The country’s Jesuits gathered Friday for a requiem Mass in honor of Pope Francis, the first Jesuit and Latin American pope, at the Church of the Gesù at Ateneo de Manila University.
The Mass was presided over by Jesuit Provincial Fr. Xavier Olin, SJ, and was attended by more than 1,000 members of the lay faithful.
‘He moved us out of our comfort zones’
In his homily, Fr. Joel Tabora, SJ, spoke of the kind of papacy Francis lived out.
“His papacy was a long homily on that Easter shore line [at the Sea of Tiberius],” Tabora said. “Sometimes, grief or frustration or anxiety obscures our sight, but Jesus is near. Francis believed this, [he] proclaimed it.”
“In His teachings, he lifted up the crucified of today and invited us to intimacy with Christ by drawing [us] near to [those crucified],” he said.
A pathway of personal conversion and ecclesial transformation
Tabora also gave witness to how Francis called everyone to a “renewed encounter with the living Christ”.
He echoed the “spiritual sickness” of today that Francis was [most] concerned with, which includes a “blunted conscience”.
“[Francis preached] that true reform is rooted in communion, participation and mission,” Tabora said.
“His vision of a synodal Church -of listening, discerning and journey together [towards] a more open, more humble and more attentive Church to the voices of the poor and the voice of the Holy Spirit was how [he believed] the Church becomes more like Christ,” he added.
Relationship with God
Tabora said of Francis, “[Lastly], he believed that without a personal relationship with God, nurtured by prayer and rooted in the Cross, other apostolic preferences would bear no lasting fruit.”
Fr. Olin added to this testimony by saying, “[Francis] was bold enough to challenge us to be more and more like Christ. [He] reminded us of who we are as Jesuits and who we are called to be: servants of the mission.”
Francis passed away in his home at the Vatican on April 21 after suffering a stroke, which led to a coma followed by cardiocirculatory collapse.
He was 88.
This comes after almost a month since he was discharged from the Agostino Gemelli Hospital in Rome after enduring a complex case of bilateral pneumonia. His funeral is slated on April 26.
