Pope Francis gained global admiration from the day he was chosen in 2013 as the first non-European pope in over a thousand years.
After the white smoke arose from a chimney atop a Vatican tower to signal a new pope was chosen and the Argentinian pope appeared on the balcony, the world was welcoming a pontiff who chose to identify with the world’s poor.
As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he’d developed a reputation for humility and simplicity, living in a church guest house instead of the official palatial quarters and daily taking public buses to church, instead of being driven.
Francis took the same mannerisms to Rome: instead of settling for “the loneliness” of the pontifical palace, he chose a small apartment in a Vatican guest house, and he parked the legendary ‘Popemobile’, replacing it with an ordinary (Fiat) car.
The first Latin American pope had a quest to bring the church closer to people, its congregation and the world’s poor.
He identified with the plights of migrants and victims of wars, and took his messages of hope to far-flung margins of society.
He started cleaning up corruption at the Vatican Bank and invited the church to reconsider its traditional attitude of treating divorcees and LGBTQ+ Catholics as eternal sinners.
Francis didn’t publicly support women becoming priests, but appointed a nun to one of the highest positions at the Vatican.
He didn’t support priests getting married, but did suggest celibacy could be a factor in the high levels of sexual abuse by priests.
Critics chose to blemish his blooming character by arguing he ‘could have done much more’ to accelerate even more changes.
But Francis saw his pontifical mission as taking the church to those neglected corners of Christendom (Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc.) where Catholics far outnumber their fellow European faithful.
He visited prisoners in jails and migrants in custody and travelled the world to pray with suffering minorities.
Pope Francis strongly opposed war: he identified with victims of the Ukraine War, sympathised with Israeli and Palestinian families suffering from ‘terror’, and kissed the feet of the two leaders in warring South Sudan to urge them to find peace.
One of his first international missions for peace was an early visit to Cuba to negotiate a ceasefire in a decades-old war between Colombian rebels and the national army.
Much was said about Francis’ Latin American origins after he kicked the papal bucket on Easter Monday (April 21), but not much was made of that known fact while he served for a dozen years as the Archbishop of Rome.
Nor was much made of his decision to abolish the 500-year-old ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ originally used to justify Europe’s conquest of Latin America and the Caribbean after Christopher Columbus opened the way in 1492.
A descendent of European occupiers from a nation and continent originally populated by indigenous people, Francis grew up knowing the deprivation and suppression his native region’s First People have faced for the past five centuries-plus.
He was also very much aware of the role of his church in blessing the conquistadores on ships with sails bearing the Holy Cross and wearing rosaries, while destroying civilisations that predated Europe, to forcibly impose Christianity.
Francis travelled to Canada to apologize to the so-called ‘native people’ his church had helped marginalize methodically for centuries; and sent similar messages to the similarly misnamed ‘aboriginal people’ Australia and New Zealand, as well as Asian and African nations where First People were systematically and mortally sinned against — with papal blessings.
He abolished the ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ — a Papal Bull that blessed those marauding invaders who killed ‘in the name of the Father’ to force ‘un-Godly’ sub-humans to worship Jesus Christ.
Francis faced significant internal opposition to his decision to abolish the ‘doctrine’ that blessed mass murders in the name of God.
But that was a seismic move by a mortal man who lived like he died – consciously defiant in pursuing his goals of preaching to, for and about the poor, crossing traditional institutional and liturgical barriers and simply ignoring medical advice in his last days.
Francis died of a stroke and heart failure, but he also willed that his funeral be as simple as his papacy — to be buried in an ordinary wooden coffin in a small tomb, instead of being interred with his predecessors in the grand papal grotto.
Pope Francis was always a larger-than-life figure from Latin America and the Caribbean.
The region will mourn his departure to the Christian afterlife — but only after having largely failed to sufficiently embrace him as a son of both Europe and Latin America, who bravely ended an ignoble chapter in the history of the Catholic Church in this region.
Unfortunately, his symbolic tearing-up of the papal doctrine that opened the way for Native Genocide, Slavery, Indentureship and all the ills of European Colonialism and Capitalism, Imperialism and Neo-colonialism (for the previous 530 years) has not been sufficiently grasped by indigenous people’s movements in former colonies now clamouring for reparations and repair.
But that single move, while it won’t change the church’s past, will surely shape the future for First People everywhere seeking deserved redress for the crimes against humanity their ancestors suffered – and with church blessings.
Who will replace Francis will be decided by the next conclave of cardinals.
But until the next cloud of white smoke rises to signal his successor has been chosen, Francis’ figure will continue to loom even larger as the world starts missing him.
Whether the Catholic Church continues along Francis’ path or changes its line of march at a time when the world seems swimming against tides of progress is left to the red-hatted cardinals.
But whoever emerges will not be another Francis, instead having to chisel his own image to meet and face present and worsening challenges and grasp new opportunities to fix old problems.