Top photo caption: Pope Francis appears on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to deliver his Easter blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world) at the Vatican April 20, 2025. Pope Francis, formerly Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, died April 21 at age 88. CNS photo/Vatican Media
By Junno Arocho Esteves, OSV News
OSV News – The Church’s celebration of Holy Week is a solemn time for Catholics around the world to contemplate the final days of Jesus Christ and commemorate his passion, death and resurrection.
It also provides an opportunity to reflect on one’s own mortality and on the price paid for mankind’s sins, which opened the doors to heaven for each and every one.
Yet seeing with one’s own eyes how a Christian makes that final, arduous journey can also be a source of consolation.
During Holy Week 2025, Pope Francis was called to share in the mystery of Christ’s passion. No one knows whether he had some premonition that it would be his final week, but one thing was certain: He prepared himself for it.
After detailing his funeral arrangements in his autobiography, “Hope,” which was published in January 2025, he concluded with a simple yet poignant prayer.
“Though I know that He has already given me many blessings, I ask the Lord for just one more: Look after me, let it happen whenever You wish, but, as You know, I’m not very brave when it comes to physical pain. … So, please, don’t make me suffer too much,” he wrote.
‘Why them and not me’
Following his release from Gemelli Hospital in March 2025, Pope Francis was prescribed two months of rest by doctors to recover after five weeks of hospitalization. Outside of a few brief appearances, it was widely expected that the Pope would be seen little during Holy Week.
But, in a totally unsurprising move – given his penchant for doing or saying the unexpected – the Pope made a surprise visit to Rome’s Regina Coeli prison despite still recovering from severe double pneumonia.
Escorted in a wheelchair, the Pope was greeted with cheers and thunderous applause by 70 inmates gathered in the prison’s rotunda, moved that he had come to see them, even in his frail state. The last time he visited Regina Coeli prison was in 2018 to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper and wash the feet of 12 inmates.
“Every year I like to do what Jesus did on Holy Thursday, washing feet, in a prison,” the Pope told them. “This year I cannot do it, but I can and want to be close to you. I pray for you and your families.”
He then went around the rotunda, greeting the inmates individually before praying with them and blessing them. Photos released by the Vatican showed a group of prisoners pressed against an iron-and-glass door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pope.
The Pope is seen looking at them, blowing them a kiss.
Upon leaving, the Pope, seated in the passenger seat of a small black car, stopped briefly to speak to a group of reporters gathered outside.
“Every time I enter these doors, I ask myself, ‘Why them and not me?'” he said.
Speaking with Italian news channel TG2000 after the Pope’s visit, Father Vittorio Trani, the chaplain at Regina Coeli, said the Pope’s visit was “a sign of immense tenderness because it expresses closeness, affection and everything positive you can imagine in a relationship.”
The prisoners, he added, were moved that, in spite of his ill health, the Pope still visited them and “confronted this very specific and harsh reality.”
“He left us with a great lesson on how we must look at the events that happen in life, always having the ability to think that there is a tomorrow where we can have the best,” he said. “And hope means exactly this bridge that exists between today, which can even be heavy, and a tomorrow that someone might help us make better.”
The last goodbye
Pope Francis was understandably not seen in public on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
However, as thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square to celebrate Easter, their eyes gazed upward as the ailing pontiff appeared from the basilica’s central balcony, mustering the strength to wave his hands and greet them, saying, “Happy Easter.”
After delivering what would be his final “urbi et orbi” blessing, and to the surprise of many, Pope Francis boarded his Popemobile for the last time to greet the faithful.
It was only after his death that as to how his last Popemobile ride came to be was made public.
According to Vatican News, the day before Easter, Pope Francis and his personal nurse, Massimiliano Strappetti, went to St. Peter’s Basilica to review the route he would take the following day to the central balcony.
The Pope then told Strappetti of his hope to surprise the faithful by greeting them in his Popemobile. However, he asked his nurse, “Do you think I can do it?”
After Strappetti reassured him, the Pope was just as happy to be close to the people as they were to see him. And although the Popemobile ride weakened him, he expressed his gratitude to his nurse.
“Thank you for bringing me back to the Square,” he told Strappetti.
He rested, and later enjoyed a quiet dinner, Vatican News reported. However, at 5:30 a.m. the following day, he suffered a stroke. After making a farewell gesture with his hand to Strappetti, Pope Francis slipped into a coma and died on April 21, 2025.
In the end, the simple prayer he wrote months earlier was answered. The Pope who admitted he was “not very brave when it comes to physical pain” was spared prolonged suffering and those at his side recalled that his death came quickly and peacefully.
After one last Holy Week marked by closeness to prisoners, quiet endurance and a final blessing to the world, Pope Francis died as he had lived his ministry: trusting in God, being close to the people and at peace.
For many, that peaceful passing became its own testimony: that the hope he proclaimed throughout his pontificate was real.
Junno Arocho Esteves is an international correspondent for OSV News. Follow him on X @jae_journalist.
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