Pope Francis, an Argentine pope who has been brought back to the centre of attention of the world’s most marginalized Roman Catholic Church, has passed away returning to the centre of attention of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican announced Monday.
A friendly, charismatic communicator, Francis manages to broaden the appeal of Catholicism at a time when he increased his disillusionment with the Church, an institution caught up in financial and sexual scandals.
Through his Pope See from 2013 to 2025, the Pope stripped the Vatican of the opaque layer, leading to public concern. He emphasized the light of the poor and the light of the prisoners.
Francis denounced the abuse of the church’s power while engaging in other faiths.
Francis’ tone marked a fundamental departure from his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who believed that raising the church’s most enthusiastic followers was a way to strengthen the institution.
However, Francis’ change never translated into a fundamental change to the Church’s doctrine on controversial issues. For the most part, he remained along his previous nipples, stubbornly opposed to gay marriage, with women becoming priests and priests getting married.
Still, his steps towards opening the church attracted the rage of traditionalists, but his lack of radical change under his watch drew criticism from progressives.
Religious pluralism and inequality
Francis was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, to immigrant parents who fled Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship.
He was trained as a chemical engineer and worked in the food processing industry. And for a while he was a security guard at a nightclub in Cordoba before becoming a priest in 1969.
He liked dancing tango, but he preferred milonga, but in a 2010 interview, Francis mentioned music at a faster pace than the tango preceded.
His upbringing in Buenos Aires exposed him to religious pluralism and socioeconomic inequality. Two factors that experts explained his commitment to interfaith dialogue and pointed out his criticism of capitalism and consumerism.
At just 36 years old, he became the order of the head of the Jesuits in Argentina, the Roman Catholic priest.
He was severely disciplinary at the time, experts and biographers say. At the time, liberation theology, a left-wing interpretation of the gospel, centered on concerns about the poor and oppressed groups, was popular among the Jesuits in Latin America, but Francis disagreed with the ideology.
Dirty War
Francis’ tenure then coincided with seven years of brutal military dictatorship, including the longstanding of Argentine’s dirty wars that lasted from 1976 to 1983.
Tens of thousands of people were tortured, killed and disappeared. The role of the Argentine churches in those years remains controversial, and Francis never openly condemns the regime.
As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he assumed in 1998, he said he was unaware of the scale of what was happening in the late 1970s.
“Let’s pray…for the silence of most society and the church,” he said in a quote read at the 1999 ceremony as a self-satisfaction recognition.
As an archbishop, he will become an outspoken critic of social injustice and economic inequality.
“The church cannot just sit and suck fingers when faced with a frivolous, cold and calculating market economy,” he once said in a sermon.
Break tradition
In 2013, the Catholic world was shocked when then Pope Benedict XVI resigned and broke the centuries-old tradition of pontiffs’ duty until his death.
By then, Francis, who had been elected Cardinal, rushed to the Vatican to vote for the new Pope.
In the tight race, Francis, who was already running the runner-up in the previous Pope Conclave, was selected in 2005.
Together with him, the church chose its first non-European pope for the first time in a year or two – the last one being Gregory III. He was elected from Syria in 731 – and has since been the first leader from the Global South, home to the majority of Christians around the world.
Francis quickly set his pope tone. When he stood on a large balcony and faced the massive crowds of St. Peter’s Square after being elected, he broke into a tradition of blessing the crowd, asking people to pray for him instead.
He refused to move to the Grand Pope’s apartment on the top floor of the Vatican Palace and chose to stay in the more modest domus sanctemartae residence. He preferred to be driven by a Fiat over a Mercedes-Benz.
“Become a shepherd with the smell of sheep,” he told the priests’ crowd in 2013, urging them to break away from the dignity and splendor that is often associated with the highest class of clergy.
On his first trip to the outskirts of Rome as Pope, he went to Lampedusa, an Italian island, to an important entrance for migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe. He threw a crown of flowers into the sea, putting his life at risk to come to Europe in memory of those who died in the Mediterranean.
Francis criticized the 2017 US President Donald Trump’s plan for building a wall alongside his speech targeting the Mexican border and Muslims.
“In Pope Francis, the message “everyone is a brother and sister” is very strong, and it argues that God promotes religious pluralism,” said Marco Politi, a Vatican expert and author of Pope Francis among the Wolves.
Such pluralism has been translated into a more comprehensive approach to other religions, saying politics will put an end to the “previous feather culture war.”
From the Vatican to the Arabian Peninsula
When Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, gave a speech in September 2006 that was perceived as linking Islam to violence, the ties between churches and Muslims around the world were sour.
Francis became the first pope to travel to the Arabian Peninsula. In February 2019 he landed in the United Arab Emirates, where he met Ahmed El-Teve, the grand imam of Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo.
Together, they signed documents rejecting religious fundamentalism and encouraged people to see “support and loving brothers” to others. The Pope also met Elteve earlier in 2016 at the Vatican.
Another first Francis announced the cyclical laudato si’ (Praise to You) in 2015. There, he urged the world, emphasizing the need to rethink the economic balance of industrialized worlds and developing countries.
Church response to sexual abuse
The issue of sexual abuse committed by church officials ruled the tenure of Benedict XVI, when the Pope saw a wave of scandal.
Francis began tackling the issue of abuse in 2019 by repealing the “pope secret” rules regarding cases related to sexual violence.
This meant that the testimony collected in the standard process was ultimately made available to the law authorities.
That same year, after the Pope himself admitted to dismissing valid claims of Chilean sexual abuse, he introduced a law outlining clear rules for reporting child sexual abuse committed by church officials and attempting to hide it.
Four years later, the rules were updated and strengthened to expand the category of victims to vulnerable adults, but amateurs working for the church could also face punishment. However, victim advocates and critics say Francis didn’t go far enough to ensure justice.
“Who do I judge?”
Francis dramatically changed the church tone towards homosexuality, ending the long demons of gay people in the Vatican.
“Who shall I judge?” he said in 2013 that his words were in stark contrast to the words of Pope John Paul II.
Recently, on his way back from a trip to South Sudan, Francis said that being gay is not a crime.
He expressed his support for same-sex private unions. In 2023 he suggested he was open to reviewing singles practices.
In December 2023, the Vatican decided in a landmark ruling that Catholic priests could manage their blessings to same-sex couples.
At the same time, the Pope continued to oppose gay marriage and abortion, including women in the Vatican government, but he always ruled out being their priests.
Through his papal authority, Francis often finds himself under attack from both conservative and progressive camps.
Those following traditional doctrines saw him too many as a reformer and socialist, but those seeking deeper changes within the church did not see him boldly enough.
Politi, a Vatican expert, argues that Francis’ decision not to cause too radical change stems from the understanding that this has already been torn apart with a highly divided church. Instead, he says, Francis chose to “causing the process of transformation of that mentality through gestures and words.”
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