Pope Francis, whose papacy mixed custom with pushes for inclusion and reform, died on April, 21, 2025 – Easter Monday – on the age of 88.
Right here we highlight 5 tales from The Dialog’s archive about his roots, religion, management and legacy.
1. A Jesuit pope
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a pope of many firsts: the primary trendy pope from out of doors Europe, the primary whose papal title honors St. Francis of Assisi, and the primary Jesuit – a Catholic non secular order based within the sixteenth century.
The ones Jesuit roots make clear Pope Francis’ option to one of the international’s maximum urgent issues, argues Timothy Gabrielli, a theologian on the College of Dayton.
Gabrielli highlights the Jesuits’ “Spiritual Exercises,” which advised Catholics to deepen their dating with God and in moderation discern how to answer issues. He argues that this religious trend of having a look past “presenting problems” to the deeper roots comes thru in Francis’ writings, shaping the pope’s reaction to the entirety from local weather alternate and inequality to clerical intercourse abuse.
2. LGBTQ+ problems
Early on in his papacy, Francis famously informed an interviewer, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Over time, he has time and again known as on Catholics to like LGBTQ+ folks and spoken in opposition to rules that concentrate on them.
An LGBTQ couple include after a pastoral employee blesses them at a Catholic church in Germany, in defiance of practices authorized by way of Rome.
Andreas Rentz/Getty Pictures
However “Francis’ inclusiveness is not actually radical,” explains Steven Millies, a pupil on the Catholic Theological Union. “His remarks generally correspond to what the church teaches and calls on Catholics to do,” with out converting doctrine – corresponding to that marriage is handiest between a person and a lady.
Quite, Francis’ feedback “express what the Catholic Church says about human dignity,” Millies writes. “Francis is calling on Catholics to take note that they should be concerned about justice for all people.”
3. Asking forgiveness
From time to time, Francis did one thing that was once as soon as unthinkable for a pope: He apologized.
He was once now not the primary pontiff to take action, on the other hand. Pope John Paul II declared a sweeping “Day of Pardon” in 2000, asking forgiveness for the church’s sins, and Pope Benedict XVI apologized to sufferers of sexual abuse. All the way through Francis’ papacy, he stated the church’s historical position in Canada’s residential faculty device for Indigenous kids and apologized for abuses within the device.
However what does it imply for a pope to mention, “I’m sorry”?
Individuals of the Meeting of First International locations carry out in St. Peter’s Sq. on the Vatican on March 31, 2022, forward of an Indigenous delegation’s assembly with Pope Francis.
AP Photograph/Alessandra Tarantino
Annie Selak, a theologian at Georgetown College, unpacks the historical past and importance of papal apologies, which is able to discuss for all of the church, previous and provide. Steadily, she notes, statements skirt a real admission of wrongdoing.
Nonetheless, apologies “do say something important,” Selak writes. A pope “apologizes both to the church and on behalf of the church to the world. These apologies are necessary starting points on the path to forgiveness and healing.”
4. A church that listens
Many popes convene conferences of the Synod of Bishops to advise the Vatican on church governance. However below Francis, those gatherings took on particular which means.
The Synod on Synodality was once a multiyear, international dialog the place Catholics may just proportion issues and demanding situations with native church leaders, informing the themes synod contributors would in the end talk about in Rome. What’s extra, the synod’s balloting contributors incorporated now not handiest bishops however lay Catholics – a primary for the church.
Members arrive for a vigil prayer led by way of Pope Francis and different non secular leaders sooner than the 2023 Synod of Bishops meeting.
Isabella Bonotto/Anadolu Company by way of Getty Pictures
The method “pictures the Catholic Church not as a top-down hierarchy but rather as an open conversation,” writes College of Dayton non secular research pupil Daniel Velocity Thompson – one by which everybody within the church has a voice and listens to others’ voices.
5. World dance
In 2024, College of Notre Dame professor David Lantigua had a cup of maté tea with some “porteños,” as folks from Buenos Aires are recognized. They shared a shocking take at the Argentine pope: “a theologian of the tango.”
Pope Francis beverages maté, the nationwide beverage of Argentina, in St. Peter’s Sq. on his birthday on Dec. 17, 2014.
Alberto Pizzoli/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Francis does love the dance – in 2014, hundreds of Catholics tangoed in St. Peter’s Sq. to honor his birthday. However there’s extra to it, Lantigua explains. Francis’ imaginative and prescient for the church was once “based on relationships of trust and solidarity,” like a couple of dance companions. And a part of his activity as pope was once to “tango” with all of the international’s Catholics, in moderation navigating tradition wars and an more and more various church.
Francis was once “less interested in ivory tower theology than the faith of people on the streets,” the place Argentina’s loved dance was once born.
This tale is a roundup of articles from The Dialog’s archives.
