Francis was the right pope for a changing global church
April 22, 2025
Pope Francis (pictured here), who died Monday at age 88, revivified the important reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council and, in doing so, became their protector and, indeed, their embodiment. He knew the limits of what a single pope can do to move the church, but was willing to test those limits and to challenge the church to embody, in turn, the risen Christ for the world.
Francis, being human, was not without his faults and hesitations -- characteristics that often got magnified way out of proportion by his critics on the theological and social right who seemed uninterested in hearing about his (and God's) concern for the poor or about climate change. But he clearly was the pope the Catholic Church needed just when it needed him.
Not long after the Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis in 2013, my then-pastor and I wrote a book exploring how the new pontiff's work and thinking were attracting a lot of interest and even support from Protestants. It was called Jesus, Pope Francis and a Protestant Walk into a Bar: Lessons for the Christian Church.
As we wrote, "Francis began to turn heads immediately upon his surprising election -- and not only because he was the first Jesuit pope, the first pope from South America and the first pope to take the name Francis. Rather, his appeal seemed rooted in his genuine humility, his insistence that the church should be a stalwart defender of the poor and his desire not to focus on the hot-button culture-wars issues that had so often dominated the papacies of his two predecessors."
Well, we got most of that right, but, in fact, Francis had a few choice words to say about such hot issues as the place for LGBTQ+ people in the church and about the structural weaknesses of capitalism, weaknesses that help to keep millions, if not billions, of people in poverty.
In 2022, my co-author, the Rev. Paul T. Rock, was invited to the Vatican along with other English-speaking American clergy in Europe (Paul by then was -- and still is -- senior pastor of the American Church in Paris). Paul's wife, Stacey Perkins Rock, accompanied him and strategically placed a copy of our book in her purse in case she got a chance to hand it to the pope. Well, she did get that chance, which explains this photo. (But we're still waiting for the pope's Amazon review of it. Perhaps he'll finally have time to get to that now.)
In almost everything Francis said or did, he sought to bring to the table as many voices as possible, which became the basis for his international conferences on what he called synodality, a word my computer's spellcheck system still underlines in red. The National Catholic Reporter has spent considerable time and space on the idea of synodality. Here is a good recent example. The essential idea of synodality, as I understand it, is that church leaders must bring to the decision table as many voices as possible and really listen to the concerns of everyone. If that's done, people still may be disappointed with whatever decision is made on this issue or that, but at least they will feel as if they've been heard. And their voices might actually change things.
My friend Melinda Henneberger of The Kansas City Star made a similar point in this account of her interview with the new archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. If a paywall stops you from reading that, you can find much of the column on Melinda's Facebook page.
Over its 2,000 years, Christianity often has been frustratingly slow to change. In some ways, that has prevented the church from simply (and foolishly) mirroring the zig-zag culture. But it also has meant that the church has taken far too long to reform what has needed to be reformed. A significant example of that problem: Christianity preached a virulent anti-Judaism almost from its beginning, and that anti-Judaism helped to create modern antisemitism, which again is now on the rise. Where was the Catholic Church in all this? It was part of the problem. It took the church until 1965, in this Vatican II document, to declare that Jews now and at the time of Jesus should not be held responsible for his crucifixion. What finally got said needed to have been said almost 2,000 years ago -- by all branches of the church.
Similarly, the Catholic Church was ridiculously slow to respond to the scandal of priests sexually abusing children and of the do-nothing bishops who protected them. There's still much to do about that, but Francis at least has not ignored that terrible situation, even if he made occasional missteps as he oversaw the church's response.
In Europe and in North America, participation in institutional religion has declined -- sometimes precipitously -- over the last half century or more. But Christianity is growing elsewhere, and the Catholic Church, because it is catholic, meaning universal, is in a unique position to draw in residents from third and fourth world countries who have suffered from colonialism and its after effects.
Pope Francis, although his family roots go back to Italy, understood that and became something of a beacon to such people at least partly because he wasn't straight from Europe or North America. Whether the Catholic Church now can choose a pope able and willing to continue the outreach and popularity of Francis isn't yet clear, of course. But because Francis got to fill the ranks of cardinals, who will choose the next pope, there's at least a realistic hope that something in essential harmony with his papacy will be next.
If, by contrast, the next pope is mostly interested in preserving papal powers and rigid rules about who may do what in the church, the opportunity to grow the church and make it serve as the heart and soul of the risen Christ in this wounded world may be lost, at least temporarily. That's an opportunity that comes with severe challenges, as evidenced by this recent story from India.
Throughout his papacy, Francis has served as a living reminder of what true leaders look and act like, which is to care first about others and to live out a consistent, generative ethic and morality that inspires others to do the same. Political leaders: Are you watching and learning?