Philadelphians mourn Pope Francis’ death and recall the 2015 visit of a pontiff who ‘was for the people’

Joyce Anne Murphy’s heart broke Monday morning after hearing news of Pope Francis’ death. Grieving, she tried to head to work, but found herself walking to Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul instead.

“I was just praying the doors were open because I wanted to thank the lord for giving us such a beautiful and gentle representative,” Murphy said at the landmark cathedral on Ben Franklin Parkway at 18th Street.

When the pope became ill, Murphy said, she knew that it would be difficult for him to make a full recovery because of his age, but she remained hopeful.

Francis, 88, the first Latin American pontiff, died Monday after having spent 38 days in the hospital for respiratory issues that worsened into double pneumonia. He made his final public appearance on Easter Sunday, blessing thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City and briefly meeting with Vice President JD Vance.

For Murphy and hundreds of other mourning Catholics, the basilica’s doors were open Monday. There, Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Pérez led a Mass honoring Francis, whom he described as an “honorary Philadelphian,” recalling the pope’s 2015 visit to the city as part of a historic six-day trip to the United States hosted by the World Meeting of Families Congress.

Francis’ visit remains among the largest events ever hosted in Philadelphia, having attracted some 800,000 parishioners to the region, where more than a quarter of the population identifies as Catholic. But Pérez said he expected that Francis, a native of Argentina, would have short, simple advice for followers Monday: Adelante, a Spanish phrase of which he was fond.

It means, Pérez said, to keep going, or to go forward.

“I’m sure he would say to the world today, ‘Adelante — don’t make this too much about me,’” Pérez said. “Because it really, at the end, isn’t. But today, it is about him in our hearts.”

Murphy was among the onlookers for Francis’ 2015 visit to Philadelphia. She compared his appearance to seeing a favorite sports player or a rock star and was prompted to buy every magazine and newspaper she could find during his visit.

“That was my Super Bowl,” she said.

Chuck Keating, too, was present for Francis’ visit to Philadelphia a decade ago, when Francis blessed his son, Michael Keating, who has cerebral palsy. News of Francis’ death, Keating said, brought a wave of “joy and sorrow mixed together.”

» READ MORE: A look back at the Pope’s 2015 visit to Philadelphia

Michael Keating, now 20, was sitting in a wheelchair beside his mother as Francis departed his plane and got into a black Fiat. Suddenly, the car stopped, and Francis exited it to cradle the boy’s face and kiss him on the forehead.

The moment was transformative, generating news stories that led to $130,000 to get an accessible van and pay for medical bills. Now, a photo of the pope overlooks Michael’s bed, his father said, and the family marks the anniversary of the blessing with a large dinner.

“Michael and the pope’s visit have taught me more about life than anything else,” Keating said. “They help me push forward.”

For Francis Hester, the emotions that ran through her Monday were the opposite of how she felt during the pontiff’s visit. For those two days in 2015, Hester said, she felt peaceful and happy just because of his presence — she even bought a T-shirt that commemorated the visit.

“He was a great man. He was for the people,” Hester said.

» READ MORE: Yes, Bob Brady still has Pope Francis’ drinking glass from his 2015 visit

Julia Barth, a Temple University junior, can’t believe that she got to see Francis speak at his last Easter service.

Barth, 20, has been studying at the university’s campus in Rome since January. She and her roommates live next to the Vatican and would joke that they were neighbors with the pope, Barth said Monday.

Barth attended a portion of Easter Mass and described the event as extremely crowded.

“I feel so lucky that I got to see him when I did. I’m not super religious, but I love the pope,” she said.

Barth and her friends took a walk near St. Peter’s Square after the news broke. She said the Easter setup from Sunday where Pope Francis stood remained intact, including flowers from the holiday Mass. She could see people crying.

“They rang a bell for every year he was alive, and we stayed for all of them — 88 bells,” Barth said.

Back in Philadelphia, Graziella Porcaro, a 72-year-old native of Benevento, Italy, didn’t expect to spend her vacation grappling with the pope’s death. She said she could remember the bells ringing in Rome when Pope Francis was elected.

“I will always think of him with a childlike smile on his face,” Porcaro said. “He was a sweet man. A man who lived by the thinking of ‘who am I to judge others?’”

St. Joseph’s University senior Julia Osęka was among the first young laypeople appointed by Pope Francis as a voting delegate to a convening of clergy to discuss and ratify changes to Catholic doctrine.

When she asked Francis why he called on young people specifically, the pontiff told her, “To make a mess,” Osęka recalled. “It was powerful.”

Osęka spent October 2023 and October 2024 in Rome as part of the 400-member council. Francis would preside over the meetings regularly, and Osęka said she felt “starstruck” the first time she met him.

“His entire papacy was the climate in which I grew as a Catholic. His freshness and interpretation of what it means to be a Catholic made me own my faith as a way to bring justice to the world,” Osęka said.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro recalled meeting Pope Francis during the 2015 visit, when the pontiff stayed at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in Montgomery County.

Shapiro, then a Montgomery County commissioner, spoke with the pope briefly before he turned to go back into the seminary, and Shapiro followed.

At a news conference in Pittsburgh on Monday, Shapiro recalled seeing Pope Francis meet quietly with a group of clergy sexual abuse survivors.

“He was expressing sympathy for what they had been through,” Shapiro said. “He was telling them he would take steps in order to stop that type of abuse. That was incredibly powerful to me.”

Shapiro would later be elected Pennsylvania’s attorney general and in 2018 published a sweeping grand jury report detailing decades of sexual abuse in Pennsylvania’s Catholic churches that Pope Francis would acknowledge “with shame and repentance.”

“This pope was a voice for the voiceless, and I honor the work that he did,” Shapiro added. “The pope laid out a road map for all of us to be able to follow to be a voice for the voiceless.”

Shapiro also ordered flags at commonwealth facilities and public buildings to be flown at half-staff until the date of Francis’ interment, which has not yet been announced. President Donald Trump issued a similar order for federal facilities and grounds, as well as military bases and naval stations.

With Francis’ election as pontiff in 2013, he became the Catholic Church’s 266th pope — and its first from Latin America. Pérez, as a Latino, said Monday that Francis’ transition from Jorge Mario Bergoglio to pope brought him a different kind of joy.

“It was a moment filled with pride. He will forever be for us a memory of happiness. He will forever be our first Latino pope,” Pérez said.

Pérez became the first Latino to lead Philadelphia’s archdiocese when Francis appointed him as archbishop in 2020 to replace Charles Chaput. He was seen as Francis’ first legacy appointment in the United States.

Diocese of Camden Bishop Joseph Andrew Williams, meanwhile, said that Francis’ election was a momentous one for Latino members of his congregation.

“I will never forget the joy his election as the first Latin American Pope brought to the Latino people I was serving in south Minneapolis, at the time,” Williams said in a statement. “They were deeply touched by his simplicity and humility and saw their culture lifted up in his ascension to the See of Peter.”

As a Catholic, Philadelphia parishioner Denise Rodriguez Brown said that she could not help but feel emptiness in the wake of Pope Francis’ death. But as an Argentinian, a tender smile came to her face when she remembered the extremes Francis went to drink mate, a popular South American herbal beverage, at the Vatican.

More than once, the pope stopped his famed Popemobile to drink tea from the hands of unknown parishioners. Rodriguez Brown never got to hand him mate, but she did get close to the pope during a trip to the Vatican in 2014.

“They have more security than an airport and we were on our feet for more than six hours,” she said. ”But it was worth it. He was like a gift of God.”

Remembering that moment in Saint Peter’s Square, she came to the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul on Monday looking for a sense of community. The next pope, she hopes, will also come from Latin America.

“It hurts to know the light of such a big leader was dimmed today, but we need to remember his lessons to have a less hostile world” Rodriguez Brown said.

Staff writers Emily Bloch, Nate File, Gillian McGoldrick, and Denali Sagner contributed to this article.