Calls to beatify Pope Francis emerge just one year after his death

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — A priest known for having been one of the main promoters of the Vatican’s 2013 takeover of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate (FFI) is now pushing for the beatification of Pope Francis.

On April 20, Italian outlets including Il Giornale and RAI News reported that Father Alfonso Bruno, a spokesman for the FFI, has supported initiating a formal process toward the beatification of Pope Francis, who died on April 17, 2025. Bruno argues that the late pontiff’s life and actions, expressed through pastoral choices and public gestures of love toward the poor and marginalized, indicate his sainthood.

“One year after his passing, what stands out,” Bruno said, “is the coherence of his life right to the end: he faded away like a candle burning itself out, after having given everything.”

According to Bruno, Francis’ “witness [was] not tied to theoretical constructs,” but to a way of life defined as a “concrete evangelical posture. It is precisely this lived radicality of the Gospel that is cited as one of the elements underlying the request for beatification.”

READ: Book on Francis’ ‘disastrous pontificate’ intended to serve as catechists’ ‘handbook’: theologian

He points to a series of actions undertaken by Pope Francis during his pontificate that are presented as “evidence” of his sanctity. Among these, particular emphasis is placed on the late pope’s first apostolic journey outside Rome, which took place in July 2013 to the Italian island of Lampedusa, where he addressed the issue of migration and commemorated those who had died at sea.

The account also highlights what is described as Pope Francis’ final public act outside the Vatican. On April 17, 2025, shortly before his death, he reportedly visited the Regina Coeli prison in Rome, where he met with inmates. This visit is presented as consistent with a broader pattern of engagement with detainees, especially during the annual liturgies of Holy Thursday. During those celebrations, Pope Francis frequently conducted the ritual washing of feet in prison settings, a gesture interpreted in the report as a sign of “ongoing attention to those on the margins of society.”

Additional symbolic acts recalled by Bruno include the throwing of floral wreaths into the sea in memory of migrants who died attempting to reach Europe.

According to Bruno, the possible opening of the canonization process would represent the “recognition of a holiness lived within history, capable of speaking even to those outside the Catholic world. This perspective [would] reflect a widespread perception of a religious figure who profoundly marked his time.”

No doctrinal notes are mentioned in the reports supporting the hypothesis of Francis’ cause for canonization. In Catholic theology, sanctity means full conformity to God’s will and participation in His divine life through grace and the heroic exercise of Christian virtues. It is not merely moral perfection or external piety, nor simply the practice of good works or philanthropic activity, but the transformation of the person by charity and sanctifying grace, leading to union with Christ and making the individual a model of imitation for other believers.

To properly understand the proposal of Francis’ beatification process, it is necessary to recall who Bruno is.

Fr. Alfonso Bruno is a member of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, a religious institute that underwent a period of apostolic administration beginning on July 11, 2013, after priests at the institute complained that the group was favoring the Traditional Latin Mass over the Novus Ordo.

Bruno served as secretary general under this administration and later, following the conclusion of the apostolic administration, became a general councillor in the government of the institute, established on May 13, 2022.

Prior to and during the intervention, Bruno had been identified by sources such as La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana and Corrispondenza Romana as a prominent internal supporter of positions critical of the leadership of the institute’s founder, Father Stefano Maria Manelli, and favorable to Vatican oversight.

Manelli, founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, created the Franciscan order marked by total consecration to the Virgin Mary, inspired by St. Maximilian Kolbe. Founded in 1970 and recognized by the Vatican in 1990, the institute follows St. Francis’s rule “in the Marian way,” adding a fourth vow of Marian devotion to poverty, chastity, and obedience. Manelli’s vision joined strict asceticism, fidelity to Catholic Tradition, and missionary zeal, seeing Mary as the path to Christ and model of perfect discipleship.

The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate were placed under Vatican administration in 2013, four months after Francis’ election and an internal investigation ordered by the Congregation for Religious.

The decision, approved by Pope Francis, followed complaints from within the community about what some described as an excessive attachment to the Traditional Latin Mass and “overly rigid governance” under the founder, Manelli. Officially, the measure aimed to restore unity and ensure proper discipline, but many observers saw it as a punitive act against a flourishing traditional order whose rapid growth and Marian rigor had become uncomfortable among certain sectors of the post‑conciliar Church.