Pope Francis, who was known for his humble style and concern for the poor, died Monday at age 88. After being hospitalized earlier this year with double pneumonia, the pope emerged from his convalescence on Easter Sunday — his last public appearance, a day before his death — to bless thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square.

Maryland Catholics, whether they had disagreements with the Roman Catholic Church or not, remember Pope Francis as a humble priest who lifted up the needs and suffering of common people above all else. He spoke about the need to confront climate change, criticized the Trump administration’s plan for mass deportations and allowed the blessing of same-sex couples.

The first pope from South America, Pope Francis was a Jesuit who was seen as wanting to bring a different perspective to his work. “I think a lot of people found this pope different. He was more accessible and relatable,” said Bill McCarthy, the executive director of Catholic Charities.

Marylanders remember the care he took to focus on immigrants and the poor, to begin conversations with the LGBT community and to emphasize the importance of taking care of the planet.

For those who met him, the moments were indelible. McCarthy traveled to Rome in 2016 with an interfaith group of Baltimoreans, including Archbishop William Lori, to meet the pope at St. Peter’s Square. The trip was born out of groups that had formed after the death in 2015 of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who died of injuries sustained while in the custody of Baltimore Police, as a way to find initiatives for healing in the community.

McCarthy brought with him an apron, embroidered with “Our Daily Bread,” a Catholic Charities initiative that has fed the hungry in Baltimore for decades. As he stood in line, McCarthy said, he was nervous but then glanced behind him and was stunned to see Placido Domingo, the Spanish opera singer. As McCarthy handed the pope the apron, he told him that Our Daily Bread had fed people every day since 1981, a total of 13,000 days of feeding.

The pontiff smiled, McCarthy recalled. “He said, ‘Thank you, and now go and do more,’” McCarthy said.

“You had a sense of warmth with the pope,” McCarthy said. “Behind him Domingo began to sing.”

McCarthy was among a group of Catholics from around the world whom the pope appointed to study Catholic education in the Middle East in 2018. And he was one of those standing on the South Lawn of the White House when the pope was greeted by President Barack Obama in 2016. The pope honored four Americans who had worked for justice and peace, he said.

“I think he viewed our faith as an active faith and not just one that is preached,” he said. “I would say he was more for an inclusive church, understanding that we are all made in the likeness and image of God and that we are all brother and sisters.”

In a statement released Monday, Lori reflected on his opportunities to visit Pope Francis and the pope’s insistence that the church “listen with understanding and compassion to the voice of its people, including those who often feel excluded.”

“Throughout the years of his pontificate, Pope Francis manifested his love for the poor and marginalized. He lifted up the plight of migrants and refugees, victims of injustice, the sick and elderly, and global poverty,” said Lori. “He called for the protection of the environment as God’s gift and as humanity’s common home.”

Lori said he will offer a Mass for Pope Francis in the coming days and plans to attend his funeral.

Alejandro Cañadas, an associate professor of economics at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, knew the pope as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a bishop in Buenos Aires. Born in that city to Italian immigrants, he became archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1997.

Cañadas attended a Catholic high school and then the Catholic University of Argentina, when Bergoglio was a cardinal and directed the university.

He regularly attended Mass with him and would see him in the Metro or walking down the street. Cañadas often helped provide a celebration of the Word of God in poor neighborhoods in Buenos Aires on Sundays, where there were no priests. One Sunday, Cañadas said, he and his wife asked the future pope to come to celebrate Mass. He agreed, but arrived a few minutes late because he had taken public transportation. He didn’t come with a driver in a car, Cañadas said, because he wanted to show people he was not above them.

“He was very humble,” he said. “He always shared with us how much he enjoyed being with the people.”

When he encountered him, Cañadas said, Cardinal Bergoglio was “very open, always happy. Once he saw you, he knew you.”

But many in Baltimore and elsewhere feel betrayed by the Catholic Church that Pope Francis leads.

Ralph Moore, who attended St. Ann’s, a predominantly Black Catholic parish that was shuttered recently by the Archdiocese of Baltimore, said he has struggled with the inability of the church to budge on long-held beliefs.

“Catholics are the last big denomination of Christians that doesn’t allow women to be ministers of their faith,” Moore said. Moore said his values and his faith should be the same, but increasingly, he has found they are not.

Moore was involved in a small movement in Baltimore that sought to get Black Catholics from America recognized as saints. His group was responsible for organizing 4,600 letters to the pope asking that the six be recognized as saints, and for three years, Moore replied to every tweet sent under the pope’s Twitter account. He was also one of three people who traveled to Rome to plead the case at the Vatican.

The pope has neither recognized nor acknowledged their efforts, Moore said. “It is very Catholic. No response is an acceptable response. It is impolite and unkind,” he said.

Despite his attending Mass every Sunday, Moore said, the closure of St. Ann’s has tested him. He has jumped around from one church to another and does not know if he will move to an Episcopal church.

Despite his own experiences, he appreciated Francis for the gestures he had made. “He once said we are all sinners,” Moore said. “I had never heard a pope say that he was a sinner.” Moore believed he was trying to say that he was “just another Catholic struggling with faith and trying to live it.”

The Rev. Brian Frain, pastor of St. Ignatius Church, a Jesuit church on Calvert Street in Midtown Baltimore, said the pope’s lasting legacy will be his moves to bring the church into the 21st century. “He has expanded the frontiers of the church in different directions to at least open the dialogue on issues,” such as civil marriage of same-sex couples and the role of women in the church, Frain said. “It is not to say he is more liberal, but he has had dialogue with those on the margins.”

Francis also acknowledged the suffering of those who were abused by members of the Catholic Church, he noted. That issue has roiled the church for the past several decades, including in 2023, when the Maryland Office of the Attorney General released a 456-page report that laid out ways in which the archdiocese had concealed the pervasive sexual abuse of 600 children over 80 years. Archdiocesan officials convinced prosecutors not to charge priests with crimes. Lori has acknowledged that “the report details a reprehensible time in the history of this Archdiocese, a time that will not be covered up, ignored or forgotten.”

Many Catholics said they believe Pope Francis will always be remembered for his pastoral stance. “He distinguished himself by emphasizing the pastoral dimensions of the papacy. By that I mean the care for people in a very sort of practical, tender way,” said the Rev. Steve Spahn, S.J., assistant professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland.

In an interview in 2013, he said the pope “used the image of the church as a field hospital, the very graphic notion of being in the thick of things and ministering to the wounded with great proximity and love.”

Francis said the church must heal people’s wounds before they can begin ministering in other ways, he said. Named at a time when Europe was experiencing a flood of immigrants, Francis quickly went to an island full of refugees, most of whom were not Catholic. Spahn said the pope’s care for the poor continued during Holy Week when he would go to a jail in Rome to wash the feet of criminals, as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet as an act of humility.

Spahn said Francis opened a conversation inside the Catholic Church to some of those who had been excluded in the past, including women and lay people. It will be difficult, Spahn said, for popes who come after him to change that inclusiveness.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.