(OSV News) -- Pope Francis, history's first pope from the global south and a maverick who often delighted the world, died April 21 after fighting pulmonary disease for the last few months.
Elected in March 2013 as an outsider who could reform the Roman Curia, meaning the central government of the church, but who often surprised and even occasionally alarmed the cardinals who backed him, Pope Francis died at age 88 at the Vatican.
The pope "from the end of the earth," as the Argentine pontiff put it during his first public blessing, ended up leading the Catholic Church through two great crises: the global explosion of the clerical sexual abuse scandals and the unprecedented interruption of pastoral life caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Pope Francis succeeded Pope Benedict XVI, the first man in 600 years to resign the pontificate, creating an unprecedented scenario of two popes living side-by-side in the Vatican -- as Benedict himself put it, one pope "governing" and the other "praying."
An advocate for migrants, interfaith dialogue as a way to prevent conflict, nuclear disarmament and an end to the death penalty, and the dignity of workers, Pope Francis collected both friends and foes in his attempt to turn the 1.3 billion-strong Catholic Church into a "field hospital" with its doors open to all and with a special love for those on the margins.
Early on, Pope Francis provided perhaps the most celebrated (and arguably misunderstood) papal sound bite of the last century when he said in response to a question about a gay cleric, "Who am I to judge?" However abused the line may have been, it captured something of the spirit of a papacy that clearly valued people more than theory and pastoral sensitivity more than law.
Pope Francis leaves behind an unfinished reform of the Roman Curia. He took several steps early on intended to promote transparency, accountability and decentralization, but as time went on the overhaul seemed to stall and fresh scandals erupted, including a $200 million Vatican property deal in London in 2019 that led to the departure of several key reformers and raised questions about whether anything had really changed.
Pope Francis also led the church at a time when the clerical abuse crisis crossed borders far beyond the West, with an unprecedented crisis in Chile that drove the Argentine pontiff to make a U-turn when it came to addressing crimes committed by clergy.
In an attempt to face matters head-on, he summoned heads of the national bishops' conferences and the leaders of religious orders to Rome for a three-day summit in February 2019.
Critics argue the summit left behind considerable unfinished business, but others say that after Pope Francis's leadership, no bishop in the world can claim he doesn't know what's expected when it comes to caring for victims and bringing perpetrators to justice.
Born in 1936 and ordained a Jesuit priest in 1969 at age 33, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires by St. John Paul II in 1992 at age 56. He was made a cardinal nine years later, in 2001, and elected pope on March 13, 2013, just months after turning 76.
In his first public appearance, the pope who took his name from St. Francis of Assisi demonstrated his commitment to humility, not only giving a blessing but asking people to pray for him. The line "Per favore, non dimenticatevi di pregare per me!" ("Please, don't forget to pray for me!") quickly became a trademark of all his public rhetoric, so much so that crowds would sometimes recite the line as the pontiff pronounced it.
From that first glimpse of Catholicism's new chief shepherd, it was clear that Francis didn't intend to lead merely a "transitional" papacy, just keeping the seat warm and maintaining the status quo. He was driven by a conviction that the church had become too set in its ways, too clericalist, too distant from ordinary people and especially the poor, and he was determined to shake things up.
Loved by most, according to opinion polls, but also strongly opposed by many, the personality of this man who worked as a bouncer and enjoyed dancing to Argentina's legendary tango music during his youth left few indifferent.
Francis was history's first pope from the Americas, the Southern Hemisphere and the first successor of Peter to come from outside of Europe since Syrian Gregory III led the church in the eighth century. A man coming from the world's peripheries himself, he focused much of his pastoral attention and even his political capital on those living in the margins of society, or as he often said, "the outskirts."
This meant that much of his ministry was focused on those who were outside the church, either because of life choices, such as believers who are divorced and civilly remarried, or life situations, such as indigenous communities in the Amazon struggling with severe priest shortages.
Known for insisting that bishops should have "the smell of the sheep," and for demanding priests and religious get the hems of their cassocks dirty doing God's work, Pope Francis was never one to stand on the sidelines.
His first trip outside of Rome was to the Italian "migrant" island of Lampedusa, where he condemned global indifference to the humanitarian crisis of those fleeing hunger, war and persecution, trying to find a safe haven in Europe after a perilous trip that caused the death of thousands. Never one who enjoyed traveling before becoming pope, he acknowledged that this trip made him see the importance of his physical presence in such places.
This conviction would lead him to visit the Central African Republic in 2015, despite the ongoing religious-fueled civil war; Myanmar and Bangladesh two years later, as the military in Myanmar was systemically annihilating the Muslim Rohingya minority that hadn't been able to flee to neighboring Bangladesh; and to Colombia in 2017, months after a peace deal between the government and guerrilla movements ended a five-decades long civil war. His impromptu stop to pray at the wall that separates Israel and Palestine during a 2014 visit would also have global echoes, as would his 2021 trip to Iraq, which made him the first pope to visit the land of Abraham despite the threat of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the threats to his safety in a country that is in constant tumult.
Ironically, this peripatetic pope never made the one trip many of his countrymen and women wanted most, a homecoming to Argentina. Why remains one of the great unanswered questions of his reign.
Though he visited relatively few Western countries, including the United States in 2015, he often used his political capital to try to help where he felt he could influence matters. In December 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro thanked him for what became known as the "Cuban thaw," meaning the warming of the relationship between the two countries ending a 54-year stretch of hostility.
He skipped Germany, France -- except for the migrant island of Corsica, which would end up being his last trip, bringing his itinerant pontificate full circle with his first -- the United Kingdom and Spain, but he wasn't indifferent to Europe. He made an exception to his general rule against accepting awards to receive the Charlemagne Prize in 2016, given to individuals or institutions for service to European unification. He had high hopes, and high expectations, for Europe when it came to unity, social justice and faith. When war came knocking on Europe's door, in the form of Russia's Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine in 2022, Pope Francis didn't hide his disappointment, anger nor sadness, referring to the conflict almost daily during the first year.
Like St. John Paul II before him, Pope Francis also displayed an instinctive understanding of the power of gestures. Two moments of prayer were among his most iconic images: Francis' visit to Auschwitz in 2016, where he remained entirely silent to underline the futility of speech in the face of such evil; and his unprecedented "urbi et orbi" blessing from an empty St. Peter's Square in March 2020 during a global moment of fear and uncertainty at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. On that haunting night, Pope Francis became the world's pastor, saying, "From this colonnade that embraces Rome and the whole world, may God's blessing come down upon you as a consoling embrace."
Perhaps the best early epitaph is this: Pope Francis was a man who electrified the world and delivered a sort of shock therapy to the church he led, driving it to rethink established patterns and to go boldly where it hadn't been before. His record as a CEO may be mixed, his positions on specific political or ecclesiastical matters debatable, but no one can say Francis didn't have their attention.
He was a man fond of following the advice he once gave to thousands of Argentine young men and women who attended World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, when he told them to "make a mess."
Cheered by some and feared by others, Pope Francis was a Jesuit to his core, from choosing to live in the Vatican's Santa Marta residence rather than the Apostolic Palace in order to have a community to the way he would consult widely on important matters, even calling for a three-year global consultation dubbed the Synod on Synodality, but, like a good Jesuit superior, very much making decisions by himself.
It's sometimes said of the sons of Ignatius that not even God himself truly knows what they're thinking, and that was sometimes the case with Francis, who could be maddeningly ambiguous and send conflicting signals depending on who he was talking to. Yet even if Francis was sometimes slippery about answers, he was never afraid to pose questions.
That boldness born of the Gospel may, in the end, be his most lasting legacy, leaving behind a church less confident it has all the answers but also less afraid to face new questions anyway.
