For many Black Catholic communities in the United States, Pope Francis’ life and legacy, as someone who lived out an ethic of “all are welcome,” is “exactly what people living the Black experience in America need,” says Father David Jones, pastor of St. Benedict the African on Chicago’s South Side, who has served in the Archdiocese of Chicago for 36 years.
St. Benedict the African and surrounding Black Catholic communities held masses, holy hours, and adoration for the nine days of prayer for Pope Francis following his death. Jones says he was also touched by how many people who are part of the local Black community who aren’t Catholic reached out, looking for ways to join in prayer for Pope Francis.
“People are responding to the death of Pope Francis in a way that normally I see people respond to the death of a loved one,” he says.
Jones says Pope Francis’ emphasis on care for creation resonated with many Black Catholics. “As a pastor, I hear Pope Francis talking about the importance of care of creation as I hear grandmothers in their garden talking about the care of creation.”
Among parishioners, Jones has witnessed not only a mourning for the loss of Pope Francis but also a deep sense of celebration for his life and legacy. “It’s fortuitous that he blessed the world and then went to sleep, and we only knew how to say Hallelujah and Happy Easter,” he says.
Ansel Augustine, author and assistant director for African American Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), who previously worked in ministry for 26 years in New Orleans, says “environmental racism in Black neighborhoods is real, and Pope Francis spoke about that in his documents.” Augustine’s hometown, St. John the Baptist parish outside of New Orleans, is known as Cancer Alley because of toxins and pollution. Pope Francis addressing that, and other injustices like racism, “spoke to us as Black Catholics,” he says.
Efran Menny, a contributor to the Black Catholic Messenger and political-social commentator on issues important to Black Catholics, including theology and social justice, says Pope Francis’ “concern for racial injustice in America really touched on Black American communities.”
In 2020, Pope Francis addressed the murder of George Floyd and decried “the sin of racism,” Menny says. “For Black Catholic communities in the United States, he was able to really address Black Americans in a unique and special way, which is related to our ongoing centuries and centuries of efforts to confront racial injustice in America,” Menny says.
U.S. bishops have reiterated that “America’s original sin is racism,” Augustine says. Black Americans have been “excluded and been told we don’t belong—Pope Francis tried to model how everybody belongs amongst the differences.”
Black Catholics “deserve the love of a church that we love as well,” Augustine says. “We’re a gift to the church and have sacrificed for the church, and it has benefited from our presence.”
Leslye Colvin, a writer who runs a blog called Leslye’s Labyrinth and hosts a virtual contemplative space called Safe and Sacred Spaces with Leslye, says Pope Francis “modeled opening the windows” and allowed the Spirit to move with his call for dialogue.
“We are so segregated today in 2025 in our thinking, our understanding, and our desire to know better,” Colvin says. “Those who are on the margins, those who are different from us—when we lean into the discomfort of those encounters, we can find God in the midst of that.”
In 2015, during Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, he gave a speech to members of Congress and exemplified four Americans: Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton.
Colvin says that “as a woman in a Black body, who was born and raised in Alabama, I was so excited when I heard Pope Francis say [those names].” Colvin was with her mother in a hospital room and they watched the speech together. “Those four being connected and being identified by the Pope, as he’s speaking to the American people—that was just a powerful moment for me,” she says.
Congressman John Lewis later spoke about how that speech was one of the most moving he had ever heard in Congress, which also resonated with Colvin. “I think that quite often, my Catholic brothers and sisters in white bodies in this country miss so much because the system in which we live has been structured for them to either not see, or to not acknowledge, injustice,” she says. “By speaking of these four Americans, whose lives addressed grave injustices, is profound.”
In addition to visiting the United States and addressing its history of racism and injustice, Pope Francis visited “many places where the Pope has not been before,” Colvin says, and he assigned bishops and cardinals from the global South. From this, Colvin says she saw Pope Francis honoring the “beauty and the richness of the Black church, that it brings value to the Catholic Church.”
In 2023, Pope Francis visited Africa and “acknowledged the history of the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and imperialism,” Menny says. Francis also made the historic move of repudiating the doctrine of discovery.
“Though not a fully equipped act of reparation that I think the Catholic Church can do and should do for its role in the doctrine of discovery and age exploration, Pope Francis’ words and the way he expressed concern about the state of Africa and the continent was very timely,” Menny says. “And it showed that he understood the state of conditions that the continent is in.”
Menny also points to Pope Francis’ nomination of the first Black American cardinal, Wilton Gregory, as a symbolic and powerful act for Black Catholics in the United States. “Black Catholics in America are one of the longest-standing and ancient groups of Catholics here,” Menny says. “We have our imprint here since the founding of the colonies and even before. For us to really be at the forefront in the College of Cardinals is powerful.”
Even though Pope Francis did not hold a gathering with Black Catholics in the United States like Pope John Paul II did in New Orleans in 1987, “when you heard him speak, when you read his writings, when you see how he interacted with people from around the world, we felt like this was someone who we could relate to and who had our needs in his place,” Augustine says.
Many Black folks, Catholic and non-Catholic, are “on the margins of society,” Augustine says, and “unfortunately, many of us feel like we’re in the margins of the church.” Augustine has held many listening sessions with young Black Catholics around the country to “see what the needs are and how we can meet them rather than just trying to do stuff without their input,” he says. “Pope Francis modeled that for us.”
Black Catholics are “not a monolith, so not one thing will always relate to one group or another group,” Augustine says. So Pope Francis’ teachings, writings, and actions resonate with Black Catholics in a variety of ways.
Augustine’s home state of Louisiana is “number one for mass incarceration in the world,” he says, so Pope Francis’ care and concern for incarcerated people was a powerful witness. “When you see who is mostly incarcerated in this country, it’s Black and brown people,” Augustine says. It was compelling for him “to see [Francis] on Holy Thursday, going to wash the feet of the prisoners, showing the dignity of these men and women.”
The synod on synodality was an example of how Pope Francis created a culture of encounter and listening in the church, something Black Catholics in the United States have been encouraging church leadership to do for decades. “The legacy of Black Catholics is encouraging the church to continue to build those bridges, especially with those that may have left and are hurt by the church.”
Colvin says the Catholic Church—meaning the universal church—“is for us all.”
“There are times Black Catholics need to not only be invited to speak, but to be able to speak without being second-guessed—just to hear us speak of our narrative, our lived experience, our faith journey,” Colvin says.
For example, Colvin looks to the life of Father Augustus Tolton, the first U.S. Black Catholic priest who was not accepted into a seminary in the United States. “I don’t say that he was not accepted because he was in a Black body,” Colvin says. “I say that the people who claim to be Catholic, in white bodies, were limited in their experience of who Christ is. To say that he was not accepted because he is in a Black body is to put the burden on him. There was no fault in him. I believe that we need to move into having conversations and dialogues today so we can explore how that still happens.”
For Menny, Fratelli Tutti (On Fraternity and Social Friendship) was also an incredibly timely document Pope Francis wrote “that will always be with us as a guiding document on how we relate to geopolitical occurrences across the world,” he says, helping us confront how we can love our neighbors better—both those nearby and across the world.
Francis and Pope Leo XIV
Pope Francis’ commitment to “spiritual and social stewardship” is something Menny hopes to see continued in the papacy of Pope Leo XIV—that he will “put the marginalized and the oppressed at the forefront,” especially in our global climate full of inequality, with effects of the COVID-19 pandemic still lingering and “climate change decimating communities.”
Being from New Orleans and having ministered there for many years, Augustine is “excited about Pope Leo XIV’s election,” given his family’s Creole roots in Augustine’s home neighborhood. “Whether or not he identifies with this lineage, it is important to note the impact this Black Catholic experience had on his maternal side of the family,” he says.
Colvin says it “seems providential to have a pope of Creole ancestry as we continue to seek the canonization of seven African-American Catholics,” she says. Menny also hopes that Leo will honor the cause of sainthood for these Black American Catholics: Sister Thea Bowman, Henriette Delille, Pierre Toussaint, Mother Mary Lange, Father Augustus Tolton, Julia Greeley, and Father Martin Maria de Porres Ward. “Their lives and legacies deserve to be authentically valued and brought into the full communion of saints,” Menny says.
At St. Benedict the African in Chicago, Jones says he is “hearing nothing but excitement” about Pope Leo XIV in the Chicago Black Catholic community, especially since Leo was born on the South Side of Chicago. Leo’s ancestry and the history of his family migrating from the south to the north resonates with many in the community, and people are “enjoying connecting with Pope Leo,” Jones says.
“Folks are delighted to learn that a fellow sojourner is now leading the whole church,” Jones says. “This selection is truly opening wide the doors of the church in the Black community.”
From Francis to Leo and beyond, Augustine prays that the church will always be a place where everyone, “whether they’re Catholic or not Catholic, whether they’re incarcerated, whether they’re on the streets strung out, wherever they are, that when they think of our Catholic Church, they think of a church that is loving and welcoming and lives out the golden rule: that we love God and we love our neighbor,” he says.
Colvin hopes Pope Leo XIV will “also go to the peripheries” like Francis did—and she sees signs of hope that he will. “[Pope Leo XIV] has told us that he will continue on the path of Pope Francis,” she says, including in the name he chose, recalling Pope Leo XIII who wrote Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor) addressing economic injustices and workers’ rights. “May we pray with and for this Chicago-born pope and his ministry, as we discern how we are called to illumine the light of Christ as missionaries of hope,” she says.
Image: Unsplash/Desola Lanre-Ologun
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