Pope Francis, the world's first Latin American and first Jesuit pope in history, died on Monday at 88, following a promising but unsuccessful recovery from double pneumonia.
The Christian faithful as well those of other faiths are paying tribute to the pontiff whose popularity was based in unprecedented humility, openness, and passion for social justice.
It isn't necessary to travel as far as South America to see the appeal of the first Latino pope — the proof of how he touched the hearts of those from his part of the world is here in the American South, in North Carolina.
Lifelong Catholic Hatciri López remembered the first time she heard Pope Francis speak his native ±è´Ç°ù³Ù±ðñ´Ç Spanish, the dialect of in his native Buenos Aires.
"Just as soon as I heard him speak, it would just strike my heart right away," says López, 36. "I would just want to cry and just feel a sense of happiness and hope for the future. It's just easier for the message to get to your heart, you know. Instead of hearing it from a translator."
López was born and raised in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, but has lived in the town of Selma in Johnston County for most of her life.
A pope known for going ''against the current"
"I feel more connected to him," said López, a member of St. Ann's Catholic Church in Clayton. "I feel empowered in a way, because he's okay with going against the current, against the traditions. He's focusing on, the world today, what does the world today need from the church? Instead of, 'Let's just keep doing the same thing over and over.'"
Franciscan Friar Gonzalo Torres, of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Durham — a majority Hispanic congregation — says Francis shaped his spiritual mission.
"He has not only inspired me, he has encouraged me, and he has challenged me as a as a Catholic, as at Franciscan friar and as a priest," said Torres. "He said that the whole church, we should be always like a hospital in a battlefield. It should be a place where all of us who are broken, who are sinful, who have been injured, can come for healing."
In a , Francis was quick to urge Christians to choose compassion for immigrants and refugees in the U.S.
He didn't mince words about the second administration of President Donald Trump, whose plans for mass deportation he referred to as a "major crisis."
Torres said Francis' message was clear, and that Immaculate Conception is heeding the call against Christian indifference to the suffering of migrants and humans around the world.
Father Manuel Vieira, lead pastor of Immaculate Conception, acknowledges that the pope's outspokenness was about living out the gospel in the world's current issues.
"Francis has tried to live out the gospel life and called the church to live the gospel life," said Vieira. "His message has resonated, it's the message for this point and time that we're living in. To embrace as Jesus would have embraced."
That message of embracing migrants and the marginalized worldwide has been central to his papacy, and it was born out of his experience as the child of Italian immigrants to Argentina.
Raleigh's Argentinian community remembers
Few people in North Carolina know the story of the humble priest and archbishop who would become pope better than those who run the only Argentinian bakery in Raleigh.
"He would say hi, shake your hand," said Carolina Spicer, owner of Milonga Bakery. "We didn't see him as often, but every time we go to mass or for the communion, you did talk to him."
As a girl in Buenos Aires, Spicer attended the Catholic school Nuestra Señora del Buen y Perpetuo Socorro in the neighborhood Villa Devoto, where the future Pope had led masses and confirmation in her childhood.
Spicer, who is an evangelical Christian, remembers her Catholic school and the kindness of the future pope fondly.
"He was a good man in Argentina," said Spicer, 40. "He did a lot for the people that was in the population that didn't have much, like get food for kids. He was the only priest that would go to the cities with, like, low income and actually be there with the people."
Spicer migrated to New York City as a teenager and later on to Raleigh, where she opened Milonga Bakery less than a year ago.
She isn't the only one at the bakery who knew the future pope, either.
"Bergoglio was a patient at my company, he'd come in every two to three months for his eyeglass lens prescription," said Leonardo Leanza, 51. "He was a very humble person, because the times he would come in to see us, he'd ride the train and then take the public bus."
Leanza also lived in Buenos Aires, where he worked as an optometrist before migrating to the U.S. Father Bergoglio was one of Leanza's prescription eyeglass patients for years.
"I feel proud as an Argentine and as a Christian, that we had an Argentine pope," said Leanza. "But most of all, for his heart, his way of being, for his humility and his great devotion to God, to helping others."
