The mixed legacy of Pope Francis, the Slum Bishop
Catholics looked to the late Pope Francis to address enormous questions about the Church, and he wrestled with many of them, but at his death it seems that he provided definitive answers to very few, says Eliot Wilson
Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday aged 88, led the Catholic Church for 12 years. A longer papacy than many expected, given his age when elected, it will be remembered as significant; the nature of that significance is not yet clear.
Francis brought a distinctive, unadorned personal style to the papacy; 1.4 billion Catholics looked to him to address enormous questions about the Church, and he wrestled with many of them, but at his death it seems that he provided definitive answers to very few. Divisions between progressives and traditionalists are more deeply entrenched than ever.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires in 1936. His father was an Italian immigrant from Piedmont and his mother also had roots in northern Italy. It was Argentina’s “Infamous Decade”, marked by economic depression and an authoritarian right-wing regime, but this in turn was the crucible for Peronism, that distinctive blend of nationalism and social justice. Early influences matter.
Bergoglio was 17 when he heard his vocation; on his way to a party he suddenly ducked into a church to confess.
“I don’t remember… why I felt this urge to go to confession, but the truth is that someone was waiting for me. He had been waiting for me for a long time.”
Bergoglio worked as a laboratory technician, but after severe pleurisy and the removal of part of his right lung, he enrolled at the Inmaculada Concepción Seminary and in 1960 took his vows as a Jesuit. Ordained a priest in 1969, he was the Jesuit’s Provincial Superior in Argentina from 1973 to 1979.
Bergoglio was appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires by St John Paul II in 1998, and created a cardinal in 2001. He lived simply and championed the Church’s mission to the poorest parts of his diocese, earning the nickname obispo villero, “slum bishop”. He also made a collective apology for the Church’s compromises and inaction during Argentina’s Dirty War.
He reached 75 at the end of 2011, the retirement age by canon law. It was rumoured that he had been the runner-up to Joseph Ratzinger in the papal conclave of 2005, but had pleaded with his fellow cardinals not to choose him.
When Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, abdicated in 2013, there was no obvious successor. Bergoglio was 76, and his time had surely passed. Yet the College of Cardinals put him in the lead by the fourth ballot and voted overwhelmingly for him in the fifth. He was the first non-European pope since the Syrian-born Gregory III (731-41), choosing the name Francis in honour St Francis of Assisi’s work with the poor.
Humility and connection with the poor
Francis conducted himself austerely. He declined the Apostolic Palace and continued to live in the guesthouse adjacent to St Peter’s, and a fortnight after his election, he washed and kissed the feet of a dozen young offenders. That humility and empathetic connection with the poor was characteristic.
His first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, fused this humble sensibility with a commitment to social justice and pragmatism. It stressed pastoral care over doctrinal disputes, focusing on “the homeless, the addicted, refugees, indigenous peoples”. Francis embraced other traditions and warned against “an ostentatious preoccupation for the liturgy”.
This made some see Francis as a liberal. in doctrinal terms, however, he said explicitly “Soy conservador”. He expressed love for all, but marriage remained exclusively between a man and a woman, there would be no female priests, he maintained that abortion was “murder” and “absolutely evil” and described gender theory as “ideological colonisation”. Tone changed but theology did not.
Institutionally, Francis’s legacy is complicated. He hated fussy, legalistic clericalism, he decentralised power to local synods and reformed the bureaucracy of the Curia. Yet by giving authority to bishops he made many ordinary clergy feel excluded, and he still flexed his authority; the celebration of the Latin Tridentine Mass, a touchstone for many traditionalists, was severely restricted. The only Jesuit pope, perhaps he still felt the pull of the unquestioning obedience which is a central commitment of the order.
Clerical sexual abuse was his greatest challenge. Francis went further than any previous pontiff, admitting grave errors and creating a pontifical commission to examine the endemic and appalling abuses. He set aside pontifical secrecy for allegations of abuse, but placed no obligation on the Church proactively to share information. Several members of the commission came to resign, citing lack of cooperation, and many survivors of abuse feel that its systemic causes remain unaddressed.
Genuinely humble, his direct manner struck a deep chord with those he met, and he was always a “slum bishop”, feeling and reflecting the plight of the poor
Pope Francis was hard to understand fully. Genuinely humble, his direct manner struck a deep chord with those he met, and he was always a “slum bishop”, feeling and reflecting the plight of the poor. He avoided moral disputes designed to draw dividing lines, but, despite the hopes of his liberal cheerleaders, he did not much alter the Church’s doctrine. And yet traditionalists feel it has become a cold house, their liturgical identity assailed almost vindictively.
All of the dividing lines remain: the role of women, attitudes towards homosexual relationships, abortion, society’s care for the poor and marginalised. A complex man, Francis perhaps took his flock to the edge of the cliff and let them see over the precipice. How they react is out of his hands but will finally determine his legacy as pope.
Eliot Wilson is a writer and strategic adviser