Grieving Together: Pope Francis and Earth Day’s Call to Action

A Prophet Departs Amid a Crying Earth

The news of Pope Francis’s death, arriving as it did on Easter Monday, sent tremors through my spirit. As a Secular Franciscan, this grief is more than ecclesial. It’s personal. We have lost a soul-anchored shepherd, a spiritual rebel whose entire papacy was a holy defiance against indifference. That he passed just before Earth Day feels like no coincidence—it is a punctuation mark from the divine, underscoring his lifelong refrain: care for our common home.

This Earth Day, grief stretches far beyond the biosphere. Our tears join with the wounded oceans, the scorched forests, and the displaced peoples of the world. Pope Francis stood unflinching in the face of greed, condemning environmental destruction as sin, and daring to tether climate justice to Gospel fidelity. His departure feels less like an ending and more like a consecrated invitation—to rise in his stead, to continue the song of the Earth.

His death resonates with particular urgency in the United States, a nation drowning in political exhaustion, cultural fragmentation, and ecological crisis. Amid all this, Francis stood in fragile defiance: elderly, soft-spoken, yet razor-sharp in his Gospel clarity. He insisted that Christianity must never be comfortable with apathy. He challenged us to wake up—not in panic, but in love. And to be, without apology, joyfully and radically woke. That word has been hijacked, mangled in our discourse. But in Franciscan terms, it simply means to be spiritually alive, heartbreakingly attentive—to God, to the cry of creation, to the wounds of our neighbor.

Franciscan Vigilance in a Sleeping World

To be woke in the spirit of St. Francis is to be allergic to numbness. It is to live with your heart peeled open to both agony and wonder. Our founder heard the whisper of the trees and the lament of the leper. He challenged the idols of his day not with violence, but with a love so bold it scandalized the powerful.

Those who deride the word “woke” miss its sacred ancestry. St. Francis was woke. Pope Francis, too, was awake in the deepest sense. Their awareness wasn’t performative—it was transformative. They refused to coast through life anesthetized by privilege or dulled by doctrine. For them, being awake meant inhabiting the margins, shedding comfort, and choosing kinship over control.

But awareness that ends in contemplation alone is incomplete. It is the pairing of attention and action that births holiness. Pope Francis didn’t just theorize justice—he embodied it. He issued papal documents, yes—but he also kissed disfigured faces, washed the feet of inmates, and welcomed refugees. His was a holiness in motion.

In the American landscape, saturated with distractions and despair, his example feels prophetic. Our greatest danger isn’t outrage—it’s apathy. We are drowning in a sea of indifference, numbed by noise, and dulled by consumerism. Being woke, then, isn’t a fad or a fight—it’s a Gospel mandate. It’s how we keep our soul intact in a world that profits from our sleep.

A Franciscan’s Grief and Benediction

When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis, it wasn’t for effect—it was for transformation. He did not want to reign. He wanted to walk, like the saint from Assisi, among the wounded and the poor, with nothing but the Gospel and a fierce tenderness.

To us Secular Franciscans, Pope Francis was more than a pontiff. He was a mirror to our vocation—humble, disruptive, and tender. His life radiated the values of our Rule: fraternity, peace, ecological reverence, and the refusal to separate spiritual depth from worldly concern. He reminded the Church—and each of us—that authentic holiness does not flee from suffering. It leans in, with hands ready to serve and hearts wide open to break.

History will remember his bold critiques of capitalism, his theological courage in Laudato Si’, and his unwavering focus on the peripheries. But what lingers deepest in my soul is his relentless mercy. He led not from marble thrones but from eye-level—with those cast out, cast down, and cast aside.

His passing calls us to more than mourning. It demands that we incarnate his legacy—not with statues or slogans, but with our lives.

Earth Day as Sacred Alarm

This Earth Day, the atmosphere feels heavier. The planet groans under human excess, and disasters no longer feel distant—they are our new neighbors. Floods in the basement. Wildfires across the skyline. Poisoned water at the tap. And yet, within this rising tide of despair lies the possibility of rebirth.

Earth Day, for Franciscans, is not a secular holiday—it is a moment of sacred reckoning. It is a global pause in which even the disenchanted are tempted to dream differently. It is our cue to live louder—not in words, but in witness. Not with guilt, but with gratitude. It’s not about shame—it’s about sacred responsibility.

The timing of Pope Francis’s death just before this Earth Day turns it into a holy threshold. One road continues toward detachment, devastation, and denial. The other calls for restoration, repentance, and renewal. For us, creation is not a talking point—it is a sacrament. It’s not a resource to be consumed, but a relative to be cherished. When we exploit the Earth, we violate the Body of Christ. When we protect it, we enter into prayer.

Living the Rule in a Wounded World

The Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order offers no escape clause. It insists that we labor for a world that reflects the heart of the Gospel—one marked by fraternity and peace. That means our discipleship cannot be cordoned off from our ecological, economic, or political lives. Everything counts. Every purchase, every meal, every click, every dollar, every silence. It’s all either Eucharist or desecration.

Our call is not to perform holiness but to live it—to compost our faith into action. The Earth does not need more pundits—it needs prophets in the pews, and Pope Francis modeled that beautifully. While we continue to treasure the prophetic voice of the papacy, the moment calls each of us to rise in harmony—to become a grassroots chorus echoing the Gospel in the rhythms of our daily lives. Let us rise as teachers, nurses, mechanics, musicians, and marchers who insist that sacredness saturates the soil beneath our feet.

Reclaiming the Sacredness of “Woke”

In America, “woke” has been weaponized—mocked, distorted, misused. But we know better. To be woke, in the deepest Christian sense, is to be like Jesus. It is to notice the unseen, love the unloved, and speak where others are silent. To be woke is to remember that the Beatitudes are not metaphors but marching orders.

We cannot cede this word to mockery. We claim it as holy, as Franciscan, as Gospel. In a time when truth is twisted and compassion is vilified, we are not called to be agreeable. We are called to be light.

Pope Francis showed us what holy courage looks like. He confronted fossil fuel giants and border walls. He refused to flatter the powerful or abandon the poor. In doing so, he reminded us that the Gospel is never neutral—it always takes sides—not politically but prophetically.

To be proudly woke is to refuse selective justice. It means standing with the immigrant, the unborn, the Black and Brown, the LGBTQ+ youth, the hungry, and yes, the Earth. It means knowing that love doesn’t cherry-pick—it encompasses.

Earth Day as Liturgy and Liberation

This Earth Day, we are not passive mourners. We are sacred agitators. Let grief become fuel. Let sorrow birth solidarity. Light a vigil. Plant a tree. Teach Laudato Si’. Write your legislators. Pray with your feet. Make your parish a greenhouse of hope.

This is not a time for silence—it is a time for sacred disruption. And joy? Joy is our resistance. Joy that dances in protest. Joy that refuses to be extinguished.

Parishes can lead the way. A zero-waste liturgy, a composting ministry, a Laudato Si’ Circle, solar panels, or green building initiatives are not pipe dreams. They are the seeds of renewal.

Pope Francis and the American Conscience

Pope Francis offered a different way in a nation divided by skin color, ballot box, income bracket, and theology. He did not dilute the Gospel—he distilled it. He saw humanity not as a war zone but as a mosaic. He embodied the paradox of radical mercy and prophetic fire.

Franciscan spirituality holds space for that paradox. We do not have to choose between being devout and bold. In fact, we cannot separate the two. Authentic faith always disrupts injustice and draws near to pain.

His passing is not the end of the story—it is the passing of the torch. We carry it now.

The Path Forward: A Green Gospel Still Unfolding

Pope Francis died on the eve of Earth Day. That’s not an accident. That’s liturgical poetry. That’s a sermon. A final breath that says: The Earth still cries. Will you answer?

He has finished his race. The baton now rests in our calloused, trembling, hopeful hands. We are not called to nostalgia. We are called to resurrection.

A Franciscan America is not fantasy. It is the slow, aching, beautiful unfolding of a people committed to simplicity, justice, kinship, and creation. It is possible—if we dare to stay awake. If we continue to choose love over convenience, solidarity over comfort, and sacred responsibility over idle despair.

Because Pope Francis was right. This world can change. But only if we do.