Happy New Birthday, Pope Francis.

I thank God for Pope Francis – that his suffering has come to end, and for the brave and dignified way he lived his last illness. This is a day of Resurrection. Pope Francis has joined Jesus, who has visited him as he did with Peter and the apostles. First thing after Easter, he came to his friends! To grant him peace.

Even when I saw him last on February 3rd, at what turned out to be his last major meeting, he was clearly coping with health issues and he was struggling to breathe. But that didn’t stop him passionately telling all of us that “nothing is more important than the life of a child!”

And even in his suffering he insisted on staying with us for most of that day, an intense working session at the Summit on the Rights of the Child. And he made sure too, that he didn’t leave any of us without a personal warm greeting and a smile that somehow – on every occasion I met him – left me with a deep new feeling of hope and courage.

It was a fitting last meeting I suppose – a continuation of what he said at the start of his pontificate, in 2013, speaking on behalf of “all those who suffer because of the scandal of hunger”, reminding the world that “We are in front of a global scandal of around one billion – one billion people who still suffer from hunger today. We cannot look the other way and pretend this does not exist. The food available in the world is enough to feed everyone.”

His words and actions have been a source of great encouragement to all of us working to eradicate hunger – and we need to let them inspire us to action now more than ever.

Today, I thank the Lord for the gift of Pope Francis’ papacy and I pray for him to help us from Heaven to fulfil our mission at Mary’s Meals – so we will continue his legacy. As soon as he became the successor to St Peter he invited “all of the institutions of the world, the Church, each of us, as one single human family, to give a voice to all of those who suffer silently from hunger, so that this voice becomes a roar which can shake the world.”

As we mourn him let’s celebrate his life and honor his memory by continuing to lift our voices in an unending roar on behalf of every neglected, ignored and hungry child in this world. And let us pray, as Pope Francis taught us, asking God to give us “the grace to envisage a world in which no one must ever again die of hunger.”

NOTE. Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow attended Children’s Rights Summit in the Vatican, the last major event with Pope Francis before his late illness – February 3rd 2025.