With the death of Pope Francis so also comes the end (apparently) of Patrick J. Marrin’s Francis comic, though nothing official has been announce as far as I know.

On 13 March 2013, the Argentinean Bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as pope. He took the name “Francis”. Pope Francis was a surprising choice, since up to then, all popes had been Europeans. The new church leader quickly became popular, even outside the Catholic community. Nine months after his election, Time Magazine already named him their “Person of the Year” (2013). Thomas C. Fox, publisher of the National Catholic Journal, was so enthusiastic about the newly elected pope that he asked house cartoonist Patrick J. Marrin to make a gag-a-day comic about Pope Francis. On 13 September 2013, the first episode of ‘Francis’ was printed in The Topeka Capital-Journal. Episodes have also appeared on ‘The Francis Chronicles’, the blog page of The National Catholic Journal. Starting on 31 March 2014, ‘Francis’ was additionally posted on GoComics.com, the webcomics portal of the Universal Uclick syndicate. While the official title of the comic is ‘Francis’, most readers and journalists refer to it as ‘Pope Francis’.

In 2017 ( at least that is as far back as their archives go ) the National Catholic Reporter started running the Francis comic strip. Francis on GoComics dates back to March 30, 2014 and has been carried ever since.

A 2015 appreciation of Francis from GoComics via The Wayback Machine.

Update: With the information from Allan Holtz the dates above have been adjusted. Here we note that the National Catholic Reporter was advertising a Pat Marrin cartoon book in December 2013 that made note of “the new comic strip ‘Francis'” so I’ll accept that the comic strip first appeared in 2013. Though it remains to be seen if it first appeared in the print edition of NCR or first in this Outside the Lines book.