Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Pope Francis Special Edition of Mission Magazine
April 21, 2025
Dear Fellow Missionaries,
As the whole Church now entrusts Pope Francis to the mercy of God that the Holy Father himself so powerfully proclaimed, we wanted to send you this special edition of Mission Magazine to focus — with gratitude to God — on Pope Francis’ service as the Church’s chief missionary over the past dozen years.
He was elected to be a missionary.
In the meetings he had with his brother Cardinals before the conclave in 2013, he emphasized that the “next Pope” had to be a “man who, from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ, helps the Church to go out of herself to the existential peripheries [as] … a fruitful mother living off the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.”
He thought that the most important qualification for the next Pope was someone whose prayer would led him to be a missionary, to go to the margins — even, as Jesus said, to the ends of the earth.
The Cardinal electors evidently agreed, and, moved by the Holy Spirit, selected him to be the 265th successor of the Galilean fisherman whom Jesus had made a “fisher of men.”
Just like St. Peter, Pope Francis put Peter’s boat out into deep water and, on behalf of Christ and the whole Church, lowered his nets for a catch. He traveled to 74 countries, 44 Italian cities and hundreds of Roman parishes, charitable works and even private homes to share the joy of the Gospel.
He did more than simply exemplify the missionary impulse flowing from prayer that he thought the next Pope had to evince. He also tried to spur the whole Church to take up that same missionary enterprise.
Eight months after his election, he expressed in an exhortation entitled The Joy of the Gospel his “dream” for a “missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures, can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world” (27).
He tried to codify that missionary impulse in his new Apostolic Constitution for the Church, which he aptly entitled, Praedicate Evangelium (“Preach the Gospel”).
He said that preaching the Gospel is the “first task of the Church,” represents “the greatest challenge for the Church,” and “is paradigmatic for all the Church’s activity” (15).
He himself was afflicted with the inner yearning St. Paul described when he famously exclaimed, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16), poignantly asking, “What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known?” (264).
He wrote with gratitude, “We have a treasure of life and love that cannot deceive, and a message that cannot mislead or disappoint,” and emphasized, “We know well that with Jesus, life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything. This is why we evangelize” (265-66).
He urged us to share that treasure of life and love with courage, charity and commitment.
He memorably told young people at his first World Youth Day in 2013, “Jesus did not say: ‘Go, if you would like to, if you have the time,’ but rather, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations.’ Sharing the experience of faith, bearing witness to the faith, proclaiming the Gospel: this is a command that the Lord entrusts to the whole Church, and that includes you; but it is a command that is born … from the force of love, from the fact that Jesus first came into our midst and did not give us just a part of himself, but the whole of himself, in order to save us and to show us the love and mercy of God.”
In communion with his predecessors, he underlined that none of us has a mission, but each of us is a mission: “I am a mission on this earth,” he wrote in The Joy of the Gospel. “This is the reason why I am here.”
It’s clear that Pope Francis a disciple, priest, bishop and pope, identified himself with the mission to share the faith. He was someone who went from his adoration of Christ to the ends of the earth, as he believed any pope of our time must.
The greatest way we honor him is to continue that mission to which he gave himself for 88 years.
I had the privilege to meet him many times, which allowed me to witness different dimensions of his missionary identity.
The first time I met him was at the United Nations in New York, where, working for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission, I was on the organizing team for his visit. Jesus called us to “go, teach all nations,” and when the successor of St. Peter speaks in the General Assembly, he can carry out that command all at once! As he spoke to the leaders of 193 nations, he summoned them to take the virtue of justice seriously in a world in which various injustices reign.
I also saw him share the faith one-on-one on visits in the Holy See Residence where he contagiously shared the joy of the Gospel with people famous and unknown. I’ll never forget the tender way he embraced my parents or the quick-witted jokes that he shared with me. Attached you’ll see a photo of our mutual reaction to one of his jokes!
A second context when I saw his missionary zeal was when I accompanied the Board of Directors of the American Bible Society to Rome to meet him in a private audience. Most of the board was Protestant and they were all impressed at his at his deep and sincere love for God’s word and his appreciation for all believers in Christ who are dedicated to sharing that gift.
The final context was in the three different gatherings he’s had with the Missionaries of Mercy he appointed in 2016. I am privileged to be one of the 1,100 out of 410,000 priests in the world he appointed with a special mission to preach mercy, to offer it in the confessional (with special powers delegated by him to remit some punishments reserved to the Holy See), and to show it in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
It was clear when he spoke to us how deeply he believed he, the Church, and in particular way priests, needed to be men, messengers, ministers and missionaries of mercy. Christ’s mission, he emphasized, was one in which his heart burst with mercy for the crowds. Pope Francis identified with the Lord’s mercy so much that he thought his whole vocation came from God’s mercy, as his papal motto — miserando atque eligendo, “God, looking upon him with mercy, chose him” — gives witness.
We pray that the faith that led him to select that motto came to its definitive fulfillment when Christ came for him: that Jesus looked on him with mercy and then called him home, as his good and faithful servant!
As the Church lives through the nine days of Masses for the repose of his soul, the several days in which the Cardinals will meet in private discussing what they believe are the Church’s greatest needs today and the qualities the next Pope must have, and as they enter into conclave to discern, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the next Pope, I would encourage you to turn on EWTN where I will be part of their daily coverage from the Vatican, including when the white smoke comes and when he celebrates his first Masses.
Until then I urge you to pray with me and our whole team here at The Pontifical Mission Societies that the one who will become the successor to Pope Francis and to St. Peter will similarly be a man who, from his prayerful worship of Jesus, will lead the Church to go out after the lost, least and last and find sweetness and joy in carrying out the pope’s work as the Church’s chief missionary!
United in Christ’s Mission,
Monsignor Roger J. Landry
National Director