Author: Eric Deabill

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis’ emphasis on God’s mercy and on pastoral outreach to Catholics who felt pushed to the edges of the Catholic community marked a new, and often controversial, approach to the family and sexuality during his pontificate.

In the Catholic Church there is room for “todos, todos, todos” – everyone, everyone, everyone – he often said.

He tried to explain what he meant in an Italian television interview in November 2023: “When I say ‘everyone, everyone, everyone,’ it’s the people. The church receives people, everyone, and does not ask what you are. Then, within the church, everyone grows and matures in their Christian belonging.”

Pope Francis encouraged pastors to welcome divorced and civilly remarried Catholics into parish life and simplified the process couples needed to go through to obtain an annulment of their first union.

And during his first inflight news conference, returning to Rome from World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, he famously said, “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has goodwill, then who am I to judge him?”

Throughout his pontificate he met with and encouraged LGBTQ+ Catholics and those who minister with them. And regularly since 2022, Sister Geneviève Jeanningros, a member of the Little Sisters of Jesus, brought transgender people to meet the pope at his weekly general audiences.

In 2023, he told an interviewer from the Argentine website Perfil that “everyone is a child of God, and each one seeks and finds God by whatever path he or she can.”

While the pope insisted matrimony can only be between one man and one woman, he also repeated his support for the legal rights guaranteed by civil unions for gay couples and others who share a life. And he said, as he told The Associated Press earlier that year, homosexuality should not be criminalized.

Catholic teaching says that homosexual acts are sinful, like any sexual activity outside of marriage, but Pope Francis told Perfil he did not think those sins would send a person to hell.

“God only sets aside the proud, the rest of us sinners are all in line,” he said, and God always is reaching out to save sinners who seek his help.

In a memoir published in 2024, the pope said the church must act as a mother, “who embraces and welcomes everyone, even those who feel they are in the wrong and have been judged by us in the past. I think, for example, of homosexuals and transsexuals who seek the Lord but are rejected or persecuted.”

The Gospel mission of proclaiming God’s love to all, he said, is the foundation of the approval he gave in December 2023 to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s publication of “Fiducia Supplicans” (“Supplicating Trust”), which allows Catholic priests to bless a same-sex or other unmarried couple. However, it cannot be a formal liturgical blessing, nor give the impression that the church is blessing the union as if it were a marriage.

In a message in April 2023 to a conference on the Billings Method of natural family planning, the pope called for a more serious reflection on human sexuality.

Specifically, he said, there is a “need for education in the value of the human body, an integrated and integral vision of human sexuality, an ability to cherish the fruitfulness of love even when not fertile, the building up of a culture that welcomes life and ways to confront the problem of demographic collapse.”

Pope Francis frequently mentioned his concern about falling birthrates, particularly in Europe, and praised communities that were going against the trend.

Visiting the French island of Corsica in December (2024), the pope commented on the many children he saw during his one-day trip, saying the only place he had seen more kids was during his trip to Timor-Leste two months earlier.

“Have children, have children,” he told Corsicans, “this will be your joy and your glory.”

Pope Francis was a regular speaker at an annual conference in Rome sponsored by groups trying to reverse Italy’s steeply declining birthrate.

“Human life is not a problem, it is a gift,” he told the conference in 2024. “The problem is not how many of us there are in the world, but what kind of world we are building.”

At the same time, Pope Francis did not encourage people to have as many children as they possibly could.

During an inflight news conference returning to Rome from the Philippines in 2015, Pope Francis noted that for a marriage to be valid, the bride and groom must be open to having children. St. Paul VI’s teaching against artificial birth control in “Humanae Vitae” was a logical consequence of that teaching, he said.

“This doesn’t mean that a Christian should have a succession of children,” he said. “Some people believe that — pardon my language — in order to be good Catholics, we should be like rabbits. No. Responsible parenthood” is needed.

But he also insisted that it is not for someone else to judge that, for example, a poor couple is irresponsible for having many children. “We also need to consider the generosity of those fathers and mothers who see in every child a treasure.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – When Pope Francis chose the small Italian island of Lampedusa as the destination for his first trip outside Rome after his election, he signaled to the world that migration would be a defining issue of his pontificate.

Standing at an entry point for thousands of migrants seeking refuge in Europe, he lamented what he called the “globalization of indifference” — a society desensitized to the plight of people forced to flee their homes.

Over the course of his 12-year pontificate, which ended with his death April 21, Pope Francis never relented in his appeals to world leaders and ordinary citizens to treat migrants humanely. He frequently condemned policies of mass deportation, called for more welcoming asylum laws and highlighted the dignity of those crossing borders in search of a better life.

The son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, Pope Francis sometimes invoked his own family history when speaking about migration. In his 2015 address to the U.S. Congress – the first by any pope – he urged lawmakers to embrace migrants rather than fear them.

“I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants,” he said, calling for a response to migration that “is always humane, just and fraternal.”

His concern for migrants extended beyond rhetoric and was reflected in powerful gestures as well.

In nearly all of his 47 international trips, the issue of migration played a central role, and in many cases, was the impetus for his visits. In 2016 and 2021, he traveled to Lesbos, Greece, a major gateway for refugees entering Europe. During his 2016 visit, he brought 12 Syrian refugees — three families with six children — who were facing deportation from the island back to Italy with him aboard the papal plane, describing the act as a “purely humanitarian” gesture.

Also in 2016, during the Holy Year of Mercy, he celebrated Mass in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, along the U.S.-Mexico border, drawing attention to the millions who risk their lives to cross it. In 2019, he unveiled the “Angels Unawares” sculpture in St. Peter’s Square, depicting a group of migrants and refugees from various cultures and historical periods, to remind the millions of visitors that come to the Vatican each year of the evangelical challenge of hospitality.

When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, the number of international migrants worldwide stood at 231 million. By 2024 that figure had risen to nearly 281 million. As conflicts, economic instability and climate change fueled displacement across continents, Pope Francis persistently framed migration as a fundamental moral issue that had serious policy implications.

He made that clear in 2014 when he addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Francis, emphasizing that Europe had a moral duty to support the development and stability of migrants’ countries of origin.

Under Pope Francis’ leadership, the Vatican, through the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, backed the 2018 “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,” the first U.N.-negotiated agreement to establish a cooperative approach to global migration. The Holy See played a role in shaping the compact’s emphasis on humanitarian protection, family unity and integration efforts.

And Pope Francis did not shy away from speaking up about migration issues in specific contexts, either. In 2017, he personally appealed to then-U.S. President Donald Trump to reconsider his administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, saying that a “good pro-life person” would not seek to separate children from their parents but would rather defend the family which is “the cradle of life.”

Similarly, in Italy, he consistently spoke out against hardline immigration measures, denouncing efforts to criminalize NGOs that rescued migrants in the Mediterranean.

In February, as Trump’s second administration ramped up anti-immigrant rhetoric and froze programs to assist legal immigration, Pope Francis again addressed the issue, this time in a letter to the U.S. bishops. Referring to ongoing mass deportations, he urged Catholics and people of goodwill not to fall for “narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”

Furthermore, in response to comments by U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, who suggested that love and charity should prioritize fellow citizens over migrants, Pope Francis countered that “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.” Instead, he pointed to the parable of the Good Samaritan, calling for “a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

Within the church, Pope Francis also gave the issue of migration a more central focus in his magisterium.

In his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” he decried the “widespread indifference” to the suffering of refugees forced out of their homes due to environmental degradation.

In the encyclical “Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship,” published in 2020, he forcefully condemned nationalism and xenophobia, stating that the treatment of migrants as “less worthy, less important, less human” by Christians is unacceptable.

In 2022, he canonized St. Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian who founded the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo to care for migrants, saying during the canonization Mass that refusing to care for migrants “is revolting, it’s sinful, it’s criminal.”

That forceful moral language, sometimes blunt and always unapologetic, was a hallmark of Pope Francis’ pontificate and cemented his legacy as a champion of migrants.

“It needs to be said clearly,” he said during a general audience in August 2024, “there are those who systematically work by all means to drive away migrants, and this, when done knowingly and deliberately, is a grave sin.”

From Lampedusa to Lesbos, from the U.S.-Mexico border to the heart of Africa, he preached that migration was not a passing crisis or a regional concern, but one of the defining moral tests of the modern era.

At his 2013 penitential Mass in Lampedusa, mourning the lives of migrants lost at sea, he prayed: “Let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like this.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Tapping into the spirit and spirituality of his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis made care for creation and for all that lives on the earth a pastoral priority.

The importance of respecting and protecting the environment had been heralded by his predecessors: St. John Paul II spoke of human ecology and insisted ecological conversion was integral to supporting human life; and Pope Benedict XVI gained the moniker “the green pope” as the Vatican began to walk the talk with solar panel installations, a fleet of electric vehicles and other environmental initiatives.

But Pope Francis took it to the next level and used his position as a respected global figure to become a leading voice to reinvigorate existing efforts and rally all of humanity to see caring for creation not as a political, social, scientific or ideological battle, but as a moral imperative to hear and respond to the cry of the earth and those most affected by its degradation – the poor.

And he upped the ante on how serious an injury this is by saying abusing the “common home” of the earth, its ecosystems and all forms of life that depend on it, “is a grave sin” that damages, harms and sickens.

Pope Francis insisted the global crises unfolding in the world reflected an interconnectedness and interdependence between human beings and the earth. Social, economic, political and environmental issues are not separate problems, but are the many dimensions of one overarching crisis.

Embracing “integral ecology” recognizes the interconnectedness, he said, and how the values, mindsets and actions people affect all human endeavors — the cultural, social, political, economic, spiritual and theological — and the planet.

An integral ecology goes “to the heart of what it is to be human,” Pope Francis said. The flora and fauna, the heavens and seas and all people are not objects to be used and controlled, but are wondrous reflections of the divine; they are God’s creations and are gifts to be protected, loved and shared.

The core of his teaching on integral ecology, its principles and practical applications were laid out in his landmark 2015 document, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” the first papal encyclical on the environment.

The document’s influence on the international community was evident when world leaders met in Paris for the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference, commonly referred to as COP21. “Not only had practically every delegate heard of ‘Laudato Si’,’ Pope Francis was cited by more than 30 heads of state or government in their interventions,” Archbishop Bernardito Auza, who represented the Holy See at the United Nations, said in a 2019 speech.

In fact, several experts believed the document had a deep impact on the successful adoption of the landmark Paris Agreement, a binding agreement for nations to fight climate change and mitigate its effects.

Pope Francis, likewise, issued a follow-up document, “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”) ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates in 2023. The exhortation presented an even stronger critique of global inaction and indifference to climate change.

The pope had planned to attend the conference, which would have made him the first pope ever to go to one of the global gatherings that began in 1995. However, a bronchial infection, which made his breathing very labored, forced him to cancel his planned trip.

Pope Francis was not without his detractors. He had been labeled “naive” for following supposedly trendy notions about climate change; he often was accused of straying beyond his strictly spiritual role; and other critics expressed fear that his denunciation of “an economy that kills” and calls for change would support socialist-leaning positions, especially distrust of the free-market economy.

But for Pope Francis it was never a question of choosing either economic growth or care for the environment, as some detractors claimed. The path the pope pointed out envisioned the promotion of “integral human development,” which gives priority to helping all people thrive by protecting the planet and all its gifts now and for future generations.

In 2016, Pope Francis established the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, based on this understanding that safeguarding creation promotes peace and human rights and benefits economies, communities and present and future generations.

For the pope, the problem was not a single policy or position, but what he called “globalization of indifference,” an economy of exclusion and a throwaway culture.

Pope Francis’ stance, like his predecessors, was always a moral one — not pushing specific policies or programs but laying out the Gospel approach to guide citizens and policymakers so they could respond to problems more ethically.

Changing the world requires first transforming one’s thinking and values, and “we need to see — with the eyes of faith — the beauty of God’s saving plan, the link between the natural environment and the dignity of the human person,” the pope once wrote to young people in the Philippines.

Pope Francis solidly established ecology and safeguarding creation as a pro-life, pro-marginalized, pro-family issue. If people have no problem throwing away reusable resources or edible food when so many people are starving, there is a similar “throwaway” attitude toward people believed to not be useful — including the unborn, the sick and the elderly, he said.

Christianity teaches that God created the world and everything in it with a certain order and proclaimed it good. As stewards of God’s creation, Pope Francis said, people have an absolute obligation to respect that gift.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The pontificate of Pope Francis did not result in breakthrough theological agreements with other Christians, but huge strides were made in personal relations and practical cooperation.

Pope Francis set the tone from his first public appearance as pope, repeatedly referring to himself as the bishop of Rome — an ecumenically sensitive way of referring to his office.

He kept a photograph of Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople tucked into the blotter on his desk — a sign of their friendship and the pope’s esteem. The two met regularly, traveled together to Lesbos, Greece, to draw attention to the plight of refugees, and Pope Francis publicly acknowledged the patriarch’s long commitment to safeguarding creation and developing a theological approach to ecology in his 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home.”

Bishop Brian Farrell, who served as secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity during the first 11 years of Pope Francis’ pontificate, told Catholic News Service Jan. 9, 2024, that from the very beginning the pope told him and Cardinal Kurt Koch, dicastery prefect, “If there’s something we have to do, tell me and we’ll do it.”

For Pope Francis, he said, “it’s the doing.”

“And this was synthesized in the words he constantly used: walking together, praying together, working together,” Bishop Farrell said. “In other words, he was saying we can’t wait to solve all the theological questions. We must walk together now.”

Pope Francis’ personality and ease in building a rapport ensured those journeys happened – spiritually and literally.

Not only did he visit migrants in Lesbos with Patriarch Bartholomew, but he made an ecumenical peace pilgrimage to South Sudan in 2023 with Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury and the Rev. Iain Greenshields, moderator of the Church of Scotland, a Presbyterian church. The three leaders went not only to encourage political leaders to get serious about making peace, but also to help revive local ecumenical relations as a voice for the people demanding peace and reconciliation.

Pope Francis had “an ability to deal with people as they are,” Bishop Farrell said, and he never made them feel that he was above them.

He could be blunt, however.

Less than a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an invasion supported by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, Pope Francis had a video call with the patriarch.

“I spoke with Kirill for 40 minutes via Zoom. He spent the first 20 minutes holding a piece of paper reading all the reasons for the war,” the pope later said in an interview. “I listened to him, and I told him, ‘I don’t know anything about this. Brother, we are not clerics of the state, we cannot use the language of politics, but of Jesus. We are shepherds of the same holy people of God. That is why we must seek the path of peace, to cease the blast of weapons.'”

The pope added in the interview: “The patriarch cannot turn himself into Putin’s altar boy.”

The Catholic Church’s relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church had been fraught for decades, so it was hailed as a major breakthrough when, in 2016, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill became the first pope and Russian patriarch to meet in person. Their encounter took place at the airport in Havana, Cuba, as the patriarch was making a pastoral visit and the pope was on his way to Mexico.

Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis spoke of the “ecumenism of blood” — the Christian unity seen sadly and powerfully in Christians who were killed for their faith in Jesus with absolutely no concern about the denomination to which they belonged.

In May 2023, welcoming Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria, Egypt, to the Vatican, Pope Francis announced he was adding to the Catholic calendar of saints the 21 Coptic martyrs whose 2015 murders on a beach in Libya by Islamic State fighters shocked the world.

The pope said including the Coptic martyrs in the Roman Martyrology, the book-length calendar of saints’ feast days, was “a sign of the spiritual communion that unites our two churches.”

“This is a first,” Bishop Farrell said at the time. During ecumenical meetings and prayer services, he said, it is common to “commemorate informally” saints and martyrs of another tradition, “but there never has been a decision to put them into the martyrology,” thus formally including them “in the prayer of our church.”

While encounters with other Christian leaders were a standard agenda item when Pope Francis traveled abroad, two of his trips were focused specifically on ecumenical relations: in late 2016, he flew to Lund, Sweden, to launch with leaders of the Lutheran World Federation a year of activities to mark the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s efforts to reform the church; and in June 2018 he traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, to visit the World Council of Churches.

Pope Francis’ pontificate also included more private ecumenical moments, including having Patriarch Bartholomew, Archbishop Welby and other church leaders stay in his residence, the Domus Sanctae Marthae, when they were in Rome.

The hospitality was reciprocated, too. When he went to Armenia in 2016, the pope was the house guest of Catholicos Karekin II, the patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church. After a papal Mass in Yerevan, which the catholicos attended, Pope Francis invited him to join him in the popemobile. The two leaders gave the crowds their blessings.

ROME (OSV News) – From the first moments of his papacy, Pope Francis was heard using one particular word in his pontifical speeches. For him, it was a reminder that God is not the one who punishes, but the one who loves, and that the church, led by him, should seek to be the same — the church of “tenderness.”

Until the very last moments of his papacy, the “pope of tenderness” was his other name — like when he visited the Roman prison on Holy Thursday, blowing a kiss to prisoners greeting him from behind the glass doors.

In his first speech, during the homily at the Inauguration Mass of his pontificate, Francis spoke of tenderness for the first time: “We must not be afraid of goodness or even tenderness!” He added that “caring, protecting, demands goodness, it calls for a certain tenderness.”

Over the years it became clear that Francis, rather than speaking of tenderness, preferred to practice what he preached, whenever he had the opportunity.

Hundreds of names confirm this: Vinicio Riva, a man with a face disfigured by a rare genetic disease, whom the pope kissed in St. Peter’s Square shortly after his pontificate started. Riva himself acknowledged that his own father never dared to embrace him. He died in January 2024.

In April 2018, Pope Francis consoled little Emmanuele during a visit to a parish in Rome. The boy, between sobs, asked the pope with great concern if his father, who had just died, was already in heaven because he was an atheist. Francis put him at ease, assuring him that God was proud of his father, because he wanted to baptize his children without being a believer.

A month later, in May 2018, Pope Francis embraced the smiling young Nigerian woman Blessing Okoedion, trafficked from her country and forced into prostitution in Italy, whom Catholic sisters and the pope himself helped to regain lost dignity.

“I still seem to hear the force with which Francis made it very clear that prostitution is a crime because it involves torturing a woman,” said Eva Fernández, author of “El Papa de la Ternura” (“The Pope of Tenderness”).

“Countless are his meetings behind closed doors in Santa Marta or during his international trips to listen to and ask forgiveness from the victims of sexual abuse within the church. He remained in contact with some of them until the end, taking a fatherly interest in their problems,” the Spanish journalist with COPE Catholic radio told OSV News.

His tending to the homeless of Rome became somewhat legendary. On Dec. 17, 2013, the first birthday that Francis celebrated as pope, the poor were his guests at Santa Marta Mass. With the help of Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, papal almoner and prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, the pope made it clear that even small gestures matter in a tender approach.

“Calling people that wrote letters to him out of the blue was something completely normal for him, but a woman in Venice got an even bigger surprise when Francis sent her money after she wrote to him that she was robbed of a purse on her way to the hospital to visit the sick husband,” Fernández said.

A parish priest received the Vatican Secretariat of State-sealed envelope for the lady, who was in her 80s. It contained the equivalent of $200, four times the sum stolen from the elderly woman.

On another occasion, in 2016, Pope Francis donated a pair of scooters to an elderly couple in Rome who were not able to leave their house because of the effect of diabetes and hypertension on their mobility.

Through his charitable point man, Cardinal Krajewski, he has sent dozens of ambulances to Ukraine, thousands of kilos of warm clothes and medical supplies to places in the world that have suffered wars, earthquakes or floods, and supported Africa’s impoverished nations.

Pope Francis visited some 650 female inmates during his apostolic trip to Chile in 2018, many of whom were imprisoned with babies and small children. “As women,” he told them, “you have an incredible ability to adapt to new circumstances and move forward. Today I appeal to that ability to bring forth the future that is alive in each one of you. That ability enables you to resist everything that might rob you of your identity and end up by killing your hope.”

Fernández, who traveled with the pope on dozens of trips, remembered every detail of this meeting.

“I had the opportunity to witness how moved he was in that prison when he listened to Janeth, a repentant prisoner, as she shared with him her suffering and that of so many other fellow prisoners, because they watched their children grow up in prison.”

The images remembered from the papacy will be many — from children embraced in the Lesbos refugee camp in 2016 to the then 84-year-old priest Father Ernest Troshani Simoni, a survivor of communist persecution in Albania who moved Pope Francis to tears with his testimony of torture and Christian perseverance. Camera shutters were fastly clicking as the pope embraced Father Simoni during the apostolic trip to Albania in September 2014. Two years later, the pope elevated the elderly priest to the cardinalate.

“Francis lived the tenderness he preached with a radicalism that requires complicating one’s life. For example, he set out to fight against the indifference with which the world treated the Rohingya minority and did not mind undertaking a grueling journey to focus on the tragedy. These people were suffering in the face of the silence of the international community, and he wanted to be there for them,” Fernández said of the Muslim ethnic group persecuted in Myanmar.

During the apostolic trip, in Bangladesh, Pope Francis received 16 refugees fleeing Myanmar, living in the Cox’s Bazar camp.

“It was almost impossible to hold back tears as an interpreter translated to the pope the atrocities they had suffered before escaping,” the Spanish journalist recalled.

“Francis would not let go of their hands. One refugee told the pope that Myanmar’s military killed his 3-year-old son by throwing him into the fire without him being able to do anything to stop it,” Fernández remembered.

After listening to the testimonies, the pope apologized for the “indifference of the world.”

“The presence of God today is also called ‘Rohingya,'” the pope said during the event in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka Dec. 1, 2017.

He then asked forgiveness “in the name of all those who have persecuted you or done you wrong.”

“The most important spiritual leader in the world had just asked for their forgiveness for cruelties he had not committed. Unheard of,” Fernández said.

“He was a witness of tenderness that always knew how to put himself in the place of the other. It’s endless examples,” she added, listing mothers like Rosalba, an 80-year-old widow who had lost her son and who received a call from the pope every month until her death. Or Anna, a single mother who decided to go ahead with her pregnancy and Francis baptized her son.

“I can’t even count calls to prisoners and refugees, to priests, nuns, young people and children, shopkeepers, firefighters — we could go on and on,” the book author said.

“His revolution of tenderness was contagious. It is something that only springs from hearts that move on the same frequency as God.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Elected in 2013 with a clear mandate to reform the Roman Curia, Pope Francis completed the project with his apostolic constitution, “Preach the Gospel,” nine years after taking office. He also published important texts outlining ways to support care for the family, the environment and young people as well as documents on being compassionate, joyful, holy and missionary disciples in today’s world, especially by contemplating Jesus’ Sacred Heart.

Here is a list of some of Pope Francis’ major documents:

Reform of the Roman Curia

— “Praedicate Evangelium” (“Preach the Gospel”). The pope’s long awaited apostolic constitution on the reform of the Roman Curia was released in 2022. It replaced St. John Paul II’s 1988 constitution, “Pastor Bonus,” reorganizing the Roman Curia to highlight its role in promoting the church as a community of missionary disciples, sharing the Gospel and caring for all those in need.

Encyclicals

— “Lumen Fidei” (“The Light of Faith”), was Pope Francis’ first encyclical, published in 2013. It was built largely on the work of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, completing a trilogy of encyclicals on the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. The encyclical on faith encouraged Catholics to embrace their faith more fully.

— “Laudato si’, on Care for Our Common Home” was published in 2015. Pope Francis said his encyclical on the environment was a way to enter into dialogue with all people about humanity’s responsibility toward “the common home that God has entrusted to us.”

— “Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship,” was published in 2020. It addressed urgent social, political and religious issues on a global scale and Pope Francis’ dream for a world where all people recognized themselves as brothers and sisters, leading to greater solidarity and concern for the poor and the Earth.

— “‘Dilexit nos’ (‘He loved us’): on the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ” was published in 2024. Meant to be understood in tandem with his previous two encyclicals, it presented the spiritual and theological foundation underlying the pope’s messages to the church and the world over the previous 12 years — that everything “springs from Christ and his love for all humanity.”

Apostolic exhortations

— “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”). This apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world was published in 2013 with the aim of encouraging ongoing missionary renewal for all members of the church. Calling for a new chapter in evangelization, the pope acknowledged that some church teachings and positions on modern issues are confusing to many people, especially outside the church. But he affirmed that women cannot be priests since Jesus chose only men as his apostles and insisted that the defense of the life of the unborn flows from the conviction that every life is sacred.

— “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”). The pope’s 2016 post-synodal exhortation on marriage, love and family life brought together the results of the two synods on the family, which were convoked by Pope Francis in 2014 and 2015. The document looked at the challenges experienced by families and affirmed the importance of accompaniment when providing pastoral care.

— “Gaudete et Exsultate” (“Rejoice and Be Glad”). The 2018 apostolic exhortation on the call to holiness challenged modern Christians to take the dignity of all human life seriously, viewing it in light of Christ’s incarnation. The pope offered a road map for simple ways that everyday people can be holy.

— “Christus Vivit” (“Christ is Alive”), the post-synodal exhortation published in 2019, was a reflection on the discussion at the 2018 Synod of Bishops on young people, the faith and vocational discernment. It called on young people and all people of God to seek hope and the youthful newness of life in Christ. The pope reminded young people of their impact and challenged them to do their best for their families, communities, the church and the world.

— “Querida Amazonia” (“The Beloved Amazon”) was his 2020 post-synodal exhortation in response to the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region in 2019. Addressed to Catholics and all people of goodwill, the pope encouraged greater respect for the people and cultures of the Amazon region, given the plight of the people and ecosystem, and he offered reflections — based on the wisdom of the church and the Amazonian people — on the way forward.

— “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”) was a 2023 apostolic exhortation “to all people of goodwill on the climate crisis.” This follow-up document to his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’,” covered similar themes: the urgency of addressing environmental and social crises, the importance of listening to the scientific community and the need to build an inclusive culture of caring for the common home through personal action and national and international institutions. The root of today’s injustices against people and the planet, the pope wrote, is the desire “to claim to take God’s place.” The answer is “rethinking our use of power,” which requires an increased sense of responsibility and “sound ethics, a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – From the moment he took the helm of the Catholic Church’s sprawling hierarchy, Pope Francis positioned himself as a pastor close to the people he served, and he called out the behavior of priests who were distant from and thought they were superior to their flocks.

The pope set the tone early for his consistent rebukes of clericalism by including it in his first apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium,” the 2013 document that was considered a roadmap for his pontificate.

Discussing the need to recognize the baptismal dignity and gifts of the laity, the pope wrote that sometimes laypeople did not have the necessary training to exercise leadership, but often “room has not been made for them to speak and to act, due to an excessive clericalism which keeps them away from decision-making.”

Pope Francis’ campaign against clericalism was waged when meeting both ordinary parish priests and “princes of the church,” as cardinals once were known.

In a 2016 homily – given at a morning Mass with members of his international Council of Cardinals – he said that modern-day priests “feel superior, clerics distance themselves from the people,” and the poor and humble suffer as a result.

“The evil of clericalism is a really awful thing,” he added.

In an open letter published in 2023, Pope Francis told priests of the Diocese of Rome that clericalism is “a disease that causes us to lose the memory of the baptism we have received” and leads to priests exercising authority “without humility but with detached and haughty attitudes.”

The papal message has reached those preparing for priesthood, too, Msgr. Andrew R. Baker, rector of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, told Catholic News Service.

In an email interview in March 2024, the monsignor, head of the largest Catholic seminary in the United States, said that since the start of Pope Francis’ pontificate he has noticed “a growing desire among the seminarians to be other-centered,” in contrast to a pervasive worldly mentality that emphasizes the needs of the self.

“Seminarians today are not becoming priests because they want an easy, revered, and privileged life,” he said. “Pope Francis’ message on clericalism serves the seminarians as a kind of warning if they don’t forget about themselves and serve others.”

At the Vatican Pope Francis tried to lead by example by appointing more laypeople, especially women, to positions of responsibility.

In a significant shift, the pope revised language about who can lead Vatican dicasteries, the departments that make up the Roman Curia, opening the door for laypeople to be at the helm of the church’s governing bodies.

St. John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic constitution “Pastor Bonus” had dictated that the top Vatican offices would be led by a cardinal or archbishop and specified that “matters requiring the exercise of power of governance be reserved to those in holy orders.”

Pope Francis replaced that language in 2022, writing in his constitution “Praedicate Evangelium” that “any member of the faithful can preside over a Dicastery or Office.”

Immediately following the promulgation of “Praedicate Evanglium,” he named three women, including a laywoman, to the Dicastery of Bishops, the Vatican office that helps the pope choose bishops. Before the reform, only cardinals and a few bishops were members of the body.

One of the three women, Salesian Sister Yvonne Reungoat, told CNS that her appointment was “one sign among many” of Pope Francis’ desire to respect the different vocations of the church’s members and incorporate them into its decision-making.

While some priests still exercise their ministry as “a power over others, who then become inferior,” Sister Reungoat said she receives “absolute respect of our vision and equality” from the cardinals and bishops in the dicastery.

Pope Francis, she said, understood the complementary nature of men and women working alongside one another as well as the fruitful collaboration of the church’s lay and religious members – both dynamics that cut down on clericalism.

The listening that took place as part of Pope Francis’ 2021-2024 Synod of Bishops on synodality, she said, allowed “a large, free expression of the sufferings, many sufferings, caused by clericalism and which remain wounds to be healed.”

Merely stating the problem of clericalism and its consequences is not enough to solve it, she said, but “the act of being able to express it and that such (sentiments) are accepted is a step on a journey of change.”

“That doesn’t mean these steps will necessarily change the whole world, but I believe they are irreversible,” she said.

Cardinal Robert Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, told CNS that having women members of the dicastery “contributes significantly to the process of discernment in looking for who we hope are the best candidates to serve the church in episcopal ministry.”

To deter attitudes of clericalism among bishops, he said, “it’s important to find men who are truly interested in serving, in preaching the Gospel, not just with eloquent words, but rather with the example and witness they give.”

In fact, the cardinal said, Pope Francis’ “most effective and important” bulwark against clericalism was his being “a pastor who preaches by gesture.”

Pope Francis tackled the issue “head on through some of the talks he’s given to the Roman Curia,” urging clerics at the highest levels of the church’s hierarchy “to examine ourselves and think about what it means to also be at the service of the church.”

“His message is precisely to inspire, to lead, to push all of us who are members of the clergy to not get so caught up in a lot of the external trappings but look for ways to truly be examples of the mercy, the compassion, the healing of Jesus Christ,” Cardinal Prevost said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Over the course of his pontificate, Pope Francis held up two recurring images: the good shepherd who looks for the lost sheep and lays down his life to save them; and the good Samaritan, who did not ignore the wounded traveler, but helped him without asking for anything in return.

“God thinks like the Samaritan” and “God thinks like the shepherd,” the pope said in his first general audience talk March 27, 2013, calling on everyone to enter “more deeply into the logic of God” in their daily lives.

Pope Francis used the same “logic” of God’s love and protection in his attempts to address the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.

One hallmark of the pope’s approach was the way he listened to survivors and understood “how deep the wounds go,” Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a leading safeguarding expert, told Catholic News Service in 2023.

The pope listened to survivors carefully with great empathy, and he regularly met with them privately, Father Zollner said. He tried to be a model for all Catholics and especially those in authority, he added.

The approach was indicative of the pope’s desire for the church to be a field hospital, Deacon Bernie Nojadera, executive director of the Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told CNS in 2023.

“He modeled humility and was able to say sorry when he was wrong,” Nojadera said. Pope Francis was not afraid to ask for help and seek advice from those “who have been harmed, molested or abused by the church and its members.”

The pope insisted that by meeting personally with survivors and learning “to weep,” leaders would understand the full gravity of abuse and, therefore, want to help the wounded, eradicate the evil and make amends. Thanks to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which the pope established in 2014, it became the norm for survivors to be present and speak to newly appointed bishops when they came to the Vatican for “baby bishops’ school.

The commission, whose task is to advise the pope and empower local churches with best practices, was led since its beginning by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston and included experts in child protection, psychology and survivors of clerical sexual abuse. It became part of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2022 since that dicastery “deals with sexual abuse on the part of members of the clergy,” the pope had explained.

The pope had clearly outlined the roadmap for action in his homily at a Mass celebrated in his residence with a group of clergy sex abuse victims in 2014.

The Lord tells Peter, “‘Go back and feed my sheep’ — and I would add — ‘let no wolf enter the sheepfold,'” the pope had said, asking for “the grace to weep, the grace for the church to weep and make reparation for her sons and daughters who betrayed their mission, who abused innocent persons.”

In that homily, Pope Francis called the sexual abuse of minors not just a grave sin, but a “crime” so “despicable” it is akin to “a sacrilegious cult.” He promised “zero tolerance,” saying “there is no place in the church’s ministry for those who commit these abuses, and I commit myself not to tolerate harm done to a minor by any individual.”

He warned that bishops must foster the protection of minors, “and they will be held accountable,” delivering on that promise five years later with “Vos Estis Lux Mundi,” which revised and clarified norms and procedures for holding bishops and religious superiors accountable.

Pope Francis built on the foundation left by his predecessor, the late-Pope Benedict XVI, said Father Zollner, who is director of the Institute of Anthropology: Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.

Pope Francis put the problem of abuse and the need to protect the most vulnerable “on the agenda of the global church,” Father Zollner said. It was a point the pope drove home when he convened a summit in 2019 for the presidents of bishops’ conferences, representatives of religious orders and heads of Vatican offices demanding concrete action by everyone when an abuse allegation is made.

Mark Joseph Williams, a survivor of clergy sex abuse, who has served as special adviser to Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, told CNS in 2023 that the pope was “a man of mercy” who showed “the global church why it is so critical to listen to the voices of victims/survivors.”

“Most certainly, the synod on synodality journey has much promise to embrace those so hurt by the church,” he said, and, at the same time, to “realize that this same church that failed so many, like me, can be the haven for healing, a place for greater prevention, a sanctuary for sustained justice.”

The synod’s final document acknowledged the crime and sin of clerical sexual abuse and abuse of power, and insisted that a commitment to synodality, particularly to learning to listen and to necessary forms of transparency and accountability, were essential to preventing abuse.

However, like his predecessors, Pope Francis faced repeated criticisms for how he reacted to some allegations of abuse and cover-up leveled against bishops.

During a trip to Chile in 2018, he had strongly defended now-retired Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, who had been accused of covering up for a notorious abuser, the late-Father Fernando Karadima, and told reporters that the people making accusations were liars.

It was only after he returned to Rome that he sent top investigators to Chile to study the clerical sex abuse scandal there, invited survivors to the Vatican for private meetings and called all the country’s bishops to Rome for a meeting, which ended with most of the bishops offering their resignations.

As the scandal in Chile continued to unfold, the Vatican announced that credible allegations of the sexual abuse of a minor had been made against Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington. Pope Francis accepted his resignation from the College of Cardinals in July 2018.

The Vatican released a report in November 2020 on how McCarrick managed to rise to the position of cardinal and archbishop of Washington despite decades of rumors of sexual misconduct and, six months later, the Vatican announced that McCarrick had been found guilty of “solicitation in the sacrament of confession and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.” The pope dismissed him from the priesthood.

The pope also insisted he had not been aware of the serious allegations of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse against a former fellow Jesuit, Father Marko Rupnik, whose mosaics decorate numerous chapels at the Vatican and around the world.

While Father Rupnik had been briefly excommunicated in 2020 for the canonical crime of absolution of an accomplice, the excommunication was lifted after he apparently repented. However, the Society of Jesus expelled the priest from the order in June 2023 for refusing to observe his vow of obedience regarding sanctions, and the pope lifted the statute of limitations a few months later to allow the Vatican to pursue an investigation into abuse allegations.

Nonetheless, Father Zollner said Pope Francis “changed church law more than his predecessors have” regarding abuse.

The pope’s 2016 motu proprio, “As a Loving Mother,” expanded canon law provisions allowing for the removal of bishops and superiors for serious negligence or “lack of diligence” in the exercise of their office, in particular regarding the sexual abuse of minors.

The document, together with “Vos Estis Lux Mundi,” aimed to correct what had been a lack of or unclear procedures for investigating the way a bishop or religious superior complies with norms and clearly expresses the consequences of noncompliance or cover-ups.

The pope also waived the obligation of secrecy for those who report having been sexually abused by a priest and for those who testify in a church trial or process having to do with clerical sexual abuse. While Vatican officials are still obliged to maintain confidentiality, the change removes potential conflicts with civil laws, including on mandatory reporting, and with following civil court orders, such as turning over documents considered as potential evidence.

Abolishing the pontifical secret in cases of sexual violence and abuse of minors by clergy was a fundamental change, Father Zollner said, because it reaffirmed “that state law has to be respected and followed independently from what the church thinks about it and does” regarding its own laws.

In June 2021, Pope Francis 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.

Pope Francis “moved mountains when it comes to the clergy abuse crisis across the entire church,” Williams said. “I have personally felt his healing balm in word and deed.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Centuries of experience dealing with the death, or occasional resignation, of a pope has left the Catholic Church with thorough instructions detailing who has responsibility for planning the funeral, preparing for the election of a new pope and taking care of essential business in the meantime.

The instructions are found in St. John Paul II’s 1996 apostolic constitution, “Universi Dominici Gregis,” which was revised by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 and again just before he resigned in 2013.

The funeral and burial of a pope who dies in office should take place “between the fourth and sixth day after death,” the document said. The exact date is determined at a meeting of all the cardinals able to reach the Vatican immediately after the papal death.

The cardinals also determine when the conclave to elect a new pope should begin, although Pope Benedict’s update of “Universi Dominici Gregis” states that it should be at least 15 days from the death or resignation of the pope and can be no more than 20 days since the vacancy of the papacy.

An earlier start is possible, he said, “if it is clear that all the cardinal electors are present.” Cardinal electors are those who were under the age of 80 on the day the pope died or resigned.

The funeral marks the start of a mandated nine-day period of official mourning. For the next eight days other memorial Masses are celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica. The nine-day period is known as the “novendiales.”

With the death of a pope, most top-level Vatican officials – including the prefects of dicasteries – lose their jobs, but that does not mean most Vatican employees get time off. Regular business continues with dicastery secretaries overseeing the steady flow of paperwork, correspondence and meeting planning.

However, the publication of documents, the nomination of new bishops and the approval of statutes for Catholic universities and religious orders are suspended. Anything that must be issued in the name of the Vatican or in the name of the pope must await the election of a new pope and the re-confirmation or appointment of prefects for the various offices.

The two senior Vatican officials who retain their titles and responsibilities are the “camerlengo” or chamberlain, currently U.S. Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, whose job begins in earnest when a pope dies or resigns, and the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis. The Apostolic Penitentiary is a Vatican court dealing with matters related to the sacrament of confession and to indulgences, so keeping him in office ensures the possibility of absolution for penitents guilty of serious sin and seeking forgiveness.

“Universi Dominici Gregis” also specified that “the almoner of His Holiness will also continue to carry out works of charity in accordance with the criteria employed during the pope’s lifetime.” That position is held by Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who also is prefect of Dicastery for the Service of Charity.

Everything having to do with the funeral and with preparations for the conclave to elect Pope Francis’ successor belongs to the College of Cardinals.

The rites and rituals used — from the formal verification of the pope’s death to the eight memorial Masses after the funeral — are published in the “Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis” (“Funeral Rites of the Roman Pontiff”), originally approved by St. John Paul II in 1998, but published only the day after his death in 2005.

In late 2024, the Vatican released a newer, simplified version on the orders of Pope Francis.

The physician who directs the Vatican health care service provides a civil certification of the pope’s death, including its cause.

But the ritual verification of the pope’s death takes place in the chapel of his residence and is presided over by the chamberlain, assisted by the dean of the College of Cardinals, the master of papal liturgical ceremonies and the physician.

If it ever was a custom to use a silver hammer to tap on the newly deceased pontiff’s forehead to make sure he is dead, it is a long disused practice.

The chamberlain also is responsible for placing seals on the pope’s study and bedroom and officially notifying the cardinal vicar for Rome and the archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Before the conclave, all the cardinals — including those over 80 — participate in “congregations.”

The “general congregation,” with all the cardinals, handles “important matters,” according to “Universi Dominici Gregis,” while “questions of lesser importance which arise on a daily basis or from time to time” are handled by the “particular congregation.”

The document says the cardinals draw lots to determine the three cardinals who will assist the camerlengo by serving three-day terms as members of the “particular congregation.” However, Pope Francis’ apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, “Praedicate Evangelium,” said that “one of these is the Cardinal Coordinator of the Council for the Economy,” currently German Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising.

The general congregation meets under the leadership of the dean, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, and besides setting the date for the funeral and for the conclave, it is responsible for:

— Ensuring that a commission of their members prepares the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican residence where Pope Francis lived, for the cardinals during the conclave. Rooms will be assigned by lot.

— Preparing the Sistine Chapel for the election of a new pope.

— Assigning two clerics “known for their sound doctrine, wisdom and moral authority” to prepare meditations for the cardinals on problems the church faces and on choosing the next pope.

— Approving the expenditures associated with the death of the pope.

— Arranging for the destruction of the papal fisherman’s ring and the lead seal that had marked Pope Francis’ letters.

Although not as secret as the conclave, the cardinals and those assisting them at the meetings of the general congregation take an oath of secrecy regarding “all matters in any way related to the election of the Roman Pontiff or those which, by their very nature, during the vacancy of the Apostolic See, call for the same secrecy.”

During the general congregation meetings, the cardinals have the services of translators working in Italian, Spanish, English, French and German, as well as ushers and other aides.