People of goodwill everywhere, believers or not, mourn the loss of Pope Francis. This is quite unusual for a religious or political leader in our world. While being the supreme high priest of about 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, and the monarch of the sovereign State of the Vatican of some 109 acres, Papa Francisco pulled down all parochial borders with compassionate grace to take up the cause of suffering children, women, and men everywhere. A man of deep humility and simplicity, Pope Francis’s words, acts and body language reflected the tenderness and compassion of Jesus, his divine role model.

Ever since his election as Pope in 2013 Francis subverted, in the prophetic spirit of Christ, some of the sacred Roman canons and protocols in favour of the miserable and the marginalised. Reluctant to wear the conventional papal regalia, he preferred his ordinary white cassock with a simple pectoral cross instead of a bejewelled gold cross. While red shoes and socks are customary for the new Pope, Francis appeared on the balcony of Saint Peter’s basilica wearing his black shoes that had long trod the streets and alleys of the poor in Argentina. Refusing to live in the classical papal apartments of the Vatican palace, he chose to live in Saint Marta’s guest house like a pilgrim or a passing inn-dweller who has no permanent roof over his head. He was simply echoing the Biblical exhortation that we are........

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