What Francis achieved as Pope – and where he failed

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis on March 13, 2013, I was in my tiny bedroom in a 14th-century palazzo 100 metres from St Peter’s Square in Rome. I heard the roar of the crowd, peered out the attic window to see white smoke billowing above the Sistine Chapel, and 60 seconds later, I was with the throngs in the square.

Addressing the faithful a little later, Francis, who died on Monday aged 88, made an instant impression of humility and openness, wishing those gathered a good evening – not the usual papal proclamation. After the election, he travelled in a bus with other cardinals and later returned to his former hotel room to pay his bill himself.

Pope Francis at the Vatican in August.Credit: AP

He sustained this impression when I enjoyed a meeting – with 3000 other journalists – at his first press conference and, by and large, for the rest of his pontificate. No pope has been as personable since John XXIII, the reformer who launched the Vatican II council 60 years ago.

Francis, too, in his quiet way, was a considerable reformer – a man who, as Jesuit American commentator Thomas Reese put it, would “change the style of being Pope, attack clericalism” – the idea that priests and bishops are the source of all authority – “empower the laity, open the church to conversation and debate, and change the pastoral and public priorities of the church”.

No pope has kissed the feet of so many marginalised people. He was “the master of the personal encounter”, leading Australian Jesuit and eminent jurist Frank Brennan told this masthead, “washing the feet of the prisoners, welcoming the asylum seekers on the island of Lampedusa, and asking rhetorically of the person who was gay: ‘Who am I to judge?’ A breath of fresh air after 30 years of constrained papal utterances.”

Some cardinals later confessed that when Francis was elected, they expected he would be a caretaker pope – he was 76 at the time and in frail health – yet in nearly 12 years, he reshaped the church in all sorts of ways that will not be easy to reverse or ignore. After the upheaval of Benedict XVI’s resignation, the church needed an accomplished media performer and someone loved by the laity more than a severe theologian.

It’s a safe bet that most of the thousands of articles around the globe today will observe that he was something of a disappointment to both main Catholic factions: too progressive for the conservatives and too conservative for the progressives. But, like all popes, the Argentinian Pope was far more complex than the caricatures presented by either side.

The first Jesuit pope and the first from the Global South – where he was entirely familiar with poverty, brutality and corruption – he was his own man with his own agenda. From the first, he fought clericalism and genuinely listened to the wider church, empowering lay Catholics. In contrast to his strongly centralised predecessors, he was happy to let local churches manage pastoral and doctrinal aspects.

A political commentator once noted that US presidents were rated by the way they increased the power of the office. It can be tempting to rank popes the same way, but if anything, Francis reduced papal authority, listening to divergent voices as few popes had before him.

I appreciated the irony of watching his emphasis on free dialogue make conservative critics (traditionally very respectful of popes) feel entitled to exercise their unprecedented freedom of dialogue to lash his openness to free dialogue.

Many Catholics, especially Australians, enjoyed his gentle sense of humour, seen in his autobiography published in January, and the fact that he didn’t take himself too seriously.

Was he too political in his criticisms of war, immigration policies, injustice, abortion and the like? Some, including US President Donald Trump, who suffered papal criticism, certainly thought so, but the Catholic Church’s long tradition of social justice teaching meant it would have been wrong to ignore such issues. In the 2024 US election, Francis was even-handed, lashing Kamala Harris over abortion and Trump over immigration.

Similarly, some saw his deep concern with the environment as political, but for Francis, it was a vital aspect of being stewards of God’s earth. The politics was incidental.

Meanwhile, progressives admired his support for laity, for women, and sympathy for the LGBTQ community and divorced Catholics, while feeling he did not venture strongly enough into any of these areas. On women, Reese, said last year: “His language drives First World feminists nuts. One might call him a Third World feminist because he is concerned about human trafficking and poverty, not language. He will promote women to positions of power in the church bureaucracy, but will not ordain them priests.”

But, like any pope, Francis had to tread a tightrope between deeply held and radically opposite convictions within the church, and his priority was to preserve as much unity as he could.

Weaknesses included failure to curb the Curia (Vatican government) – never having worked there himself, he was easily obstructed by wily bureaucrats – and financial reform. He tried hard on finances, but was weakened when he lost the services of Cardinal George Pell as economic watchdog due to the latter’s Australian travails. His trust in Pell, who reportedly campaigned against him in two conclaves, did him credit. However, his record on tackling clergy sexual abuse was erratic at best.

Francis’ legacy will endure partly through his choice of cardinals, 120 of whom will elect his successor. He has reportedly appointed 72 per cent of those eligible to vote, from a greater range of countries than ever before, which should ensure some continuity for his vision.

One of the most important lessons Francis leaves behind is that he deeply understood something that too many Christians do not: that the message of Jesus cannot be grafted onto the modern political or cultural spectrum. It sits above it.

Barney Zwartz is a senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity and was religion editor of The Age from 2002 to 2013.

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