Pope Francis has helped me to focus once again on the joy in my pastoral ministry. He has challenged me genuinely to believe that the Gospel is and should be the source of the church's joy. His own approachable, cheerful, and hopeful style in exercising the papacy reminds me that shepherds must exude joy or they will fail to lead anyone else to discover it.

Like any other spiritual transformation or renewal, conversion must begin with an honest and a sincere admission that we need God's trans-formative power in our lives to achieve any real change, no matter the perspective from which we might begin.

For better or worse, the United States enjoys the lion's share of public and media attention. We influence much of the conversation on social and public media by sheer volume.

Each one of us must ask how we contribute to the racist climate that seems only to grow stronger in spite of our best efforts at legislative and social remedies. Whether we are victims of racism or its perpetrators, we must begin on our knees.

There are many serious and knotty issues that I must face each day, but the Pope Francis reminds me by his example and his words that Christ has already redeemed creation and we are saved, even when that might not be so obvious because of the world's many problems and our own grievous sinfulness.

We must remind our people that a great majority of Catholics including their own families were once themselves immigrants forced to endure the nativist bigotry of earlier generations who spoke about Catholics with the same disparaging vitriol being hurled at the new immigrants of now.

We must refine our evangelization efforts, catechesis, and social-justice teaching to ensure that our people fully understand that religious formation and principles can never be disassociated from any aspect of our daily lives, including our political choices.