From Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, to the Basilica of St. Mary Major, over two miles away where Pope Francis has been laid to rest, groups and individuals shuffle past each other as they share their time between praying at the heart of the Church and paying their last respects to this man who touched the heart of the world.

In the last eight months of his life, which also marked the duration of my studies here in Rome thus far, we all witnessed what could be called a crescendo of invitations to encounter each other and engage with the spiritual and all-too-human side of our faith journeys. From the tail end of the Synod on Synodality to the beginning of the Jubilee Year of Hope, the pope, in his frail health, consistently met with different groups, from clergy to reverend sisters, to comedians, to artists, to deacons, the armed forces, the police, the security personnel, and many more, as his health would permit. This desire to encounter and be with the people moved him to offer the world a final farewell on Easter Sunday when he made the unexpected appearance and drove around St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile.

I feel more than privileged to have been studying in Rome in the last eight months of Pope Francis’ life. Now as Rome swells with people flooding in from all over the world to pray and show their loving respect at his simple gravesite, it is not only a historic moment in the life of our Church in our times, but it is an opportunity for myself as a doctoral student, from Cameroon to Nigeria, and to the Diocese of San José, to consider all that I am witnessing and participating in.

Therefore, on a personal note, as I reflect on his life and legacy, I am left in absolute awe at how much his every action spoke to the cultivation of the spirit and culture of encountering others. In fact, as a priest, his call for “the shepherd to smell like the sheep” has remained a north star on my journey of seeking God and serving the people of God. In a world rife with social, religious, and political hatred and division, one where people are dehumanized for being different, and some tend to hold strong and bitter prejudices, Pope Francis’ life spoke loudly for the dignity of every person, especially those on the fringes of society. From his autobiography, Hope, we read Francis’ own words that “we are not truly Christian, nor even human, if we cannot see the person before his actions, before our opinions and prejudices.”

The world has lost not just a spiritual leader but a Man of Encounters, a man whose life brought joy and hope to a world that needed both. Some have called him a great pope. I believe that Pope Francis showed that to be a great pope, you must first be a good person. Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has challenged the world to live with goodness; with love, humility, and simplicity. He has also left us all with a loud testimony on our lips, so that we can heartily proclaim, “We have encountered a great person!” He called us to realize that we are all brothers and sisters, as he wrote in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti. May our encounter with Christ’s love spur us to seek further encounters of fraternal and spiritual love shared with one another.