Groundbreaking Pope Francis was laid to rest yesterday, as he had directed, in a “tomb in the earth; simple, without particular decoration and with the only inscription: Franciscus.”
The beloved 266th pontiff’s interment at the Papal Basilica of Santa Maggiori was the final gesture of a captivating Pope who preached and practiced his well-documented humility.
Pope Francis also purposely broke Vatican tradition by choosing not to be buried in the Vatican, the first pope to do so in 350 years.
By doing so, the visionary reformist pontiff gave painful notice that the Catholic Church he led, whose future largely lay outside of the West, was paradoxically the main obstacle to his transformative pastoral vision.
Pope Francis came to lead a Catholic Church in crisis, beset by sexual and financial scandals, time-serving bishops besotted by pomp, a recalcitrant Roman curia, and a clericalism-minded clergy whom the Pontiff said did not “smell like the sheep.”
He then tried to forcefully shake an imperious Church, shepherding it into one closer to the poor and inclusive of the voiceless of society.
But Pope Francis left an arguably mixed bag of successes and failures, and left many things unclear, even if he meant well.
We may yet not know the full extent of the late Pontiff’s true legacy. But we may perhaps get partial answers when the conclave of cardinals concludes the ancient ritual for choosing the next pope.
By then we should have an answer to the conclave’s most crucial question: In wrestling for the Church’s soul, will the geographically and racially diverse 135 cardinal electors — many of whom were appointed by Pope Francis — elect a new pope who will continue Francis’ liberal transformative vision or bring the Church back to a conservative direction?
Still, whoever will be Pope Francis’ successor will need to address some major global problems the influential Francis raised when he, in his inimitable humility, moved the Church away from divisive issues like abortion and homosexuality.
(Here, Pope Francis’s humble style and willingness to debate such divisive issues could be disarming. When asked about an alleged gay priest, he responded, “Who am I to judge?”)
In his struggle to adapt the Church to the convulsive 21st century, Pope Francis turned the Church’s attention to the climate crisis, migrants, the role of women, and the excesses of global capitalism in exploiting the poor.
On this, he issued his remarkable encyclical Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home) in 2015, a document that for the first time placed concern for the environment on the same level as human dignity and social justice in Vatican doctrine.
While the encyclical came from the warnings of previous pontiffs, Pope Francis was far more hard-hitting: “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”
Pope Francis also convened in 2023 a synod of leading prelates and lay Catholics to tackle other pressing issues faced by the Church and its nearly 1.4-billion faithful. And, the strongest recommendation of that synod was for the fuller participation of women in the Church’s governing positions.
Though we have yet to see more women in powerful Vatican positions, Pope Francis nevertheless took a meaningful first step towards dismantling the Church’s hidebound patriarchal culture.
On a small but interesting side note that resonates with us, Pope Francis was even willing to confront difficult aspects of Church history — that in 2023 the Vatican repudiated the “doctrine of discovery” set out in 15th century papal decrees that had been used to justify European colonialism.
All these, however, are but a few of the so many things we can remember and judge Pope Francis by. But that is for another time.