The MacIver family didn’t know they’d be witnessing Pope Francis’ last public appearance when they hustled to St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday, but they felt an urgency to get there.

“We had a sense it was significant because we knew that Pope Francis had not been well,” Colin MacIver, 45, an author and youth minister from Covington, Louisiana, related in a telephone interview with the Register on Monday, the day Pope Francis died of a stroke and heart failure at age 88, after several weeks of illness and after 12 years as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

On Sunday, the Pope spoke briefly, sounding weak and in obvious discomfort.

“Dear brothers and sisters: Happy Easter!” Pope Francis said in Italian, followed by the traditional message and blessing urbi et orbi (“to the city and the world”) in Latin.

Archbishop Diego Ravelli, who served Pope Francis as master of pontifical liturgical celebrations, read the Pope’s Easter message.

The crowd that gathers for a papal blessing in St. Peter’s Square often includes both people of faith and tourists who are merely curious. Most don’t know Latin, and many don’t speak Italian, and the mood is often more festive than pious. 

But Aimee MacIver, an author and leader of pilgrimages and retreats who has visited Rome before, told the Register she has seen “how everybody kind of becomes still when the blessing is delivered, when the message is delivered.”

“There’s something that’s being communicated that’s more than words,” Aimee said.

The MacIvers arrived in Rome on Holy Saturday for a weeklong family pilgrimage, which is scheduled to end on Easter Friday.

Aimee said she is particularly grateful that Pope Francis on Easter Sunday appeared above St. Peter’s Square to bless his people during the “Pilgrims of Hope” Jubilee Year 2025, when he wasn’t well, and at the risk of shortening his time on earth.

“He was making a tiny pilgrimage of hope himself,” she said, “just to come out on that balcony.”

On Monday morning, less than 24 hours after they saw the Pope in St. Peter’s Square, the MacIvers heard church bells pealing while they were making a long walk to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, but they didn’t know why.

While they were in line to go down into the catacombs, a tourist broke the news to the group that Pope Francis had died earlier that morning, having seen the news alert on his phone.

Colin said a spontaneous prayer for Pope Francis, and all four members of the family followed with a Hail Mary.

“We have been communicating to our kids there’s a sense of solemnity — we want to stop and pray for our Holy Father and the Church,” Colin said.

“This is the moment when the Church pauses, and stops and prays, and holds her breath,” he said, “to see what the Holy Spirit has in store next.”