“There can be no peace without freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and respect for the views of others.”
—Pope Francis, Final Easter Message, April 20, 2025
But on this day, Pope Francis knelt before a Muslim and solemnly washed his feet. The spiritual leader of over 1 billion Catholics performed the ritual emulating the Savior’s gesture of service to others. Just as Jesus washed the feet of his 12 apostles at the Last Supper, the Pontiff, at a center for asylum seekers outside of Rome, did the same for another eight men and four women, a group comprised of three Muslims, three Coptic Christians, a Hindu and five Catholics.
Francis told them: “All of us together, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Copts, Evangelical [Protestants], brothers and sisters—children of the same God—we want to live in peace, integrated.”
The very word “Catholic” has its root in the Greek katholikos, or “universal.”
For the man born Jorge Mario Bergoglio—formerly the archbishop of Buenos Aires, formerly a lab chemist and nightclub doorman before beginning his decades-long path to the Vatican—respecting those of other faiths was always the rule, not the exception.
“All religions are a path to God,” the Pope, who died April 21, told a group of youths at a Catholic junior college in Singapore last year. “They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all.”
And Francis was fluent in many of those languages, sharing meaningful dialogue with spiritual leaders of other faiths and cultivating harmony with their communities.
In 2021, amid the ancient ruins of Ur in Iraq—traditionally the birthplace of Abraham, patriarch to three faiths—Pope Francis met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, leader of the Iraqi Shiites.
The meeting came at a crucial time. Iraq had just wrested itself free of the terrorism of the Islamic State, but was still riven by rocket attacks from militias, violence and a swell of COVID cases.
“We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion,” Francis said to an interreligious gathering in southern Iraq, in the shadow of a 4,000-year-old mud-brick Mesopotamian ziggurat. “Dark clouds of terrorism, war and violence have gathered over this country. All its ethnic and religious communities have suffered.”
Three years later, the Pope was once again front and center for a crisis, responding with emotion to a letter signed by hundreds of Jewish scholars and rabbis asking for the Church to stand in solidarity with them against the swelling tide of antisemitism. “I want you to know,” he wrote, “that you are close to my heart and to the heart of the Church … I feel the desire to assure you of my closeness and affection. I embrace each of you.”
Francis further wrote: “The path that the Church has walked with you, the ancient people of the covenant, rejects every form of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred toward Jews and Judaism as a sin against God.”
Though his embrace of those of other faiths has discomfited some elements of the Church, Pope Francis—by thought and deed—has exemplified the values of the religion he led. The very word “Catholic” has its root in the Greek katholikos, or “universal.”
Francis walked in the footsteps of 265 popes, yet none reached across so many faiths with such grace and love. Let us pray it does not take another 265 to find his equal.
