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The congregation listened, many of them in tears, as Francis commiserated with
them over their loss of homes and loved ones. He said he could not fault them if
the ordeal had cost them their faith and admitted he could offer no other comfort
than the Cross. “But I see Him there nailed to the cross,” he said, pointing to a
crucifix. “And from there, He does not disappoint us.”
That sermon was Pope Francis at his best, displaying his well-known compassion
for the downtrodden but also a grave, even somber, side that he showed less often.
He was best known, worldwide, for his cheerful, thumbs-up persona, especially
when greeting children, but he seemed more deeply himself that day.
I have been covering the Vatican since 2007, a span that includes Francis’s entire
pontificate—which began with his election on March 13, 2013, and ended with his
death on Easter Monday at the age of 88, mere hours after he appeared for a final
time in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday.
That day in Tacloban, he displayed his flair for the dramatic gesture, a quality in
which he rivaled his charismatic predecessor, the former actor St. John Paul II. He
did the same in March 2021, when much of the world was shut down by the
pandemic, and Francis insisted on traveling to, of all places, Iraq.
For the Vatican press corps, it was an irresistible story—and a chance to receive one
of the first Covid-19 vaccines courtesy of the Holy See—though those of us with
little experience reporting from war zones had our qualms. Both Vatican officials
and local Iraqi clergy had hoped the pope would delay his trip, for both security
and public health reasons. Indeed, Francis later revealed that authorities had foiled
plans to assassinate him during his stop in Mosul, where he spoke among the ruins
of the city battered by the Islamic State. The large gatherings of the faithful may
have been reckless from an epidemiological standpoint, but they were a shot in the
arm for beleaguered Iraqi Christians, whose numbers had been steadily dwindling.
Francis’s solidarity with the marginalized was not only spiritual but also highly
political. Born in 1936 to a family of Italian immigrants in Argentina, Jorge Mario
Bergoglio was, in his youth, a supporter of Argentina’s populist strongman Juan
Perón, a persistent and influential challenger to U.S. influence in Latin America.
After joining the Jesuit order as a young man, Francis quickly rose in the ranks,
becoming head of the order in Argentina at just 36. He proved controversial in that
role. “My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have
serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative,” he later recalled
of that period.
Nevertheless, he continued to show leadership qualities, and Pope John Paul II
made him archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and elevated him to the rank of
cardinal three years later. Runner-up in the 2005 conclave that elected Pope
Benedict XVI, who resigned eight years later, Bergoglio was elected his successor
and became the first pontiff to take the name Francis, after the mendicant saint
from Assisi. The new pope, who had been known for his work in the shantytowns of
Buenos Aires, told reporters a few days later that he sought to lead “a church
which is poor and for the poor.”
That same year, he published an agenda-setting document, Evangelii Gaudium, in
which he denounced a capitalist economy governed by “the laws of competition
and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.” He
asked, in a line singled out for praise by former U.S. president Barack Obama: “How
can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of
exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?” 1
Francis criticized the market economy again in 2015, calling for a major reduction in
the use of fossil fuels to reduce climate change, in his encyclical Laudato Si'. That
year, in Bolivia, he exhorted a meeting of grassroots activists to struggle for their
“sacred rights” to land, lodging, and labor—tierra, techo y trabajo—and also
accepted a gift from the country’s left-wing populist president Evo Morales: a
crucifix incorporating a hammer and sickle. He said he took no offense at the
present and brought it back with him to the Vatican. The contrast was stark with
Pope John Paul II, whose support for democracy against communism in his native
Poland played a major role in the process that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and
the Soviet Union.
Francis could be highly polemical, berating theological conservatives as “rigorists”
and fundamentalists. He was particularly severe with the small minority of
Catholics who attend the traditional Latin Mass, the celebration of which he tightly
restricted in 2021. He believed the rite had become a rallying point for Catholics
who reject the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which took
place in the 1960s, and enabled, among other things, more active participation of
laypeople in worship. In an autobiography published earlier this year, Francis
criticized Latin-Mass-goers, who extol the aesthetic and devotional qualities of
that liturgy, as ideologues of “backwardism,” and wrote that the fancy vestments
and lace of traditionalist priests “sometimes conceal mental imbalance.” Such
invective likely reflected a naturally combative temperament, but there was also a
strategic element: like the former Peronist he was (as a youngster he once sprayed
an uncle with seltzer water for speaking against Evita), he used elites, including his
own bishops, as foils to bond with the people. Though he was himself the supreme
head of a hierarchy that heavily emphasizes obedience, and he did not hesitate to
use his power whenever he deemed appropriate, he cast himself as the champion
of laypeople and repeatedly inveighed against the vice of “clericalism,” or
excessive deference to the priesthood.
There’s a striking symmetry in the timing of Francis’s death: the most influential
and inspiring figure of the global left departs just as President Donald Trump’s
return to power fuels a resurgent wave of right-wing populism worldwide.
Underscoring that symmetry is the fact that his final public meeting was with J.D.
Vance. He met the U.S.’s vice president, a Catholic convert, on Easter Sunday.
The week before he was hospitalized earlier this year, Francis sent an open letter to
the U.S. bishops denouncing Trump’s deportation policy.
“The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for
reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution, or serious
deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women,
and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and
defenselessness,” he wrote.
It’s a sign of the times that Trump didn’t respond to the pope’s criticism—unlike in
2016, when Francis suggested Trump’s anti-immigrant stance meant he was “not
Christian,” and Trump shot back that it was “disgraceful” of the pope to question
his faith. The incident was a rare public show of Francis’s formidable temper, and a
rare political blunder by the pope, which helped raise the international stature of
then-candidate Trump.
Vance did acknowledge the latest criticism, which included an extraordinary papal
rebuttal of Vance’s argument that Catholic theology warrants giving priority to
caring for one’s compatriots over caring for foreigners.
Francis got along better with Trump’s successor-predecessor Joe Biden. After
certain U.S. bishops sought to deny the Catholic president Communion because of
his support for abortion rights, the Vatican opposed them. Biden said the pope
privately told him he was a “good Catholic.”
Yet Francis had a wary relationship with the U.S. in general, including with the
Catholic hierarchy there—one of the most influential conservative blocs in the
church’s leadership. He once said, about criticisms from conservative Catholics in
the U.S., that he was “honored that the Americans attack me.”
That wariness extended to the U.S.-dominated world order, which helps explain his
stance—baffling to many—on the war in Ukraine. Even before Russia’s full-scale
invasion in February 2022, Francis angered Ukrainians, including members of his
own hierarchy, by describing the struggle with Russian-backed separatists as a
“fratricidal” conflict rather than a case of Russian aggression. Over the last three
years, while often bemoaning the plight of “martyred Ukraine,” he avoided
blaming Russian president Vladimir Putin for the war and repeatedly suggested
that the invasion had been provoked by NATO expansion in Eastern Europe.
He also dismayed many of his followers in China, especially members of the so-
called underground church that resists state control, with his overtures to Beijing.
Francis’s policy of engagement with the rising superpower reflected his multipolar
geopolitical vision, and his efforts culminated in an agreement to share power with
the Communist government over the appointment of Catholic bishops. The pope
was conspicuously silent on China’s human rights abuses. He referred to the
Uyghurs as “persecuted” for the first time in 2020, and his critics contrasted this
relative silence with his outspokenness on Western policies. Cardinal Tagle was
widely considered one of the most promising candidates in the 2013 conclave but
seemed too young for the job at the time.
Cardinal Tagle has dealt with some of the church’s most divisive issues, like the
inclusion of gay people and whether to give communion to divorced and remarried
Catholics.
He served as president of the church’s international gathering on the family in 2014,
and of a general assembly on the same topic the following year, in which prelates
agreed on a more inclusive approach by the church, although they remained
opposed to same-sex marriage.
Matteo Zuppi
Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi of Italy, 69, stands out among the contenders who
reflect Francis’ view that the church should be representative of and support the
poor.
Francis promoted the progressive native of Bologna to the rank of cardinal in 2019
and assigned him several important missions. Some experts speculate that Francis
would have likely favored him as his successor, although the pope never weighed in
publicly on the matter.
