See some of the most memorable moments from Pope Francis' papacy

There's an old saying often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.

While St. Francis likely never said those words, Pope Francis, who took his papal name from the 13th century saint, seemed to use them as a mission statement.

Like all popes, Francis, who died on Monday at age 88, did his fair share of preaching with words. But he also encouraged Catholics to "not waste time with discourses or interrogations, much less with pietism or sentimentalism."

"Let us ask ourselves today: do I know how to listen to people, am I ready to meet their good requests? Or do I make excuses, procrastinate, hide behind abstract or useless words?" he asked during an Angelus address in 2024.

Pope Francis was a master of making emotional connections through his actions, resulting in viral moments that rocketed across the Internet. He was, at heart, a pastor to wounded souls.

From consoling a young boy whose father had recently died, to preaching in an eerily empty St. Peter's Square during the pandemic, Francis understood how his actions, as much as his words, could preach the Gospel.

With that in mind, here are some of the most memorable moments of Pope Francis' papacy.

The pope brings refugees home to the Vatican on the papal plane 

In 2016, Pope Francis and Orthodox Christian leaders visited a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.

"We have come to call the attention of the world to this grave humanitarian crisis and to plead for its resolution," Francis said. "We hope that the world will heed these scenes of tragic and indeed desperate need, and respond in a way worthy of our common humanity."

But the pope did more than call attention to the issue. He brought 12 Muslim refugees from Syria home with him to the Vatican on the papal plane. The three families' homes had been bombed during the Syrian war. "The pope has desired to make a gesture of welcome regarding refugees," the Vatican said in a statement.

The pope simply said: "They are guests of the Vatican."

Five years later, The New York Times caught up with the three families and found them all still living in Rome, where they settled with the help of St. Egidio, a Catholic charity close to Francis.

The pope comforts a little boy whose father was an atheist  

As the Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis visited the city's Catholic parishes and took questions from children. In April 2018, a young boy named Emanuel stood up at the microphone, but he couldn't get his question out. As the boy fought back tears, the pope said, "Come, come to me, Emanuele. Come and whisper it in my ear."

In the pope's embrace, Emanuel whispered his question. Francis then asked Emanuele if he could share it with the small crowd.

Emanuele's father had recently died, the pope said. His father had baptized his four children, but was himself an atheist. "Is my father in heaven?" Emanuel asked.

"What a beautiful witness of a son who inherited the strength of his father, who had the courage to cry in front of all of us," Francis said. "If that man was able to make his children like that, then it's true, he was a good man."

Then the pope encouraged the children to think about God as a father. "Does God abandon his children when they are good?"

"No!" the children shouted.

"There, Emanuele, that is the answer," the pope told the boy. "God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much."

The pope embraces a man covered with boils

In 2013, a man named Vinicio Riva attended a public audience held by Pope Francis in Vatican City. Riva suffers from neurofibromatosis type 1, a genetic disease that left him covered with growths, swellings and itchy sores.

"We didn't think we would be so close to the pope, but the Swiss Guard kept ushering us forward until we were in a corner in the front row," Riva's aunt, Caterina Lotto, told CNN.

When Francis saw Riva, he quickly moved to embrace him.

"I thought he wouldn't give him back to me," Lotto said. "He held him so tightly. We didn't speak. We said nothing but he looked at me as if he was digging deep inside, a beautiful look that I would never have expected."

Riva said he was taken aback by the pope's lack of hesitation in embracing him.

"He didn't have any fear of my illness," he said. "He embraced me without speaking…I quivered. I felt a great warmth."

On the bus home, Riva shook from the intensity of the encounter.

"I felt I was returning home ten years younger, as if a load had been lifted," he said.

The pope asks "Who am I to judge?" gay people

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" the pope asked.

It was a remarkable question, especially since popes and other religious leaders have judged LGBTQ+ people for centuries. Now, the leader of the world's biggest church was saying the opposite.

Francis' comments, made during a press conference in 2013, on the flight home from his first papal trip overseas, were seen as revolutionary by LGBTQ+ Catholics, even if they did not change official church doctrine.

"Basically, I'm overjoyed at the news," Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the U.S.-based New Ways Ministry, told the AP. "For decades now, we've had nothing but negative comments about gay and lesbian people coming from the Vatican."

The pope washes the feet of migrants 

The symbolism was hard to miss: The head of the world's largest church including refugees in one of Catholicism's most sacred rituals – the reenactment of Jesus' washing the feet of disciples during the Last Supper.

Kneeling in his white robes, the pope carefully washed and kissed the feet of 11 refugees at a center for migrants seeking asylum in Rome. Some were Muslim, others Hindu, Catholic and Coptic Christians from Mali, Eritrea, Syria and Pakistan.

Some cried as the pope washed their feet. Francis's message was simple but profound: despite the apparent indifference of the world, their lives mattered to this pope.

"Gestures speak louder than words or images," the pontiff said, citing the example of Jesus' washing the disciples' feet in the Gospel.

Coming just two days after a terrorist attack in Brussels in 2016, the pope said he wanted to remind European leaders of migrants' humanity.

"When I do the same gesture as Jesus who washed the feet of the twelve, when I wash your feet, then all of us together are doing a gesture of peace. We are brothers and we want to live in peace. That's the gesture I will do."

The pope has lunch with homeless people in Washington, D.C. 

After addressing a joint session of Congress — a first-ever for a pope — Francis didn't do the usual DC thing: have lunch with powerful people. Instead, he headed to a homeless shelter in the nation's capital, where he dined with 300 people served by Catholic Charities.

Among the attendees were people suffering from homelessness, people in recovery from addiction, struggling single mothers, victims of domestic abuse and people with intellectual disabilities. To many in society, they were among the most marginalized. To this pope, they were VIPs.

"It's awesome, you know?" Latisha Bussie, who was there that day, told NPR. "You get to meet the man who actually has started a change on how people should look towards other people."

Before lunch, the pope reminded the gathering that Jesus was homeless, too, when he came into the world. He then earned cheers by saying that "We can find no social or moral justification — no justification whatsoever — for lack of housing."

The pope preaches to an empty St. Peter's Square 

When popes deliver an "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) address, it's usually a festive occasion, such as Christmas and Easter. But in March 2020, as the world began to reckon with a lethal pandemic, the mood was somber and fearful.

Sensing that fear, Pope Francis stood alone in St. Peter's Square as the evening sky bled from blue to black, and offered a meditation on the crisis facing the world.

"For weeks now it has been evening," said the pope. "Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice it in people's gestures, their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost."

At the same time, the pope said, the pandemic reminded us that "we are all in the same boat," and he urged humanity to reassess our priorities and plans.

"In this storm, the façade of those stereotypes with which we camouflaged our egos, always worrying about our image, has fallen away, uncovering once more that (blessed) common belonging, of which we cannot be deprived: our belonging as brothers and sisters."

While no one was in St. Peter's Square to hear the pope's address that March evening, millions viewed it online. It was one dramatic moment in a papacy filled with them.