Over 12 profoundly consequential years for the Catholic Church, Pope Francis steered it into uncharted territory and did so in ways that will resonate long into the future.
The pontiff worked to soften the face of the Catholic Church for many, loosened the Vatican’s grip on power and intervened in some of the major social questions of our time.
Within Catholicism, he certainly had his critics; some traditionalists in particular were often enraged by actions they felt were a radical departure from Church teaching.
Despite him being a vocal pacifist and critic of actions by major nations that he perceived as harmful, there were also those who felt he should have been more progressive.
But from the moment he was elected in 2013, Pope Francis came with an informality and a smile that put the people he met at their ease. It was symbolic of a principle that guided his belief that the Church should reach people in their daily lives, wherever in the world they happened to be.
“At the beginning of my papacy I had the feeling that it would be brief: no more than three or four years, I thought,” Pope Francis said in his autobiography Hope, released in January 2025, a book that gives us insight into the Pope’s own reflections on his legacy.
One of his first acts as pope was to give up the papal apartment on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, instead choosing to live in the same guesthouse in which he had stayed as a cardinal.
Some saw this as a sign he was giving up the ostentatious trappings of papacy, and of the humility he would certainly become known for – he had, after all, taken the name of a saint who championed the cause of the poor.
But the main reason for surrendering the papal apartment, as he later explained it, pointed to another of his characteristics: that he loved being around people.
To him, the apartment felt detached and a difficult place in which to welcome guests. At the guesthouse he was surrounded by clergy and rarely alone for long.
On foreign trips to more than 60 countries, in his audiences at the Vatican and during countless events, it was very clear that being close to people, and particularly the young, was his lifeblood.
BBC
