The man currently mourned by the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics was a boy from a Buenos Aires barrio born to a working-class family of immigrants. An Argentinian and the first Latin American pontiff, he grew up in a continent in which obscene wealth and abject poverty live side by side.
Moreover, Jorge Mario Bergoglio (his pre-papacy name) was the first Jesuit elected to the papacy. The tenets of the Society of Jesus emphasize the utmost importance of service, advocacy for the poor, and the promotion of peace. Jesuits are fervent in their defense of social justice. In practical and spiritual terms, social justice represents the imperative that everyone must use their position to advocate for the most vulnerable and marginalized in society. Pope Francis understood such service as a core component of his faith.
Despite being entitled to a salary, Pope Francis renounced it, deciding to donate it instead. He ditched or scaled back much of the pomp and frills of the position. More substantively, he attempted to tackle the Church’s finances (including by introducing anti-corruption measures) and the child sexual abuse scandal (including by creating a commission for the protection of minors).
When it comes to women, the thorniest issue within the intrinsically androcentric Catholic Church, Pope Francis took judicious but decisive steps towards inclusion. He appointed women to decision-making positions and granted them full voting powers in papal advisory bodies and appointed the first female governor of the Vatican City State. Women have more authority within the Church now than ever before.
In November 2022, Pope Francis told reporters:
The struggle for women’s rights is a continuing struggle. We have to continue struggling for this because women are a gift. God did not create man and then give him a lapdog to play with. He created both equal, man and woman. A society that is not capable of [allowing women to have greater roles] does not move forward.
Pope Francis also created two mixed-sex commissions in 2016 and 2020 to explore the possibility of women becoming deacons, the historical role of women within the Church, and the diaconate’s theology.
Francis’ worldview, grounded in a commitment to social justice, had clear political implications. In 2015, he published a 40,000-word encyclical on climate change titled Laudato si’, highlighting not just the harm that avarice wreaks on the environment, but also the exacerbated impact environmental disasters have on people living in poverty and the rise in immigration as they flee, seeking refuge from growing and unbearable inequality. These injustices, he emphasised, are manmade.
Many will remember Francis’ unwavering advocacy in support of the Palestinian people amid an 18-month war that has seen Israel drop over 85,000 tons of bombs (surpassing the amount used during World War II) on a trapped population of two million people. This bombardment, among the most intense in history, also dealt unprecedented damage to the environment. If Pope Francis was expected to remain indifferent in the face of such a catastrophe, he did not get the memo.
On Easter Sunday, Pope Francis dedicated some of his last hours on Earth to advocate for those most vulnerable and abused in our world. He stated: “I express my closeness to the sufferings…of all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace.” Previously, the pope had said that the effects of the conflict had “gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism,” and that, “According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. It should be carefully investigated.”
While many would have preferred an apolitical pope who remained silent in the face of conflict, constraining himself to abstract pronouncements about spirituality, that is not the role of a leader, let alone one who understood social justice as a way of life. Why should the global leader of a Church in which salutations of “peace be with you” are shared at every mass self-censor in the face of one of the deadliest wars the world has ever witnessed, livestreamed on our phones?
Imagine the stain on Catholicism if our leader had remained indifferent while wars and climate change threaten apocalyptic destruction on the planet we share. It would have represented an abject moral failure.
Existential ponderations about whether each of us is good or evil according to the metrics set by ancient doctrines can easily overwhelm even the most devout among us. Francis was wise to demonstrate that faith is best practiced, rather than stated.
The Catholic Church is deeply flawed on many fronts. But the power of Pope Francis is that he managed to broadcast to the world the hope of what could result if all of us practice our faith rather than simply preach it.
Raquel Rosario Sánchez is a writer, researcher, and campaigner from the Dominican Republic.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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