RALEIGH, N.C. (RNS and NPR) — Pope Francis, the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope in history, died at 88 on Easter Monday (April 21) of a cerebral stroke and heart failure, following a promising recovery from double pneumonia.
The Christian faithful as well as those of other faiths are paying tribute to the pontiff whose popularity was based in his apparent humility, his openness across differences and his passion for those on the margins.
It isn’t necessary to travel as far as South America to see the appeal of the first Latino pope — the proof of how he touched the hearts of those from his part of the world is here in the American South, in North Carolina.
Lifelong Catholic Hatciri López, who was born and raised in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, remembered the first time she heard Pope Francis speak porteño Spanish, the dialect of Buenos Aires.
“Just as soon as I heard him speak, it would just strike my heart right away,” says López, 36, who has lived in the town of Selma in Johnston County for most of her adult life. “I would just want to cry and just feel a sense of happiness and hope for the future. It’s just easier for the message to get to your heart, you know. Instead of hearing it from a translator.
Hatciri López at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Clayton, N.C., Feb. 20, 2025. (Photo by Aaron Sánchez-Guerra/WUNC)
“I feel more connected to him,” said López, a member of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Clayton. “I feel empowered in a way, because he’s OK with going against the current, against the traditions. He’s focusing on, the world today, what does the world today need from the church? Instead of, ‘Let’s just keep doing the same thing over and over.’”
Franciscan Friar Gonzalo Torres, of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Durham — a majority Hispanic congregation — says Francis shaped his spiritual mission.
“He has not only inspired me, he has encouraged me, and he has challenged me as a Catholic, as a Franciscan friar and as a priest,” said Torres. “He said that the whole church, we should be always like a hospital in a battlefield. It should be a place where all of us who are broken, who are sinful, who have been injured, can come for healing.”
In a February letter to U.S. bishops, Francis was quick to urge Christians to choose compassion for immigrants and refugees in the U.S., calling plans for mass deportation a “major crisis.”
Torres said Francis’ message was clear and that Immaculate Conception is heeding the call against Christian indifference to the suffering of migrants and refugees around the world.
Friar Gonzalo Torres, parochial vicar at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Durham, N.C., with the autobiography of Pope Francis on Feb. 26, 2025. Torres says he was personally changed by the theology of Pope Francis. (Photo by Aaron Sánchez-Guerra/WUNC)
The Rev. Manuel Vieira, pastor of Immaculate Conception, believes the pope’s outspokenness on behalf of the marginalized was about living out the mandates of Jesus’ message in the face of today’s issues.
“Francis has tried to live out the gospel life and called the church to live the gospel life,” said Vieira. “His message has resonated, it’s the message for this point and time that we’re living in. To embrace as Jesus would have embraced.”
That message of embracing migrants and the marginalized worldwide has been central to his papacy, and it was born out of his experience as the child of Italian immigrants to Argentina.
Few people in North Carolina know the story of the humble priest who would become pope better than those who run the only Argentine bakery in Raleigh.
As a girl in Buenos Aires, Carolina Spicer, owner of Milonga Bakery, attended the Catholic school Nuestra Señora del Buen y Perpetuo Socorro in the neighborhood Villa Devoto, where the future pope led Masses during her childhood.
“He would say hi, shake your hand,” said Spicer, 40, who opened Milonga Bakery less than a year ago. “We didn’t see him as often, but every time we go to Mass or for the Communion, you did talk to him.”
Carolina Spicer, left, and Leonardo Leanza at Milonga Bakery in Raleigh, N.C., on March 18, 2025. Both are originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photo by Aaron Sánchez-Guerra/WUNC)
Spicer, now an evangelical Christian, remembers her Catholic school and the kindness of the future pope fondly.
“He was a good man in Argentina,” said Spicer, who migrated to New York City as a teenager and later moved to Raleigh. “He did a lot for the people that was in the population that didn’t have much, like get food for kids. He was the only priest that would go to the cities with, like, low income and actually be there with the people.”
She isn’t the only one at the bakery who used to know the future pope. Leonardo Leanza, a baker at Milonga, recalls Father Bergoglio coming in to pick up his new eyeglasses.
“Bergoglio was a patient at my company. He’d come in every two to three months for his eyeglass lens prescription,” said Leanza, 51, who previously worked as an optometrist in Buenos Aires before migrating to the U.S. in 2019. “He was a very humble person, because the times he would come in to see us, he’d ride the train and then take the public bus.
“I feel proud as an Argentine and as a Christian, that we had an Argentine pope,” said Leanza, who like Spicer is an evangelical Christian. “But most of all, for his heart, his way of being, for his humility and his great devotion to God, to helping others.”
A version of this story was originally published on WUNC and aired on NPR. This story has been adapted and published on RNS through a partnership with NPR.
