He made room
He could’ve ruled from a throne. But he chose a chair beside the suffering.
Pope Francis—our shepherd with the smell of his sheep—didn’t just lead the Church. He opened it. He cracked its windows to let the Spirit breathe through again, letting in the light of mercy, the wind of compassion, the sound of all those who had been standing just outside the door for far too long.
And he made room for them.
For us.
The doubters. The divorced. The seekers and the scarred. The outcast and the overburdened. The ones who had been told, subtly or directly, that holiness wasn’t meant for them.
He tore down that lie. With every embrace, every foot he washed, every tear he wiped away, he built something new: a Church that looked more like Jesus.
He believed in an open Church. Not in theory, but in practice. Not as a distant ideal, but as a living, breathing, broken-and-beautiful body. One that aches with the pain of the world, one that rejoices in every prodigal child returning home.
He made it his mission to bring the margins to the middle.
He didn’t water down truth. He widened its reach.
And that’s the Francis I pray we never forget. Not the figure in white, but the man who limped into prisons and refugee camps. The one who spoke to the planet like it was his suffering sibling. Who said, again and again, in word and in silence: You belong. You are seen. Come closer.
He called us higher by walking lower.
He showed us that mercy isn’t a loophole—it’s the law of love.
That compassion isn’t weakness—it’s Christ.
That the Church doesn’t need walls—it needs wounds to touch.
And maybe that’s why his death, timed as it was, feels like more than loss. It feels like testimony. Like a final act of surrender.
He held on just long enough to hear the Alleluia resound one more time, to witness the stone roll away, to see the Church rejoice in resurrection one last time.
And only then—only then—did he let go.
Because his life was always about that one thing: making space for resurrection.
So now, in the shadow of his passing, we are left with the ache of his absence—and the weight of his witness.
And I pray—God, I pray—that his legacy doesn’t just outlive him.
That it outlives us all. That the Church he dreamed of, the Church he loved into being—open, tender, merciful, brave—continues to rise. That we carry it forward. Limping, maybe. But still walking.
He is gone now.
But his echo remains in every kind welcome, every courageous stance, every moment we choose love when judgment would be easier.
That’s what he taught us.
That’s how he changed us.
That’s how we keep him alive.
And may we do so—gently, boldly, bravely—until, like him, we find our rest in the arms of the Love that has always been waiting to receive us home.
This piece was first published in The Front Liners, the official student publication of the University of Rizal System-Morong Senior High School.
