1 / 10The late Pope Francis met US Vice President JD Vance on April 20, 2025. In his Easter message after the meeting with Vance, read by Archbishop Diego Ravelli, the Pope said, ” How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants. I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear, which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger, and to encourage initiatives that promote development.” Source: Vatican Pool/Getty Images
2 / 10“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.” Pope Francis said in his Apostolic Exhortation as early as 2013, the year he took over the spiritual leader for the billion-plus Catholics around the world. Photographer: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
3 / 10“These workers contribute a great deal to society and should be guaranteed a fair wage. I would like to highlight the risk entailed in focusing solely on pragmatism or placing merit above all things, namely the unintended consequence of justifying the exclusion of those on the margins from benefiting from progress,” he said in September 2024 during a visit to Singapore, a country that doesn’t have a set minimum wage and is often criticised for unfair working conditions.
4 / 10“I hear that some of the richest men in the world recognize this. They say that the system that allowed rich – and may I add, sometimes ridiculous – people to amass fortunes is immoral, that it must be changed. That there should be more taxes on billionaires. That’s all well and good. And I pray that the economically powerful will come out of isolation, reject the false security of money and open up to share goods that have a universal destiny because they all derive from Creation. All goods derive from there and all goods have a universal destiny,” he said in September 2024. FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis gestures during his weekly general audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican on Jan. 8, 2025. Photographer: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
5 / 10“In order to try to break the debt-financing cycle, it is necessary to create a multinational mechanism, based on the solidarity and harmony of peoples, that takes into account the global nature of the problem and its economic, financial and social implications. The absence of such a mechanism favours the mentality of “every person for himself or herself”, where the weakest always lose.” he said in May 2024, at a meeting promoted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
6 / 10“Nobody is useless, nobody is superfluous, there’s space for everyone as we are,” he said after apologising for a remark that the LGBTQ+ community found to be offensive. FILE PHOTO: Pope endorses same-sex civil unions in new documentary film REUTERS/Max Rossi
7 / 10“I am sorry. I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools.” he said while apologising for abuses of indigenous peoples in Canada’s residential schools in Maskwacis, Alberta, July 25, 2022. FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis shakes hands with the President of South Sudan Salva Kiir at the end of a two day Spiritual retreat with South Sudan leaders at the Vatican, April 11, 2019. Vatican Media/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
8 / 10“I encourage you to continue along this path so that all of us, together, each cultivating his or her own spirituality and practicing his or her religion, may walk in search of God and contribute to building open societies, founded on reciprocal respect and mutual love, capable of protecting against rigidity, fundamentalism and extremism, which are always dangerous and never justifiable,” the late Pope said in his speech at Asia’s largest mosque during his visit to Indonesia in September 2024. In the picture, the Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar, left, bids farewell to Pope Francis, as he leaves after signing the “Joint Declaration of Istiqlal 2024” at the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)
9 / 10“What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly,” the late Pope Francis wrote in a letter to the US President Donald Trump after the latter returned to the White House for a second term. FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis meets with US President Donald Trump and First lady Melania Trump on the occasion of their private audience, at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, Pool, file)
10 / 10My prayerful hope is that Israelis and Palestinians can rebuild the bridges of dialogue and mutual trust, starting with the smallest, so that future generations can live side by side in the two States, in peace and security, and that Jerusalem can be the “city of encounter”, where Christians, Jews and Muslims live together in harmony and respect. This photo taken and handout on April 20, 2025 by The Vatican Media shows Pope Francis at the main balcony of St Peter’s basilica during the Urbi et Orbi message and blessing to the city and the world as part of Easter celebrations, in The Vatican. (Photo by Handout / VATICAN MEDIA / AFP)
