Nun reveals details of Pope Francis’ will: he left money to buy ambulances for Ukraine

(ZENIT News / Barcelona, 12.03.2025).- The final pages of Pope Francis’ life continue to unfold quietly, not in Rome or in the Vatican archives, but along the battered roads of Ukraine. A Dominican nun from Argentina, Lucía Caram, revealed that the late pontiff set aside a significant portion of his will to support her humanitarian mission by financing ambulances for civilians living under the shadow of war. The gesture, disclosed during an interview on the Catalan program Órbita B, has added an unexpected chapter to Francis’ long-standing concern for the victims of conflict.

Caram, who has traveled to Ukraine more than twenty times since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, admitted that the bequest stunned her. She had long trusted that Francis supported her work, she said, but never anticipated that he would bind that support so personally and so concretely to his final wishes. The late pope, who died on 21 April 2025, often encouraged her during their meetings, telling her he would find a way to help. Only now has she discovered the extent of that promise.

For those familiar with Francis’ pastoral style, the gesture aligns with a pattern: compassion expressed not through grand statements but through precise, sometimes hidden acts of mercy. An ambulance—practical, urgent, unadorned—fits seamlessly within that legacy. Caram’s team has long struggled to replace destroyed medical vehicles in regions where evacuations must happen rapidly and quietly. The new units funded through Francis’ will are expected to serve frontline villages where medical aid arrives sporadically, if at all.

The interview touched on more than Francis’ final act of generosity. Caram also spoke candidly about her recent meeting with the new Pope, Leo XIV, offering a glimpse into a pontificate still taking shape. She described him as a man who weighs his words carefully but communicates with clarity once he speaks.

In Catalonia, Caram is known not only for her work in Ukraine but also for promoting initiatives that channel generosity into everyday spaces. She serves as a spokesperson for Giving Machines, a project that replaces traditional vending products with direct donations to local charities. Installed at Barcelona’s La Maquinista shopping center, the machines invite passersby to buy not snacks but support—meals, blankets, school materials—transformed into digital items that go straight to organizations serving the vulnerable. For Caram, the contrast is deliberate: a consumerist setting turned into a point of encounter with need.

The convergence of all these threads—Francis’ quiet bequest, Leo XIV’s attentive listening, and grassroots tools like the Giving Machines—suggests something larger than a single donation or a single nun’s mission. Caram’s experience reveals an ongoing current inside the Church: an insistence that solidarity must move outward, toward the world’s neglected margins, whether by sending ambulances into a war zone or reimagining charity at a shopping mall.

And in the background stands Francis’ final signature, still at work long after his passing, steering life-saving vehicles toward a wounded land that had weighed on him until the end.

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