Just hours after a dramatic Funeral Mass for Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, people gathered for a Memorial Mass for the pope on April 26, 2025 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C.
Greeting the people at the Memorial Mass, Msgr. W. Ronald Jameson, the cathedral’s rector, noted how the pope’s funeral that included delegations of world leaders also was attended by people in need whom the pope championed, including immigrants and the homeless, and reflected the pontiff’s message of spreading God’s mercy, compassion and justice.
“We are invited today to continue in that spirit and to acknowledge all that Pope Francis did for the Church and for us,” he said.
The cathedral’s rector pointed out how when the new Pope Francis first appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in 2013, he asked people to pray for him. Msgr. Jameson said the Memorial Mass offered a time to pray for the pontiff, but he added, “Today our prayer is, ‘Pope Francis, pray for us.’”
Before and after the Mass, people prayed at a shrine to Pope Francis set up in the cathedral’s St. Anthony Chapel that included a kneeler placed in front of a large portrait of the pope with a floral arrangement at its base, with a Book of Condolences nearby, where people wrote heartfelt words about the pope who died on April 21 at the age of 88.
During his 2015 visit to Washington, Pope Francis joined a prayer service with the nation’s Catholic bishops at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, encouraging them to be pastors for the people whom they serve.
In his homily at the Memorial Mass, Father Joseph McHenry, a parochial vicar at the cathedral, said it was fitting that “we call our pope the Holy Father.”
The priest, who was also the main celebrant of the Mass, then added, “There’s been a loss in our family, a loss in our spiritual family.”
Father McHenry said that just days after Easter when the Church commemorated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, at the Memorial Mass they would pray that Pope Francis will gain eternal life.
That Mass offered a time to thank God and to offer words of gratitude to Pope Francis for the pontiff’s life and ministry, the priest said.
Father McHenry noted how the pope described the Church as a field hospital where people experience God’s healing and mercy, and how Pope Francis encouraged people to “radiate the joy of the Gospel,” and to go out to the peripheries and share God’s love and compassion with people in need. The priest also underscored how Pope Francis made “calls for peace in a world torn by war and strife,” and how the pope emphasized the importance of caring for creation and recognizing the dignity of every person.
Praising the witness that Pope Francis offered in his last days, Father McHenry pointed out “how he allowed us to see it was okay to be vulnerable,” and use a wheelchair, and during and after his recent hospitalization use tubes for breathing and have his face bloated. He noted how the pope in his frail condition still visited prisoners on Holy Thursday and offered a blessing “for all of us” from St. Peter’s balcony on Easter Sunday, the pope’s final blessing on the day before he died.
Despite his doctor’s orders to rest after his hospitalization, Pope Francis desired to be with his people as their shepherd and serve them, Father McHenry said. “He loved to the end… What an example for us.”
The prayers of the faithful at the Mass included a prayer for Pope Francis, “whose constant message of hope and mercy touched and transformed many hearts; may he now experience God’s mercy and love face to face.”
As the Memorial Mass for Pope Francis ended, people sang the hymn, “May the Angels Lead You into Paradise.”
People visiting the Cathedral of St. Matthew could pick up a memorial prayer card with the pope’s smiling portrait on it, and also a brochure highlighting “The Wisdom of Pope Francis.” The quotes in the brochure included an excerpt form the pontiff’s 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”): “I invite all Christians everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ… How good it feels to come back to him whenever we are lost!...” (3)
The brochure also included this excerpt from Pope Francis’s 2018 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (“Rejoice and Be Glad”): “Do not be afraid to set your sights higher, to allow yourself to be loved and liberated by God. Do not be afraid to let yourself be guided by the Holy Spirit…” (34).
Another excerpt in the brochure was from the pope’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home”: “The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.” (84)
In interviews before the Memorial Mass for Pope Francis, people reflected on the impact of the pope’s life, and what they admired about him.
“He showed us how to life our faith,” Msgr. Jameson said.
Karl Bar-Lev, who a week earlier had been baptized as a Catholic at the Easter Vigil at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, said, “I admire Pope Francis for his humanity, his ability to communicate with the common folks. His love was transformative across nations.”
The pope encouraged people to focus on the life of Christ and be guided by that example, as he did in his own life, said Bar-Lev, who is retired from the U.S. Navy.
Irene Cuyun, who works for UnidosUS, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that is the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, said she appreciated Pope Francis’s “emphasis on the vulnerable and the poor.”
The pope from Argentina, the first pontiff from Latin America, was the son of immigrants from Italy, and he often spoke out on behalf of migrants and refugees, urging countries to welcome them as they sought a better life for themselves and their families, fleeing war, civil strife, natural disasters and extreme poverty.
Cuyun, who grew up attending St. Mark the Evangelist Parish in Hyattsville, Maryland, noted that her parents immigrated to the United States from Guatemala, and she said she appreciated how Pope Francis understood the plight of immigrants and their humanity, not ignoring the political complexities of immigration, but underscoring “there’s a person at the center” of those issues.
Angie Holan, who was among those visiting the cathedral’s shrine to Pope Francis before the Mass, said, “I admired his humility and the way he cared for the marginalized and the poor, and I admired the way he always spoke with love and concern for everyone. He tried to be a peacemaker in world matters and in small matters.”
Holan, a journalist who works as the director of the International Fact-Checking Network, attends Epiphany Parish in Washington, D.C. She noted how the shrine to Pope Francis was set up in a chapel that featured mosaics of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of caring for God’s creation. She said that the pope who spoke out about the impact of climate change and emphasized the science behind it, “chose his name well. He lived up to his namesake.”
After the Memorial Mass for Pope Francis, people lined up to sign the Book of Condolences for the pope and then many of them prayed quietly for him in the shrine set up for the late pontiff in the cathedral’s chapel.
Helder Hernandez, a St. Matthew’s parishioner who works on policy issues for a non-profit organization, said he appreciated Pope Francis’s message of sharing the hope of Christ, how the pontiff encouraged people to go out to the peripheries and to encounter and accompany people in need, and “to have that joy and hope amid the uncertainties of the world.”
Francesca Kang, who attends Epiphany Parish in Washington and works as a librarian at Georgetown University, said she loved how the pope cared for the poor, his humility, and his “openness toward people from every walk of life.” She said people can continue the pope’s legacy by “keeping the message of the Bible in our hearts” and “love each other as Jesus told us.”
After hearing about the Memorial Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Rhea Arciaga from St. Philip Neri Parish in Linthicum, Maryland, and members of her family drove to the cathedral to attend the Mass, and they waited in line to sign the Book of Condolences for Pope Francis afterward. She appreciated how Msgr. Jameson at the beginning of Mass noted how the pope often asked people to pray for him.
“Now it’s our time to ask prayers of him,” she said, adding that in her message to the late pope in the Book of Condolences, “I wrote, ‘Pray for all of us.’”
