch with and to follow our deepest, truest desires, and then worry as little as possible about what others think of us.

On His Jesuit Spirituality

Fr. David Collins, S.J., met Pope Francis in 2016 during a meeting with fellow Jesuits in Rome. Pope Francis joined to offer them encouragement and calls to action.

I remember a fellow delegate insistently asking for more direct instruction from the Holy Father about what we should be doing as Jesuits, and he responded, with an impish twinkle in his eyes: ‘You are the masters of discernment; my instruction is that you follow this gift deeply.’ 

It’s wonderful to see one Jesuit outfox another by encouraging him to be even more discerning than he thinks he can be. 

I suppose what I will miss is the way in which Jesuit spirituality shaped his language. It wasn’t that his use of Jesuit lingo was heavy handed, but there were ways that he explained things and offered encouragement that rang of Jesuit spirituality. You could just hear — explicitly and between the lines — that this pope knew the Spiritual Exercises, and knew them deeply. This couldn’t help but shape his approaches to everything. 

Certainly one aspect of this was his insistence that real human encounter means putting everything on the table, good and bad, clear and unclear: real discernment means looking at everything transparently. His project of synodality certainly presupposes honest and frank exchange. I hope that transparency and willingness to exchange openly continues as the Church continues moving forward in its mission of preaching the Good News. 

On His Pastoral Style

Fr. Quentin Dupont, S.J., is the Swan Family Ignatian Assistant Professor in the McDonough School of Business.

Early in his pontificate, I heard stories of people writing to Francis to share their experience with him. So, I wrote the Pope before my priestly ordination, telling him how much I was looking forward to preaching and sharing ‘the joy of the Gospel’ (following the name of his first Apostolic Exhortation) as a priest. I figured he received hundreds of letters a day and, of course, couldn’t answer all of them, so I didn’t expect a response. 

But then, the morning of my ordination, I got a call from the local Jesuit community’s reception desk saying I had just received mail. When I opened the envelope, there was a note from the Pope answering my letter. Imagine reading this just hours before ordination! His words of encouragement and care were with me the whole day.

Pope Francis is the only pope I have known as a priest, so I learned a lot from him about being a priest, a pastor. His preaching style, using simple language and concrete examples always inspired me. He had a way to step right into the concreteness of our lives and, from there, open up the picture. Among his many memorable phrases, his call to engage in a ‘culture of encounter’ has stayed with me: for priests, this means being ‘shepherds who smell like their sheep,’ pastors who encounter their flock in their lived reality. 

I get to live this culture of encounter every day as I meet our students on campus (in our classrooms, in our chapels, on our quads) and run into colleagues in the hallways. That’s one of many things I absolutely love about being at Georgetown, and Francis’s talk about ‘the smell of the sheep’ helped me understand how vital that is to me as a Jesuit priest on campus. 

On His ‘Deceptively Simple’ Phrases

Fr. Christopher Steck, S.J., is the Healey Family Distinguished Professor in Ethical Issues and an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.

As I reflect on the ways that the ministry of Pope Francis has shaped me, I keep coming back to the wonderful phrases he coined. Deceptively simple, their power lies in their ability to freshly illuminate the fundamentals of Christian life: the Eucharist as medicine for the weak not a prize for the perfect, Christian leaders smelling like the sheep of their ministry, political life grounded in a culture of encounter that builds bridges where many build walls, the church as a field hospital after battle, the avoidance of a throwaway culture. 

But more impactful than all these has been Francis’s Laudato Si’. In no small part, my scholarly work over the last decade in environmental and animal ethics is due to the inspiration of, and made possible by, the teachings of that great, magisterial and prophetic work.

Editor’s Note: The first photo in the story is of Pope Francis hugging a young boy at a luncheon at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington during his visit to the United States in 2015. Photo by Tony Powell/Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington.