“The next pope,” Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio told his brother cardinals in their 2013 General Congregation meetings six days before they would elect him the 266th Peter, had to be a “man who, from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ, helps the Church to go out of herself to the existential peripheries, who helps her to be a fruitful mother living off the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.”

The most important qualification for the new pope, the archbishop of Buenos Aires argued, was to be a missionary who could lead the whole Church on her mission — someone whose prayer would drive him joyfully to share with others the fruits of his contemplation and the ultimate love of his life.

Hence, that criterion is not only one of the most fitting ways by which to assess Pope Francis’ papacy but also one of the most important considerations for the cardinal-electors to evaluate when they convene soon to elect his successor.

Pope Francis took seriously that summons to bring the Gospel to the peripheries. Despite age and growing frailty, he regularly left the Vatican to bring the Gospel to the peripheries, visiting 74 countries, 44 Italian cities, and hundreds of Roman parishes, charitable works and even private homes to share the joy of the Gospel.

He clearly prioritized those on the margins, visiting developed nations only because either they had already been on Pope Benedict’s schedule or because of global institutions or meetings occurring there. Instead, he chose to go to places like Lampedusa, Palestine, Albania, Central African Republic, Armenia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Iraq, South Sudan and Papua New Guinea.

Just as in his choice of cardinals — overlooking the shepherds of major Catholic metropolises like Los Angeles, Paris and Milan in favor of those leading tiny dioceses in Tonga, Laos, Mongolia and Algeria — he similarly sought, through his travels, to draw the world’s attention to places that receive little notice.

He visited the United States for the previously scheduled World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia and the 70th anniversary of the United Nations in New York. He traveled to Canada mainly to meet with long-suffering Indigenous groups. In France, he addressed the European Parliament and attended a pan-Mediterranean conference on migration, but never visited any of the country’s major cities or sanctuaries. Notably, he never returned to his native Argentina.

To a world so accustomed to focusing on those in the center of political, economic, military and cultural influence, Pope Francis’ priorities were certainly odd. But he tenaciously stuck to them, seeking to lead the Church with missionary zeal to the perimeters and to bring those on the extremities with him back to the center.

Pope Francis, however, did more than exemplify the missionary spirit he believed the Church needed in a pope. He actively worked to inspire the entire Church to embrace its missionary calling, a vision he laid out in his programmatic apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, published eight months after his election.

In this beautiful document, he expressed his hopes for the missionary metamorphosis of the Church. “I dream,” he wrote, “of a … missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures, can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation” (27).

He tried to codify that missionary impulse in his 2022 apostolic constitution for the Church, which he entitled, Praedicate Evangelium (“Preach the Gospel”). At times, many struggled to see how certain initiatives, like the Synod on Synodality or the details of the reorganization of the Vatican Curia, were consistent with this missionary thrust rather than manifestations of the self-centered subjectivism that he said was a sign of ecclesial sickness. It’s fair to say, however, that the Pope, prudently or not, thought such initiatives would facilitate rather than frustrate the Church’s mission.

He was convinced, as he wrote in Evangelii Gaudium, that preaching the Gospel is the “first task of the Church.” Missionary activity, he added, “still represents the greatest challenge for the Church” and “must remain foremost.” He poignantly asked, “What would happen if we were to take these words seriously? We would realize that missionary outreach is paradigmatic for all the Church’s activity” (15).

It was not a new concern for him. Before becoming pope, perhaps his greatest achievement was to lead the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean in the formulation of the “Aparecida document,” a 2007 pastoral plan for the reevangelization of their vast territories. It’s the most thorough and probably greatest document on the missions the Church has ever produced, and Cardinal Bergoglio was president of the drafting committee.

The goal of everything the Church does, the bishops wrote, was to form “missionary disciples in communion,” and they described the stages in that formation: encountering Jesus Christ in the Word of God, in prayer, in the witness of the faithful, in the beauty of the Church, and the recognition of his saving work; the conversion one experiences after encountering Jesus and the yearning for the new life he gives; discipleship, when we learn better what Jesus teaches and strive to live by it, advancing in the Christian sacramental and moral life; communion, when we learn that Jesus came not just to save individuals but to found a family that loves one another as he loves us, that lives united as his Mystical Body and Bride; and, finally, mission, as disciples go forth to try to help others encounter Christ at the depth he wishes to meet them and invite them to follow Christ on the same itinerary of Christian life and growth.

Despite some ambiguous interreligious overtures like the 2019 “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” that raised questions about the indispensable role of Jesus Christ as universal Redeemer, he was clear that there is no other name but Jesus’ by which human beings are saved.

Speaking to youth in Umbria in 2013, he declared, “The Gospel is God’s message of salvation for mankind. When we say, ‘message of salvation,’ this is not simply a way of speaking, these are not … empty words like so many today. Mankind truly needs to be saved!”

Pope Francis occasionally confused the faithful about their missionary duties by jeremiads against “proselytism,” by which he basically meant seeking to make converts for the evangelizers’ sake. He wanted, rather, for Christians to propose the splendor of Christ to others’ freedom and attract to Christ through radiating the difference Christ has made in their lives.

“The primary reason for evangelizing,” he wrote in Evangelii Gaudium, “is the love and salvation of Jesus that we have received.” He asked, “What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known?” (264).

He emphasized that the Church’s missionary work — carried out by every believer, not just “professionals” — is a response to that love.

“We have a treasure of life and love that cannot deceive and a message that cannot mislead or disappoint,” he wrote with gratitude, adding, in one of the most eloquent passages of all his papal writings: “We are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. … We know well that with Jesus, life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything. This is why we evangelize” (265-66).

He urged us to share that treasure of life and love with courage, charity and commitment.

He memorably told young people at his first World Youth Day in 2013, “Faith is a flame that grows stronger the more it is shared and passed on, so that everyone may know, love and confess Jesus Christ, the Lord of life and history. … Jesus did not say: ‘Go, if you would like to, if you have the time,’ but rather, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations.’ Sharing the experience of faith, bearing witness to the faith, proclaiming the Gospel: This is a command that the Lord entrusts to the whole Church, and that includes you; but it is a command that is born not from a desire for domination, from the desire for power, but from the force of love, from the fact that Jesus first came into our midst and did not give us just a part of himself, but he gave us the whole of himself, in order to save us and to show us the love and mercy of God.”

He underlined there that in living out our vocation as missionary disciples, Jesus “not only sends us, he accompanies us; he is always beside us in our mission of love.”

The Holy Father also highlighted that Jesus meant it when he sent us to teach all nations and proclaim the Gospel to every creature: “The Gospel is for everyone, not just for some. … Do not be afraid to go and to bring Christ into every area of life, to the fringes of society, even to those who seem farthest away and most indifferent. The Lord seeks all — he wants everyone to feel the warmth of his mercy and his love.”

In communion with his predecessors, he underlined that none of us has a mission, but each of us is a mission: “I am a mission on this earth,” he wrote in Evangelii Gaudium. “This is the reason why I am here.”

It’s clear that Pope Francis, as the successor of the Galilean fisherman whom Jesus made a “fisher of men,” identified himself with the mission to share the faith. He was someone who went from his adoration of Christ to the ends of the Earth, as he believed any pope of our time must.

The Church is doubtless stronger because of that focus and those determined efforts, as we pray with gratitude for the repose of his soul as well as for the next captain of the fishers of men who will take his place at the helm of Peter’s barque.