Photo: The Canadian Press

Father Jim Sichko has a 50-state congregation and a simple mandate from the pope: Go forth and do good deeds.

That's why the Roman Catholic priest found himself standing by the drive-thru of a popular Hollywood fast-food joint on a recent windy, rain-swept afternoon buying lunch for everyone who stopped by. The next day he'd be at a gas station in Kentucky, topping off people's tanks. Then it would be on to Arizona where he would — well, he wasn't quite sure what he'd do there, but he'd think of something.

At a Starbucks last Christmas, he tipped each of the baristas $100 after learning the annual brouhaha over whether the coffee chain's holiday cups are Christmassy enough had caused tips to plummet.

Sichko is a papal missionary of mercy, a rarified group of 700 from around the world, including several from the United States, who were appointed directly by Pope Francis in celebration of a "Jubilee of Mercy" that began in December 2015 and has since been extended indefinitely.

Missionaries were assigned to travel the world spreading kindness, forgiveness, joy and mercy to everyone they encountered. Some responded by using their newly granted authority from the pope to perform confession and forgiveness of sins basically anywhere at any time. Others took to radio airwaves or retreats to offer messages of joy.

Sichko, a Kentucky-based preacher, came up with an idea different from the others and got his bishop at the Diocese of Lexington to sign off on it: He'd travel his country performing random acts of kindness in all 50 states.

He's provided groceries for half a year to a man with HIV and paid for medical services for a struggling Muslim family. This Christmas, he's headed to an elementary school in Corbin, Kentucky, where more than a quarter of the population lives in poverty. There he'll surprise the school's 100 second-graders with shiny new bicycles.

"The first question people ask is, 'Why are you doing this?'" Sichko says between bites of his double-double cheeseburger at the crowded In N' Out restaurant down the street from the Hollywood Walk of Fame where he'd just bought lunch for everybody.

"My question," the balding, bespectacled 51-year-old cleric adds with a smile, "is why not?

"My approach is not so much speaking about the word of God, although I do a lot of that, but showing the presence of God through acts of kindness that kind of shock the individual and kind of cause them to, maybe cause them to stop for a little bit," he said. "Or maybe, which I hope, to again bring kindness to others."

He is candid in saying the church itself has much work to do in restoring its image after years of priestly sex and pedophilia scandals that he calls "horrific and tragic and disgusting."