Feelings of deep sorrow and profound gratitude overwhelm us. We thank God for the Holy Father who commissioned us to help the Church, following the teaching and example of Our Lord, to treasure and serve the least, the fragile, the vulnerable, the forgotten. We thank God for the care that Pope Francis took of our Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
In 2017, the new Dicastery – the fruit of the union of four Pontifical Councils – began learning to accompany the Church everywhere in the world in promoting the fullness or integrity of life for each and every one, for all persons and all peoples, including attention to justice and peace, health and works of charity, and care for the common home to which Pope Francis so forcefully called the world’s attention.
Migrants and refugees
Migrants, refugees and victims of human trafficking held a special place in the heart of the Pope. To focus on them he created the Migrants and Refugees (M&R) Section and personally guided it for six years. We vividly remember his 2017 visit to the Dicastery when he told us of the suffering he felt so deeply in his first trip to Lampedusa: there, for the first time as Pope, he dried the tears of many migrant brothers and sisters who had been traumatized by their devastating crossings of the sea. This spawned a sorrow that remained permanently in his heart and he reassured them then: “The Church is close to you in your search for a more dignified life for you and your family”.
The M&R Section encouraged and equipped the Church to welcome and protect the displaced little ones of the Gospel. We remember the orange life preserver given to the Pope by a rescuer who did not succeed in saving a little girl from the waves. “This is your mission,” he said, and it became the symbol of the Holy Father’s embrace of migrants and his denunciation of what he called “the globalization of indifference”. The life preserver is on display to remind everyone of the biblical obligation, underlined by Jesus, to take the stranger in.
Vatican COVID-19 Commission
In March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began its devastation, bringing the world to its knees, Pope Francis, with prophetic vision, instituted the Vatican COVID-19 Commission, entrusting its coordination to our Dicastery. He urged the Commission to connect the highest levels of science with the principles of the Church’s Social Teaching, to show how both Church and civil society should help those most affected by the pandemic but easily overlooked. He challenged everyone to prepare the future, continually repeating that, from a huge crisis like this, we emerge the worse or the better, but not the same.
Closeness and personal affection
Many times, Pope Francis demonstrated his closeness to the least. A recent example is his September 2024 meeting with Popular Movements which took place in our Dicastery. The Pope listened attentively to the participants and encouraged them in their struggle to meet their own greatest challenges, not wait for others to do so. Their motto “tierra, techo, trabajo” (land, housing, work) became his own, calling these sacred rights necessary for all people to guarantee their dignity.
On that occasion, the Holy Father passed through our long office corridors, stopping to greet Superiors, officials and staff one by one. Observing details of our daily work, he smiled at the posters of communication campaigns that featured him prominently, and everyone, absolutely everyone, felt listened to and appreciated and thanked.
Other memories are even more personal. For example, during a meeting with the Officials of the Dicastery, he heard mention of a colleague’s grief over the imminent death of her grandfather. The Holy Father comforted her tenderly and gave her a rosary that he blessed for the grandfather she loved. On another occasion, Francis wanted to symbolically embrace the sick mother of a worker. That same day, he listened with concern to another Official and gave her a rosary for her mother along with his prayers and words of encouragement.
This love was shared also by us Officials who, like concerned children, often worried about him. Once, at the end of Holy Mass, one of us said to the Pope: “Your Holiness, please, rest and take care of yourself. It hurts us to see you so tired!” The Holy Father smiled with tenderness and answered “Yes”.
These years united with Pope Francis have enriched us in our mission and in our humanity as he shared in planning our pastoral projects. His example inspires us to keep trying to live the Gospel concretely each day and, from now on, to follow the path he traced for the whole Church.
From the depths of our hearts: thank you, Pope Francis, please continue to accompany us, and now rest in peace.
The Superiors, Officials and Staff, Members and Consultors,
of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
