At final memorial Mass, Pope Francis remembered as tireless shepherd

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — On the final day of official mourning for the death of Pope Francis, the late pontiff was remembered as someone who was determined to live out the mission entrusted to him and serve others, even when his health deteriorated.

Presiding over a memorial Mass May 4, French Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, protodeacon of the College of Cardinals, said Pope Francis “remained faithful to his mission to the very exhaustion of his strength.”

“I was close to him on Easter Sunday, on the balcony of blessings of this basilica, as a witness to his suffering, but above all to his courage and determination to serve the people of God to the end,” Cardinal Mamberti said in his homily in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The main concelebrants at the memorial Mass, which marked the final day of the “novendiali” — the nine days of official mourning and Masses for the late pope — were Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, subdean of the College of Cardinals, and Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, the Chicago-born prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops under Pope Francis.

Unless he is elected pope, as the senior cardinal deacon, Cardinal Mamberti is also tasked with declaring the election of the new pope to the public by proclaiming the words, “Habemus papam” (“We have a pope”).

In his homily, the French cardinal reflected on the Gospel reading which recalled Jesus’ threefold question to Peter, asking the disciple if he loved him and then entrusting him to “feed” and “tend my sheep.”

The mission entrusted to Peter, Cardinal Mamberti said, “is love itself which becomes service to the church and to all humanity.”

In his teachings, travels, gestures and way of life, Pope Francis was faithful to that mission by warning “the powerful that we must obey God rather than men” and by proclaiming “to all humanity the joy of the Gospel, the merciful Father and Christ the savior,” he said.

The late pope also emphasized the importance of adoration and worship before God “who comes in littleness, who dwells in our homes, who dies for love,” the cardinal said, citing Pope Francis’ words.

“This capacity for adoration was not hard to recognize in Pope Francis,” Cardinal Mamberti said. “His tireless pastoral life and countless encounters were grounded in long periods of prayer shaped by Ignatian discipline. He often reminded us that contemplation is ‘a dynamic of love’ that ‘lifts us to God not to detach us from the earth, but to help us inhabit it more deeply.'”

Cardinal Mamberti concluded his homily by remembering the pope’s devotion to Mary, evidenced by his “126 visits to the ‘Salus Populi Romani,'” the Marian icon housed at Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major.

“And now that he rests near that beloved image, we entrust him with gratitude and confidence to the intercession of the mother of the Lord and our mother,” Cardinal Mamberti said.

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