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It was a mark of the humanity that typified his papacy that Pope Francis appeared in public to deliver Easter blessings and tour St Peter’s Square when his voice and body were clearly failing — less than 24 hours before his passing. Only weeks after he came close to death in hospital with double pneumonia, the pope was able to end his ministry as it began: among the people. Catholics and many non-Catholics will mourn a compassionate reformer who tried to modernise his church, even if the results fell short of what his most progressive supporters hoped for.
His modesty and determination to be a voice for the poor and marginalised was one of several things that marked him out from many predecessors. The first non-European pope for more than 1,000 years, and first from the Americas, chose to live not in the lavish papal apartment but in a two-room Vatican guesthouse. Not for nothing did he take the name of St Francis of Assisi, known for his humility.
While Francis did not change doctrine on questions of sexuality, faith and marriage, he shifted the tone and language of discussion to emphasise the need for tolerance and understanding. His early comment in response to a question about the presence of gay priests in the church, “Who am I to judge?” opened the way to his 2023 approval of informal blessings for same-sex couples. His 2016 exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, raised the possibility of allowing some divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. After a worldwide consultation Francis launched with the faithful — to the resentment of traditionalists — the concluding document recommended broadening the role of women and lay people in the church.
In a church struggling for relevance in the modern world, Francis tried, too, to make it more of a moral voice on issues beyond the family and the bedroom. In a 2015 encyclical he sought to redefine climate change in terms of religion and faith, warning that it was the product of the developed world’s addiction to consumption while disproportionately affecting the world’s poor. He made outspoken interventions in support of migrants, amid hardening US and European attitudes against irregular migration, and spoke of his distress over the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Ultimately, however, Francis failed to translate his personal magnetism into reforms that settled key questions such as the ordination of women or married priests, or which arrested the church’s decline in Europe and North America. He made some errors of judgment on individuals, including some accused of serious crimes such as financial demeanours or sexual abuse in the church — a scourge some will feel he did not do enough to lay to rest. He also left the church facing significant financial strains that need to be addressed.
The pope managed to irk both liberals, by failing to deliver decisive change, and conservatives who accused him nonetheless of undermining traditional teachings. Those divisions will carry into what is set to be a hard-fought contest for his succession. Today’s Catholic church is increasingly, in terms of membership, one of the global south, and cardinals will face pressure to elect another pope from beyond Europe, and one sensitive to issues of poverty and the environment. Yet many church leaders, and adherents, from the global south are also socially conservative — in contrast to some more liberal-minded followers in wealthier countries.
The next pope, whatever his background or talents, may find it little easier to resolve the deep-seated questions facing Catholicism. But Pope Francis should be remembered for the modernising progress he made and for attempting to live out Gospel teachings on siding with the needy and the oppressed. His personal example was perhaps his most powerful legacy.
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