The 1963 novel by Morris L. West, The Shoes of the Fisherman, begins with these words: “The Pope was dead. The Camerlengo had announced it. The Master of Ceremonies, the notaries, the doctors, had consigned him under signature into eternity. His ring was defaced and his seals were broken. The bells had been rung throughout the city.” Once again the rituals that Morris wrote of over sixty years ago have been put into effect in reality for the Pope, Pope Francis has died. It was quite a shock to hear of the Pope’s death this morning as I drove to celebrate the 7:30 a.m. Mass, (I write this on Easter Monday). Just yesterday, Easter Sunday, we saw images of the Pope driving through Saint Peter’s Square and blessing the people gathered from the balcony of the Basilica. He seemed to be continuing on the road to recovery. Yet, today we heard the news: The Pope is dead. Just as twenty years ago, Pope Saint John Paul died during the Octave of Easter, so has Pope Francis. Just as it was somehow symbolically appropriate that John Paul would pass as we approached the celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday, it is appropriate that Pope Francis should pass in this sacred time, and near to that feast. Pope Francis often spoke of the Mercy of God, the deep and abiding love shown us in the Father’s gift of the Son, the Son’s passion, death and resurrection for our redemption, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit ‘for the forgiveness of sins.’ Moreover, as Jesus revealed to Saint Faustina, Pope Francis reminded us that we are called to acts of mercy in imitation of our loving God: caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the stranger, visiting the sick and imprisoned. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy are essential to living the life of a disciple. At the beginning of his novel, West continued his description of the rites observed at the death of a Pope: “The Pope was dead. So they would pray for him as for any other: ‘Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, O, Lord…Deliver him from eternal death.’ …They would mourn him with nine days of Masses and give him nine absolutions---of which, having been greater in his life than other men, he might be in greater need after death.” On this Divine Mercy Sunday, let us remember in prayer our late Holy Father Francis, who taught us of that Mercy and whom, to that Mercy, we now commend.