They called him the people’s pope — a charismatic and inspirational leader touched by grace. Pope Francis, controversial head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, died early on Easter Monday from a cerebral hemorrhage, sending Catholics and others worldwide into collective mourning.
Francis moved people with his ready smile, his love of children and his deep and abiding belief that the world could and should be a better, more equitable, more egalitarian, more compassionate place for everyone, irrespective of who they were.
Catholics comprise more than half of the world’s Christians, making Pope Francis a singularly impactful religious leader. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, scientist, was called to the priesthood at 30, driven by faith. He sought to reform the church he loved with a progressive and aggressive policy that moved the church forward. Even his choice of name — Francis, for St. Francis of Assisi — was emblematic of the humility that characterized his papacy.
Change maker
With an abiding concern for the most vulnerable populations and focused on a panoply of key issues of both religious and global significance, Francis was unafraid of and undeterred by the controversy his words and actions engendered. In his ministry in Argentina, Francis walked the streets and rode the subway, in touch with the people. He continued that outreach at the Vatican.
The first pope from the Americas, the first from the Southern hemisphere, the first born outside Europe since the 8th century and the first Jesuit — an order of priests known for progressivism and intellectualism — the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires forged his new path with an immediacy that sent shock waves through an unprepared church hierarchy used to the staid conservatism of Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI.
Francis eschewed luxury accommodations, choosing to live in a modest papal guest house instead of the papal palace and he drove a used car.
Elected pope a mere two weeks prior to the beginning of Holy Week 2013, rather than do the traditional washing of the feet of fellow priests at the Vatican on Holy Thursday, Francis chose to wash the feet of prisoners, women and Muslims.
That act garnered global attention, but it was just the beginning.
Francis would go on to embrace not just social outcasts like prisoners, but would revolutionize the church’s position on women, LGBTQ+ people and divorced persons. He appointed a woman, Sister Simona Brambilla, to run the Dicastery, which oversees all the church’s religious orders. Brambilla is the first woman to ever hold an office at the Vatican or within the church hierarchy.
Speaking truth to power
Francis took on both the church’s own hierarchical structure and world leaders. He demanded redress for the decades of sex abuse scandals within the church, apologizing to victims and defrocking perpetrators. He called for the end of wars in Ukraine and Gaza. He chastised the U.S. for the death penalty. And most recently, he said of Donald Trump that anyone who deported migrants could not call themselves Christian. His last audience with a politician was with Vice President JD Vance on Easter. In that exchange, the Pope urged Vance to stop the deportations.
A scientist and a fierce defender of the environment, Francis spoke out often on climate change and the threat of global warming. In May 2015, he issued an encyclical, “Laudato si,” on the critical need to save the planet as well as the perils of consumerism.
Embracing LGBTQ+ people
Pope Francis appointed Father James Martin as a consultant to the Secretariat for Communications at the Vatican. Martin, a native Philadelphian, is a Jesuit priest, author and editor who has built a ministry advocating for LGBTQ+ people to both Francis and the church.
Martin has spoken declaratively on the criticality of building bridges between the church and the queer and trans communities. A best-selling author, Martin wrote about that work in his book “Building Bridges: How the Church and the LGBTQ Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity.”
It is to Martin that Pope Francis entrusted this ministry of outreach to the LGBTQ+ community which became a pivotal part of Francis’s legacy as well as the most controversial.
After the Pope’s death, Martin said in interviews that when Martin met with Francis, he asked him what he, Martin, could do for the Pope. Francis replied, “Yes, you can continue your ministry — in peace.”
Exchanges like this endeared Francis to many LGBTQ+ Catholics. Yet Francis’s continual expansion of his views on LGBTQ+ people and gay priests and his punishments of bishops and cardinals who refused that messaging angered many in the Church hierarchy who disagreed with Francis.
In an extraordinary action related to this outrage, the Anglican church invited Catholic prelates at all levels and in all countries to leave the Catholic Church and join the Anglican communion.
Undeterred, Pope Francis continued to punish cardinals and bishops who refused to support his pro-gay agenda.
“Homosexuality is not a crime”
Over the years of his tenure, Francis continually broadened his perspective on LGBTQ+ people.
Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of the Chilean priest sex abuse scandal, met with the pope. He told CNN that Francis was “almost in tears” while discussing his concern for trans people with Cruz.
In November 2023, the Pope said trans people can be baptized and also be godparents.
A gay man and an advisor at the Vatican, Cruz remembers the Pope’s fierce support for the LGBTQ+ community.
Francis voiced that support repeatedly in both off-hand remarks while traveling with reporters and as actual policy.
Francis has said “Being homosexual is not a crime.” And while Francis did assert that homosexuality is still considered a sin by the church, he also declared that people cannot change who they are and that “We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are and for the strength that each of us fights for our dignity.”
Francis continued to advocate for LGBTQ+ people. In 2020, the Pope called for laws allowing civil unions for same-sex couples. And in December 2023, Francis said same-sex couples could receive blessings.
Repeal anti-gay laws
One of the more extraordinary actions Francis took was to speak out vociferously against anti-gay laws, saying these laws against gay people are “unjust” and should be repealed.
In July 2013, while traveling with reporters, the subject of gay priests arose. Francis said, “If someone is gay and searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”
Francis in Philly
Pope Francis visited Philadelphia in Sept. 2015. He celebrated Mass at both the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul and in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. While those events were broadcast on local news networks, less attention was paid to the Pope choosing to visit incarcerated people at the Curran-Frumhold Correctional Facility where he discussed prison overcrowding and the unjust bail system.
Francis already had links to Philadelphia prior to that visit. He had appointed Nelson Perez to be the first Hispanic archbishop for Philadelphia in 2020.
Perez replaced Charles Chaput, a staunch critic of Pope Francis. Chaput had actively attacked gay and trans people in commentary and by holding conversion therapy events at the Archdiocese, actions antithetical to the Pope’s messaging on LGBTQ+ people.
A lasting legacy
As evidenced by all his work for the most marginalized people in the world, Pope Francis was a man who wanted to make the lives of people who faced stigma and discrimination lives more livable by calling attention to their plights.
Francis’s attempts at rapprochement with world leaders were to facilitate that goal.
Francis chose to build bridges, not build walls. He leaves behind a legacy of compassion and fearlessness that has changed the church forever and left a lasting imprint not just on the church, but on the world.