Celebrating the legacy of Pope Francis: My 12 Francis Moments. Part One

There is a tinge of sadness for those who felt Pope Francis’ impact and influence; while others, especially doctrinal hawks, heave a sigh of relief, as they declare good riddance. The pervasive virulent, vitriolic and vicious critiques that have been penned about the 88-year-old Jorge Mario Bergolio, who became Pope Francis 12 years ago, on March 13, 2013, died on Easter Monday April 21, 2025 and was laid to rest on Saturday April 26, tell a truncated story of one who, no doubt, was a “larger-than-life personality”. While, unfortunate, it is nothing new, Pope Francis himself would not be surprised. There is a lot to celebrate about Pope Francis. One word that captures the papacy of Francis for me is: “Unconventional”. One thing is clear, Pope Francis’ papacy has the distinctive mark of a Rubik’s cube 

As a Catholic, I would submit that the measuring rod of any papacy should be how the Pope helped one to know God, to love Him and to serve Him? The intellectual heft of St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI gifted the Church with an exceedingly rich treasury. Having served as periti (experts) during Vatican II, they built a colossal bulwark. We find the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Studies in Rome, with sessions in Washington D.C., Benin, and Australia; the John Paul II Cultural Centers dotted across the world, with one in DC, Master’s Level Programs in John Paul II Studies. No difference with Pope Benedict XVI. There is an Annual Ratzinger Prize Award since 2011, and a Pope Benedict XVI Institute is in gestation in Cameroon. All are centers, nerve ganglions, citadels of wisdom, meant to propagate the intellectual legacies of the two giants. We might not have a Pope Francis Institute, but what Georgetown University’s Catholic Social Thought program has “trademarked” namely as “Francis Factor”, highlighting annually the accomplishments of Pope Francis, drives home the point. It is kind of paradoxical that the Jesuits known for their intellectual sophistication produced a Pope with a Franciscan heart. In fact, one could swear that Cardinal Ratzinger was a Jesuit. My image of Pope Francis is that of the French parish priest, the Cure D’Ars, St. John Mary Vianney. After 35 years of solid orthodoxy with John Paul II, the philosopher whose papacy found a radical continuity with that of the theologian, Pope Benedict XVI, the break that came with Pope Francis, the pastor, is to be expected. There is no doubt that Pope Francis received flak for his doctrinal imprecisions. He pushed the boundaries of the Catholic theological principle of “both…and” thereby attracting the ire of a gungho intellectual elite whose sole test of the papacy is intellectual puritanism. Pope Francis will be remembered not for his intellectual sophistication, but rather for how he incarnated the theological principles. His was an incarnational, or incarnated theology, if I can be tautologous. And the Word Became Flesh and dwelt amongst us. 

The ecclesiology of Pope Francis 

The papacy of Pope Francis was in many senses a breath of fresh air – the “aggiornamento” that greeted the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis breathed life into the “dry bones” of the doctrinal edifice which his predecessors had painstakingly constructed. Two years into his Pontificate, Pope Francis found it necessary to summon the Church to an extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope John Paul II had canonized Sr. Faustina, and instituted the Second Sunday of Easter as the Divine Mercy Sunday. His encyclical Dives in Misericordia, focused also on mercy. Pope Francis, reading the “Signs of the Times” called the Church to experience Mercy. He challenged the Church to be “Merciful as the Father”, and taught us the God whose name is Mercy. His Pontificate can rightly be described as underpinned by the ecclesiology of Mercy; with a merciful God who is never tired of dispensing mercy. This merciful God dwells in a Church which Pope Francis described as a “field hospital,” a poor Church for the poor, a Church that is not self-referential, a Church of the peripheries. And because of this, the Church must go out of itself to seek out the lost sheep, encounter and accompany them. With Pope Francis, the Catholic Church became “cool” again, not in a Woke sense, whatever this means, but rather a welcoming presence, the soothing balm of Gilead. A Pontificate of Mercy, a merciful God for a Church which is a “field hospital”, open to all God’s children, God’s family, people of God listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, journeying together on the way, listening to each other, guided by listening to the Holy Spirit, this has been Pope Francis’ papacy, of which defining hermeneutic is undoubtedly the parable of the Good Samaritan. Pope Francis opened up the Church, which was suffocating under the stranglehold of intellectual orthodoxy. For want of a better nomenclature, his could be said to have been an ecclesiology of Mercy, Encounter, Accompaniment, Synodality and Hope (MEASH). 

While the papacy of Pope John Paul II could be said to have been defined by love, as seen in his emphasis on marriage and the family, his works on Love and Responsibility, and of course, the ground breaking Theology of the Body, Pope Benedict XVI’s was definitely about the faith. Think of his seminal work: Introduction to Christianity, his tryptic on Jesus of Nazareth and his famous quote: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” Pope Francis was all about Hope. His Wednesday Catechesis in 2016/2017 focused on Hope. His book, Let us Dream, which came out during the pandemic, says it all. He brings all of this to bold relief with his choice of Pilgrims of Hope as the theme of this Jubilee Year. Pope Francis invited us, like the Psalmist, to sing: “I place all my trust in you my God, all my hope is in your mercy.” 

In his forthcoming book, Fr. Nkardzedze provides the interpretive key to understanding the papacy of Pope Francis: the maternity of the ecclesial. I would surmise that this belies his ecclesiology of MEASH – Mercy, Encounter, Accompaniment, Synodality and Hope. “The Church is the home, the family and the mother. His papacy is therefore maternal and feminine in approach,” dixit Fr. Eugen.

Spiritual Nuggets 
I am grateful for what can be loosely characterized as elements of the spirituality of Pope Francis. Thanks to him, I learnt the Novena of Our Lady who unties knots. He is said to have discovered the famous painting of Our Lady who unties knots in Germany while he was studying there. He then popularized the novena when he returned to Argentina, and even globally when he became Pope. Untangling and untying the knots of a bland theological system is the great reform he championed and articulated. Like St. Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis had a special devotion to the Blessed Mother, and no wonder, he chose to be buried in the Basilica of Mary Major, where he stopped and prayed before and after every papal journey. When he signed the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christus vivit, and handed it to the young people, and to the entire people of God, in the Pontifical Shrine of the Holy House of Loreto on March 25, 2019, he decreed that the Shrine was henceforth going to be the reference point for three apostolates: the family, the youths and the sick and vulnerable.

Pope Francis also helped me to deepen my devotion to St. Joseph, husband and foster father. His love for St. Joseph, demonstrated in the prayer to St Joseph, which he prayed every Wednesday for over 50 years, and the statue of the sleepy Joseph, under which he wrote a note expressing his needs, are great examples of a rediscovery of St. Joseph which he championed. He declared a Year to celebrate St. Joseph, which he marked with the encyclical: Patris Corde – With a Father’s Heart. Thanks to Pope Francis, we can truly say that this is the time of St. Joseph, and to his patronage we fly.