The following sermon was preached at a Solemn Requiem Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis on 1st May 2025.
This Mass is being offered for the repose of the soul of His Holiness Pope Francis. Pope, or Papa in Italian, means father, and every successor of St Peter is in a very true sense a father to the flock that has been entrusted to his care by Almighty God. When the father of a large family dies, it is quite possible that his children will experience emotions which differ considerably between the siblings. Some may cherish treasured memories of their father, while others who feel that they were misunderstood, unappreciated, or even ill-used, may have cause to feel more ambivalent. But in a civilised and Christian family all will unite in expressing filial piety by praying with fervour for their father’s immortal soul. In so doing they perform a priceless act of real charity, knowing in faith that the prayers of the living are of great assistance to the faithful departed.
The strongest and most powerful prayer that we have is the Holy Mass. In this Requiem Mass, we gather as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, with the company of the saints in Heaven, praying that the merits of Our Lord’s Passion and Death will be applied to the soul of the late Sovereign Pontiff, who bore such formidable responsibilities.
A Requiem Mass is not the time for discussing the qualities of the deceased. Many modern funerals seem to have become like canonisation ceremonies. This does a great disservice to the dead, who need not accolades or appraisals, but rather prayers – prayers that are fortified by sacrifice and penance, to help them. It is not the Catholic way on an occasion such as this to avoid the unsettling reality of death by distracting ourselves with anecdotes and reminiscences. Instead, we confront death head-on, by doing something practical and positive.
Traditionally the custom at a Requiem Mass is actually to preach, if at all, on the Four Last Things – death, judgment, Heaven and hell.
Death. According to Catholic doctrine, death was never a part of God’s original plan for mankind. Along with sickness and all manner of suffering, it entered the human experience as a punishment for the sin of Adam. Through Baptism, however, while death remains a consequence of Original Sin, it is transformed so that sickness and the manner in which we approach death may themselves become meritorious for eternal life. The late Pope suffered considerably and publicly from a debilitating illness, the last stages of which coincided with the whole period of Lent and Holy Week, during which the Church enjoins us to participate in the Way of the Cross through prayer and mortification. We can be grateful for the witness His Holiness gave by persevering in his own personal Via Dolorosa, by sharing it with the world and by dying in office. This is particularly poignant for us at a time when relentless lobbying for so-called euthanasia would seem to suggest that there can be no value in suffering or decrepitude. And the Pope’s death came on Easter Monday, while the Church was rejoicing in Our Lord’s Resurrection. Easter is our assurance that the bodies of those who die in God’s grace will eventually be resurrected on the Day of Judgment to be renewed, perfected, reunited with their souls, and glorified forever.
Judgment. In the Hail Mary, we petition the Blessed Virgin to pray for us now and at the hour of our death, the only two moments over which we have any real control in our lives. Every “now” is an occasion which we must use to make sure that when the hour of death comes, we are found spiritually enlivened by the Sanctifying Grace that was infused into us in Baptism. It is that State of Grace, and nothing else, which will determine our portion in eternity when our soul departs from the body, and we come face to face with our Lord in the moment of our Particular Judgment. But while the everlasting destiny of every soul is sealed irreversibly at the moment of death, we must remember that God dwells in eternity – and while time is linear to us, to the Creator every moment of our time is present at once. This means that we can ask and hope for the prayers which we offer here and now to have been effective at the moment when a soul was about to leave this earth and stand before the Throne of reckoning.
Heaven. This is the supernatural state and place for which we have been created and redeemed. In Heaven the saints wear the crown of everlasting life and are elevated to the state of glory and the Beatific Vision in which they behold God face-to-face and become like Him because they see Him as He is.
Hell. We know, because Our Lord Himself has told us so, that hell exists and that it is populated. Beyond that, we can have no certainty of who is there. The Church has Her list of canonised saints, but She keeps no equivalent register of those who have died in mortal sin. And so we pray for all of the faithful departed, commending each and every one of them to the mercy of God, with the assurance that any graces obtained by our intercessions for a soul that is beyond benefitting from them will be redirected to where they are needed by souls being purified in the cleansing fires of Purgatory.
And so we ask the Blessed Virgin, St Peter, St Philip, and all the saints and holy angels to join us in praying for the soul of His Holiness Pope Francis. May his judgment have been merciful. May each one of us one day join him in Heaven. We pray too for the Cardinals gathered in Rome, that the Holy Ghost will guide them to choose a worthy successor to the humble fisherman from Galilee, St Peter.