Editorial: ‘People’s Pope’ leaves a complex legacy

Pope Francis — born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires in 1936 — was a new world pope in every sense.

The first leader of the globe’s 1.4 billion Catholics to be born in the Americas, and the first non-European pope since the eighth century, he leaves behind a legacy as a reformer of one of the world’s oldest and most conservative institutions.

He was a surprise choice to assume the papacy following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013.

And he embraced his status as an outsider, at least by the cloistered standards of the very highest levels of the Catholic Church.

Just hours after emerging from the conclave as pontiff in 2013, Pope Francis chose to eschew tradition by shunning the chance to sit on a throne or wear elaborate vestments and catching a bus with the cardinals instead of a chauffeur-driven car.

His Catholic church was, after all, a “poor church for the poor”. He took his name from St Francis of Assisi, who devoted himself to a life of poverty, assuming the lifestyle of the peasants he served.

It was this down to earth humility that earned Pope Francis — the only one of the church’s 266 leaders to date to take that name — a reputation as the “people’s pope”.

A bouncer and janitor in his native Argentina before joining the church, Pope Francis assumed the papacy at a difficult time for Catholicism worldwide.

Pope Benedict’s alleged inaction when confronted with evidence of child sex abuse occurring in the church had left many Catholics disillusioned with the institution into which they had trusted their faith.

Pope Francis’s record on cleaning up the evil influence of paedophile priests was patchy. Like his predecessors, he was accused by sex abuse survivors of being complicity in the church’s culture of cover up.

But, in a major leap forward, following a global summit on the abuse crisis in 2019, Pope Francis established new rules obliging every Catholic diocese in the world to set up simple as well as abolishing the doctrine of “pontifical secrecy” which had served to keep allegations of abuse hidden.

He was a reformer — and a radical — in other ways too.

In a landmark ruling in 2023, he allowed Catholic priests to give blessings to same-sex couples, and later blasted critics of the move as hypocrites.

He confirmed that transgender people could be baptised and serve as godparents. He said the church should apologise to gay people rather than judge them. He allowed divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive communion.

His death on Easter Monday — a significant date on the Christian calendar — signals the end of his 12-year battle to drag the lead-footed Catholic Church into the modern era.

For now, the world will mourn his death and celebrate his life. Then, the church will face a choice: continue his progressive legacy or succumb to its impulse to retreat to the past.