The Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola
Farewell to Pope Francis
By Robert Ballecer, SJ
July 31st, the feast day of St Ignatius of Loyola, is always a special day for Jesuits and Jesuit apostolates around the world. Not just a celebration of our founder, July 31st tends to be a time for Jesuits to gather, to give thanks, to reminisce, and to recommit ourselves to service to the Church under the charism of St Ignatius of Loyola. That being said, there is something different about THIS feast day... THIS July 31st... THIS opportunity to give thanks...
It’s the first Feast of St Ignatius after the passing of Pope Francis.
Pope Francis is special to me and my vocation, and not just because he was the first Jesuit Pope, but because his leadership was instrumental in making me who I am today. I was working communications and vocation promotion for the Jesuit Conference of the United States in 2013 when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio took the name “Francis”. I was in Rome for his inauguration, and running the Catechesis center for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for World Youth Day 2013 in Brazil. I had been part of World Youth Day since 1993 and had seen how Pope John Paul II & Pope Benedict XVI celebrated the events.
Francis was different.
He moved in and through the crowds rather than being protected within a bulletproof popemobile. He walked the stations of the cross with the pilgrims. He encouraged the assembled bishops and cardinals to be WITH their young adults, rather than watching them from a distance. It was my first experience of the leader of the Catholic Church “smelling like his sheep”, a phrase that Pope Francis would use time and time again when telling priests and bishops how they should serve their flocks.
That amazement would grow after I was missioned to the General Curia of the Society of Jesus in Rome. It was one thing to see the Pope and work on his behalf. It was another to be able to shake his hand, break bread with him, or sit in his simple apartment in Casa Santa Marta and share a laugh. What showed through every encounter was his humanness, his humility, and his overwhelming desire to serve. I remember in March of 2022 when Pope Francis joined us at the Gesù Church in Rome for the 400th anniversary of the canonizations of St Ignatius of Loyola and St Francis Xavier. His homily focused on the gift of Ignatian discernment to not just the Society of Jesus, but to the entire world: “may our holy father Ignatius help us to preserve discernment, our precious legacy, as an ever timely treasure to be poured out on the Church and on the world. For discernment enables us to ‘see anew all things in Christ’.”
Three years later I would remember this homily, word for word, as I sat in front of St. Peter’s Basilica concelebrating the funeral mass for Pope Francis. After days of mourning – of watching an endless line of faithful, well-wishers and the curious cross Pope Francis’ body in state – I finally faced the sadness – he was gone, and it hit me harder than I thought it would.
But I wasn’t the only one.
The day after Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost became Pope Leo XIV, I started four weeks of work travel through Europe, South America and the United States. Each community shared stories of their own feelings of loss, even as they celebrated the new Pope. One Jesuit brother told me, “I was surprised because the closest I came to Francis was seeing him on TV, but his death felt like losing a friend who understood me.” Another said he had downplayed the fact that Francis was a Jesuit, but while watching the funeral he realized how connected he felt. “He brought the things we love about St Ignatius and the Society of Jesus to the world. And he brought them not by telling people about them, but by living them.”
Pope Leo XIV is a worthy successor to Peter, and I believe he will guide the Church with the same love and sense of service that I appreciated about Francis. However, as the Worldwide Society of Jesus remembers this coming feast day of our founder, as we gather to give thanks, as we discern what the future holds, I pray that this first Feast Day since the passing of the first Jesuit Pope may be one of celebration and gratitude for our brother Francis.
Fr Robert Ballecer, SJ, has been a Jesuit for more than three decades, with missions and ministries that have taken him to the far corners of the Church. He is currently serving in the office of communications at the General Curia for the Society of Jesus in Rome.
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