AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Pope Francis has died at the age of 88. The Argentinian-born Jesuit had led the Catholic Church since 2013, when he made history by becoming the first pope from Latin America and the first Jesuit pope. He made his last public appearance yesterday, Easter Sunday, when he repeated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying the situation was “dramatic and deplorable.” The pope briefly spoke, then had the Archbishop Diego Ravelli read his Easter message.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter. I ask the master of ceremonies to read the message.

ARCHBISHOP DIEGO RAVELLI: [translated] I expressed my closeness to the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. The growing climate of antisemitism throughout the world is worrisome, yet at the same time I think of the people of Gaza, and its Christian community, in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation.

AMY GOODMAN: The pope’s statement Sunday echoed his past comments. In 2023, on his December 17th birthday, the pope appealed for an end to the terrorism of war.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] And let us not forget our brothers and sisters suffering from war in Ukraine, Palestine, Israel and other conflict zones. May the approach of Christmas strengthen our commitment to open paths of peace. I continue to receive from Gaza very serious and painful news. Unarmed civilians are being bombed and shot at. And this has even happened inside the Holy Family Parish compound, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, and sick people with disabilities, and nuns. A mother and her daughter, Ms. Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar Kamal Anton, were killed, and others wounded, by the snipers as they went to the bathroom. The house of Mother Teresa’s nuns was damaged, their generator hit. Some say it’s terrorism. It’s war. Yes, it’s war. It’s terrorism. That is why Scripture says that God stops war, breaks bows and breaks spears. Let us pray to the Lord for peace.

AMY GOODMAN: Pope Francis was also a vocal champion for the poor and marginalized and spoke out often about the climate crisis and against the death penalty. On Thursday, the pope traveled to a prison in Rome to meet with dozens of prisoners as part of his Holy Thursday ritual.

On Sunday, Pope Francis briefly met with Vice President JD Vance. In February, before the pope was hospitalized, he openly criticized the Trump administration’s attacks on migrants. The pope wrote, quote, “The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” unquote.

For more, we’re joined by three guests: the Palestinian Christian theologian Reverend Munther Isaac in Bethlehem; Marie Dennis, director of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative at Pax Christi International; and Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, editor of Pope Francis’s book, A Stranger and You Welcomed Me: A Call to Mercy and Solidarity with Migrants and Refugees.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for joining us. Marie Dennis, let’s begin with you. The life and legacy of the pope, if you can talk about it?

MARIE DENNIS: Yes. Thank you so much.

What a gift he has been over these years. From the very beginning, both his way of life, his own witness and his words, have pointed in the direction of peace, of mercy, of nonviolence. Pope Francis, as we, many of us, remember, immediately after he was elected, gestured by even what shoes he was going to wear and by where he was going to live and by what car he was going to ride in, his own personal commitment to be close to those who are poor and marginalized in our world. And he has continued that throughout his papacy.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about where he took the church when it came to LGBTQ issues, when it came to abortion. He just went to a prison to visit with prisoners, apologized for not washing their feet on Thursday, but said he was not well. If you can talk about all these issues?

MARIE DENNIS: Of course. Pope Francis — I think it’s important to begin by saying that Pope Francis began — when he addressed almost any issue, he would begin with experience, with the experience of people at the margins, who were on the receiving end of whatever form of violence or rejection was being exercised. So, for example, with migrants, his first gesture was to go to meet with migrants, to understand their journeys, to understand what motivated them to leave home. When he was challenged by those who were abused by priests and others in the church, he listened to the survivors of that abuse. He listened to LGBTQ representatives, people who were on the receiving end of the exclusion of LGBTQ in our church. And he began to shift, both shift his own understanding of a particular situation and to begin to change practice in the church.

I think his consistent commitment was to life. But he describes that broadly. He talked about violence — the violences that were done to destroy life, that were multifaceted, as you said, beginning with war, with overt violence, with exclusion of migrants, and on and on. So he did not limit the church’s understanding of commitment to life to only the issue of abortion, but stretched our imagination to understand that to protect life meant to promote a world of peace, of justice, and to find nonviolent ways to move into the future.

AMY GOODMAN: And women?

MARIE DENNIS: Yes, and women. Pope Francis — as is often the case, Pope Francis began to listen to women, to hear the experience of women, and he took some quite significant steps to move women into positions of leadership in the institutional church, very high-level positions, which was significant in the Catholic Church. He was not yet ready to talk about women’s ordination or to make a change in terms of ordination of women in the Catholic Church. But he — especially during the very large synod process, where people from around the world were invited to share their experience and their opinions, he listened carefully, I think, to the insistence of women around the world that we needed to be fully a part of the leadership in the church. So, some small steps in that direction. At least a door was open.