“I am a dreamer, dazzled by the light of the Gospel, and I look with hope into the visions of the night. And whenever I fall, I discover anew in Jesus the courage to continue fighting and hoping, the courage to keep dreaming.”
— Pope Francis
Saint Peter’s Basilica
Solemnity of Christ the King
21 November 2021[1]
Pope Francis drew his last breath one year ago today. It was Easter Monday. After spending five weeks in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital with a serious lung infection, Francis was able to return home to Casa Santa Marta to spend the final weeks of Lent and the Easter Triduum with his people.
In those final weeks, after he returned from the hospital, Francis made several noteworthy gestures that reminded us of the spontaneity of spirit that characterized his entire pontificate. Despite being confined to a wheelchair and receiving oxygen through a nasal tube, Francis wanted to spend his final days among the people. As he once said early in his papacy, “I need people, I need to meet people, to talk to people.”
On April 6 of last year, Francis made his first public appearance since his return to the Vatican, greeting the congregation at a Mass for the sick. Then, on April 10, we saw images of the pope inside St. Peter’s Basilica wearing a white shirt and black trousers, wrapped in a striped poncho. It was the one and only time Francis made a public appearance as pope wearing anything other than his white cassock.
His appearance stunned tourists and pilgrims. Several people recorded his visit on their phones. He was seen blessing a couple with a baby and greeting a young boy. He had asked to be taken to the basilica so he could pray at the tomb of his predecessor St. Pius X — another pope whose reforms had a profound impact on the spiritual life of the Church.
On Holy Thursday, Pope Francis spent 30 minutes visiting with the prisoners and guards at Regina Coeli prison. He told them that he was unable to wash the feet of the inmates, “but I can and I want to be close to you. I pray for you and for your families.”
On Easter Sunday, he gave his final Urbi et Orbi blessing as roughly 50,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square — greeting the crowd with “Cari fratelli e sorelle, Buona Pasqua” (Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter). He then spent more than 15 minutes riding in the popemobile to greet the faithful.
These gestures in his final weeks — being with the sick, greeting children and young people, spending time in prayer, visiting prisoners, and celebrating the Resurrection of Our Lord among the people of God — reflect the way Francis carried out his mission throughout the 12 years of his pontificate. The sick, the young, the imprisoned, the Eucharistic assembly: these were the peripheries he had spent his papacy encountering, and he went back to them one last time.
He began his papacy by reminding us that we must be “a poor Church for the poor” and sharing his dream that the Church would be moved by “a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation” (Evangelii Gaudium 27).
Pope Francis was a dreamer, and he spoke often of his dreams for the Church. In Let Us Dream, the book he wrote with Austen Ivereigh during the first year of the pandemic, Francis drew a careful distinction between escapist fantasy and the kind of dreaming he meant — the discernment of one who responds with faith and trust to a crisis. He writes, “From this crisis we can come out better or worse. We can slide backward, or we can create something new” (p. 4).
Although the book was written in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Francis’s words are forward-looking. “This is a moment to dream big,” he writes, “to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of” (p. 6). The book’s threefold structure — see, choose, act — describes a spiritual discipline, not a daydream. “Let us dare to dream,” a call that echoes the Lord’s invitation to Isaiah. In a Church where we often find ourselves wrapped up in the same routines and habits or focused on self-preservation, Francis knew we were capable of more. He challenged us to respond to Christ’s invitation to follow him to the peripheries, allowing ourselves to be transformed by encounter, accompaniment, and prayer.
Pope Francis spoke of the Church as a field hospital, one that tends to the wounded after a battle. He dreamed of a Church in which no one was excluded and everyone was treated with dignity and respect. As he told a group of young people in St. Petersburg, “I dream of a Church in which no one is superfluous, where no one is ‘extra’. Please, may the Church not have a ‘border control’ to select who enters and who does not. No. Everyone, everyone. Entry is free.”
Pope Francis also dreamed of a synodal Church — a pilgrim people that journeys together. Every person has something to contribute, and no one’s voice is excluded. In January 2025 he spoke of the integral role of those on the peripheries, saying, “I dream of a world where the discarded, the excluded, the marginalized can be the agents of much-needed change in society, so that all of us can live as brothers and sisters.”
Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, a day after we proclaimed Christ’s victory over death. For those of us who experienced deep interior conversion and personal transformation thanks to Francis’s words and actions, the timing served as a profound consolation to the sorrow of losing a spiritual father.
This morning, Pope Leo XIV marked the occasion on X with the words, “On the first anniversary of the birth into heaven of our dear Pope Francis, his words and actions remain written in our hearts. We carry on his legacy by always proclaiming the joy of the Gospel, announcing God’s mercy, and promoting fraternity among all men and women.”
Today, Pope Francis’s dreams for the Church live on in Pope Leo. These dreams are not memorial — they are continuing. Leo’s call for a “humble Church” is Francis’s “poor Church for the poor” heard in a different key:
“Dear friends, we must dream of and build a more humble Church; a Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all; a Church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone. Let us commit ourselves to building a Church that is entirely synodal, ministerial and attracted to Christ and therefore committed to serving the world.”
Francis’s dreams were never his alone — they were invitations to the people of God. A year after his birth into heaven, the most fitting remembrance is to take them up: to refuse a posture of self-preservation, to cross into the field hospital, to be dazzled by the light of the Gospel, and to keep dreaming.
Note
[1]The official English translation says, “I watch with hope in the night visions,” I re-translated it to “I look with hope into the visions of the night.” The original Italian is, “guardo con speranza nelle visioni notturne.”
Image: Vatican Media.
Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. In addition to his work for the site, his writing has appeared in America Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, US Catholic, The Irish Catholic, Catholic Outlook, The Synodal Times, and other Catholic publications. He has been quoted in The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New York Post, and other mainstream outlets on Catholic affairs. He previously co-hosted the Field Hospital podcast with Jeannie Gaffigan and The Debrief podcast. Before founding Where Peter Is, he worked in communications at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Climate Covenant. He is married with four children.
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