At the conclusion of the Mass, Metropolitan Borys offered a few brief remarks.
I would like to share three vignettes with you. Each of them highlights how Pope Francis cared—how deeply he cared about people, about you, about each of us, and especially about those left on the margins, the weak, the small.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav, Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, was once the youngest bishop in the Catholic Church when he was first nominated. He was 38 when the Church sent him from Ukraine to Argentina to serve as bishop for Ukrainian Catholics in Buenos Aires—where Jorge Mario Bergoglio was Archbishop for the Roman Catholics. His Ukrainian eparchy was poor and faced serious legal challenges. There was no money to hire lawyers to get out of the entanglements.
When Archbishop Bergoglio heard about this from his young colleague, he decided to act. His Beatitude Sviatoslav recounts that the very next day, there was a knock at the door. Archbishop Bergoglio had taken the tram and come personally, bringing an envelop with, if I am not mistaken, $10,000 in cash. He handed it over to Bishop Sviatoslav and said: “I would like to help you solve the legal problems of your eparchy.”
Fast forward a number of years. It was ten years ago. The war in Ukraine had already been going on for a year, and our Permanent Synod was meeting with the Holy Father. We had a number of topics to discuss, and His Beatitude Sviatoslav asked me to present the humanitarian needs.
I thought to myself, “Pope Francis appreciates directness.” So I kept it short: “There are three things the suffering people need to hear from you, Holy Father: “1. They need help. 2. We can help. 3. We will help.”
The Holy Father opened a drawer in the desk at which he was sitting, pulled out a piece of paper, and said, “Please repeat that again?” I said: “They need help. We can help. We will help.” He wrote it down. Within a week, a campaign called the Pope for Ukraine was launched. It raised 17 million euros for humanitarian needs of the beseiged frontline Ukrainian population.
The last vignette comes from a personal meeting. The Holy Father spoke about the war in Ukraine nearly 400 times. Almost every week—on Wednesdays, and Sundays—he called for peace, summoning the world to pray for Ukraine as he did again just yesterday in his last Urbi et Orbi. He always remembered the “tortured people of Ukraine.”
But on a few occasions, he said things that were difficult for Ukrainians to hear. So I went to speak with him. He gave me an hour and a half of his time. I tried my best to explain the concerns of the Ukrainians, and he listened. I told him frankly that some of the things that he said were not correct. He accepted that. And he said, “I want you to know—and I want all Ukrainian people to know that they can call me a sinner, because I am a sinner. But they cannot say that I do not love them.”
In a divided Church, a divided world, and a divided country, many people need to know this about Pope Francis: no one can say he didn’t love them. He could be tough, he could be direct—but he was real. He often said, “Reality is more important than theory.” And when he saw someone in need, he acted.
That’s close to what Jesus did. I believe Pope Francis brought Jesus closer to us—and brought us closer to a merciful, loving God who is the source of our hope.
