A Few Thoughts About Pope Francis

Among them: It’s time for an English-speaking Pope

Pope Francis – the first from the Americas, the first Jesuit, the first to take the name of the saint of Assisi – has died at 88. His papacy was a blend of contradiction, compassion, and futility. The world he tried to coax toward decency did not heed him. The Church he tried to reform outlasted him. It seems like he mattered, but he leaves behind a world far worse than the one that received him in 2013.

Is paradox his legacy? That does not seem so Catholic.

Francis will be remembered as a deeply humane pope, a man of palpable goodwill toward the forgotten and the fragile. From his first appearance on the balcony — avoiding the gilded cape, wearing only white — he signaled a different papal style. He washed the feet of prisoners, visited refugee camps, and spoke with tenderness of gay people, asking, “Who am I to judge?”

Previous popes – say, his predecessor Benedict XVI, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger – might have answered “The Pope.” Not so Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina. He brought warmth and humility to an office often cloaked in marble. He was surely the kindliest public figure in a profoundly unkind era. But kindness had its limits.

Within the Church, his efforts to elevate the marginalized met institutional granite. He opened financial records and made progress on Vatican transparency — no small feat for a notoriously corrupt and insular cabal. But when it came to the most intimate struggles — divorce, contraception, same-sex love —he left nearly all doctrine unchanged. Women remain excluded from the priesthood. Abortion remains condemned. Even the ban on condoms, in a world still touched by HIV, remains technically intact.

Yes, he allowed for blessings of same-sex couples and made overtures to the divorced and remarried.