When Pope Francis was elected to the Throne of Peter on March 13, 2013, he was largely unknown to the wider world. Even many of his fellow Argentines felt they had only a vague, indistinct impression of a man who, in their experience, had tended to shun the spotlight.
Newsroom (21/04/2025 08:00, Gaudium Press)Within days, however, the new pontiff had established a narrative about himself which utterly electrified public opinion, and which would endure to the very end: A humble, simple man of the people, “the world’s parish priest,” who spurned luxury and privilege in favor of proximity to the underdogs and the excluded.
This was the pontiff, after all, who took the name “Francis” in homage to Catholicism’s most iconic and beloved saint, the “little poor man” of Assisi; the pope who rejected the marble and gold of the Papal Apartments in favour of the Domus Santa Marta, a modest hotel on Vatican grounds; the pope who returned to the clerical residence where he’d stayed prior to his election to pack his own bag and to pay his own bill; and the pope who, 15 days later, spent his first Holy Thursday not in the ornate setting of St. Peter’s Basilica, but at a youth prison in Rome where he washed the feet of 12 inmates, including two Muslims and two women.
Pope Francis’ very first words to the crowd in a rainy St. Peter’s Square were disarmingly informal: “Buona sera” (“good evening”). Many noted that he was wearing only his white papal cassock without the traditional ermine-trimmed, red velvet cape called a mozzetta, which his predecessors had worn on the same occasion. Before bestowing his traditional blessing, he bowed and asked for the blessing of the crowd. In an interview later, he said he had not prepared what he would say or do, but “I felt deeply that a minister needs the blessing of God, but also of his people.”
Under his watch, the papal charities office increased its outreach, particularly to the homeless who live near the Vatican. Sleeping bags were handed out at Christmas, showers were installed in the public bathrooms in St. Peter’s Square and a special, private tour of the Vatican Gardens and Vatican Museums was arranged.
Like St. John Paul used to do, Pope Francis also insisted on personally administering the sacrament of reconciliation. Making parish visits in Rome, he arrived early to meet with the parish council, parents of recently baptized babies and usually a group involved in charitable work. But before celebrating Mass, he always left time to hear confessions.
Still, it apparently was a complete surprise, even to Pope Francis’ closest aides, when, at a penance service in 2014 in St. Peter’s Basilica, instead of going to the confessional to hear confessions, he turned and knelt at another confessional to receive absolution first.
For four of the next six years, he celebrated the Mass at Italian prisons, including two in Rome, one in Paliano and one in Velletri. In 2014, he washed the feet of people with severe physical handicaps at a rehabilitation center, and in 2016, he celebrated the liturgy and foot-washing ritual at a center for migrants and refugees.
In early January 2016, the then-Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments issued a formal decree at the pope’s request, changing the rubrics of the Roman Missal, which mention only men having their feet washed. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman at the time, said the pope wanted to highlight “this dimension of the gesture of Christ’s love for all.”
The most significant transition in Catholicism in the 20th century is the demographic shift from the global north to south in terms of the faith’s center of gravity, and as history’s first pope from the developing world, Francis put a face and an agenda on that epochal change.
If Francis was often jarring to first-world sensibilities, that may have been no more than a long-overdue adjustment to the new realities of Catholicism in the 21st century, when more than two-thirds of the global Catholic population of 1.4 billion lives outside the West, with very different attitudes, instincts and priorities.
He spent much of the first nine years of his pontificate pursuing two ambitious projects: revitalizing the church’s efforts at evangelization — constantly urging outreach rather than a preoccupation with internal church affairs — and reforming the central administration of the Vatican, emphasizing its role of assisting bishops around the world rather than dictating policy to them.
His momentum and popularity outside the church seemed to falter in 2018 because of new revelations about the extent of clerical sexual abuse in the church and of bishops’ efforts to cover up the scandal, as well as instances in which, initially, Pope Francis seemed more prone to believe bishops than victims.
Eight months after taking office, Pope Francis published his apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), a detailed vision of the program for his papacy and his vision for the church — particularly the church’s outreach and its response to challenges posed by secular culture.
Faith, he constantly preached, had to be evident in the way one treated the poor and weakest members of society. He railed against human trafficking and rallied forces inside and outside the church to cooperate in halting the trade in people.
Although initially he said he did not like to travel and insisted he would not be a globetrotter like St. John Paul II was, he made 47 foreign trips, bringing his close-to-the-people papacy to the centers of global power, but especially to the “peripheries” of the world’s influence and power.
At the suggestion of the Council of Cardinals, Pope Francis instituted the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which was led by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston and included experts in child protection, psychology and survivors of clerical sexual abuse. But like his predecessors, Pope Francis had a checkered record of dealing with the abuse scandal and with allegations of cover-up leveled against bishops
Pope Francis called the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences, heads of the Eastern Catholic churches and representatives of religious orders to a summit in February 2019 to listen to the voices of abuse survivors, to pray and to understand the obligatory steps every bishop and superior must take when an abuse allegation is made.
Less than three months later, he published “Vos estis lux mundi” (“You are the light of the world”), a document setting out universal procedures for reporting suspected abuse, carrying out initial investigations and protecting victims and whistleblowers. It included procedures for holding bishops and religious superiors accountable and mandated that bishops report to the Vatican all cases of suspected abuse, including possession of child pornography.
In June 2021, he promulgated a revision of the section of the Code of Canon Law dealing with crimes and punishments; the revision made many of the procedures in “Vos estis” a permanent part of church law, made mandatory many of the previously suggested measures for handling allegations and expanded the application of canons dealing with abuse to religious and laypeople who have a role, office or function in the church — not just clergy. He slightly revised “Vos estis” in early 2023 and made its procedures definitive.
While acknowledging the suffering many Catholics endured under the communist government in mainland China, the Vatican announced in September 2018 that Pope Francis had approved a provisional agreement with the Chinese government on the nomination of bishops. The agreement, while hailed by some as a step toward unifying the Catholic community in China and normalizing Catholic life there, was seen by critics, including a retired cardinal from Hong Kong, as a betrayal of Catholics who risked their lives to avoid cooperating with the communist government.
The Vatican and China renewed the agreement for another two years in October 2020, 2022 and 2024.
In 2014 and 2015, Francis convened two high-profile Synods of Bishops devoted to the family, which culminated in a 2016 document titled Amoris Laetitia opening a cautious door to the reception of communion by Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the church.
The synod met again in October 2018 to focus on young people, the faith and vocational discernment. Just five months later, Pope Francis released “Christus Vivit” (“Christ Lives”), a combination letter to young people about their place in the church and a plea to older members of the church not to stifle the enthusiasm of the young, but to offer gentle guidance when needed.
His next synod was the special gathering in October 2019 focused on the Amazon and on ways to provide pastoral care to a widely scattered flock while protecting the region’s Indigenous people and safeguarding the environment.
The pope’s reflection on the synod, “Querida Amazonia” (“Beloved Amazonia”) was released less than four months later and contained few concrete ideas for action. Instead, Pope Francis called Catholics to work together to realize the “dreams” of an Amazon region where the rights of the poor and Indigenous are respected, local cultures are preserved, nature is protected, and the Catholic Church is present and active with “Amazonian features.”
In 2021, when Pope Francis issued a decree called Traditionis Custodes rolling back permission granted under his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, for wider celebration of the traditional Latin Mass.
In October 2021, Pope Francis launched a two-year process of listening on the local, diocesan and national levels in preparation for a synod focused on working “For a synodal church: communion, participation and mission.”
While maintaining the synod’s identity as a meeting primarily of bishops from around the world, the pope expanded the participation by naming several dozen laypeople — women and men — as voting members of the synod, which met in both October 2023 and October 2024. The full participation of non-bishops was not the only innovation: the first gathering was preceded by an ecumenical prayer vigil and a three-day retreat. The assembly was moved to the Paul VI Audience where members sat at round tables and practiced “conversations in the Spirit,” giving each person a chance to speak without interruption and time for prayer before discussing what was heard.
Between the two synod assemblies, Pope Francis took off the table, at least temporarily, some of the more complex, sensitive issues raised in the listening sessions and at the first synod assembly in 2023. Instead, he set up 10 study groups to look at issues such as ministry by women, seminary education, relations between bishops and religious communities and the role of nuncios; the groups were asked to work on proposals to give the pope by June 2025.
He told synod members those questions required more time, but he promised that “this is not the classical way of postponing decisions indefinitely.”
On March 19, 2022, the ninth anniversary of the inauguration of his papacy, he finally promulgated “Praedicate Evangelium” (“Preach the Gospel”), his complete restructuring of central church offices to emphasize the church’s missionary focus and the Curia’s role as assisting the pope and local bishops.
Pope Francis also launched investigations of the Vatican’s accounting practices and the Vatican bank and expanded the reach of Vatican City laws against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from OSV and Crux Now
Related Images:
