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Pope Francis Leaves Behind Complex Legacy
On Easter Sunday, Pope Francis was wheeled out to offer the traditional blessing of pontiffs to tens of thousands of Catholics in St. Peter’s Square. His voice was raspy, and he seemed tired and weak.
Usually, the Roman pontiff offers an urbi et orbi (to the city of Rome and to the world) apostolic blessing on major feasts. But this year, Archbishop Diego Ravelli read Francis’s address, declaring that “Love has triumphed over hatred, light over darkness and truth over falsehood. Forgiveness has triumphed over revenge.” (READ MORE: The Death of Pope Francis)
The pope just managed to greet the faithful briefly. “Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter.”
That was yesterday. Then, this morning, the pope quietly passed away at 7:35 a.m. local time.
In some ways, it was a surprise. Pope Francis was supposed to be on the upswing after his battle with pneumonia in February and March. Yes, he was frail, but it looked like he would recover. He had begun filling his schedule with visits to St. Peter’s; he met with King Charles and Queen Camilla some 12 days ago, and with Vice President JD Vance just yesterday. (RELATED: King Charles’ Easter Message Accelerates Britain’s Fall)
On the other hand, it seemed somewhat clear that death was probably not all that far away for the 88-year-old pontiff. It was a cerebral stroke and cardiocirculatory collapse that finally took him.
Francis’s Divisive Legacy
Pope Francis, of course, leaves behind a somewhat divisive legacy. His 12-year papacy was nothing if not “unconventional.” Jesuit Jorge Bergoglio made the history books by the very act of being elected as the first Latin American pontiff, and then proceeded to govern the Church in ways that were somewhat at odds with his more conservative predecessors, Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
As the New York Times noted, Francis was a champion for “migrants, the marginalized and the health of the planet,” and “reached out…to alienated gay Catholics.” He opened the door to conversations about married priests and a female diaconate — topics famously discussed vigorously during his Synod on Synodality — but was content to leave priests celibate and women without clerical roles. (READ MORE: Requiescat in Pace, Pope Francis)
As Francis X. Rocca observed in the Atlantic, “Francis’s improvisations [in front of journalists] didn’t always sit easily with his predecessors’ teachings. Often vague and imprecise, his comments led to fierce arguments over interpretation that polarized the Church.” His famous “Who am I to judge?” comment, for instance, prompted some Catholics to condemn him for his apparent tolerance for gay priests, and had others defending him as having meant the comment more generally.
When it came to international politics, Francis did not hesitate to jump into the fray. At one point (in 2019), he “got on his hands and knees before the warring leaders of South Sudan’s government and its opposition, kissing their shoes and imploring them to make peace.” Even in his last address to the faithful, Francis called for a ceasefire between the “people of Gaza” and Israel and urged Ukraine and Russia to come to the table to “achieve a just and lasting peace.”
And yet, to more conservative Catholics — especially those who love the older forms of the liturgy and language of the Catholic Church — Pope Francis could be simultaneously unpredictable and incredibly strict. He was more lenient than his predecessors towards the Society of Saint Pius X (an irregular group of priests committed to offering the Latin Mass), but then limited the celebration of the Latin Mass in June 2021 with his motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, relegating it to chapels and gyms, preventing it from gaining a foothold in parish churches.
In his personal life, the pontiff seems to have been devout. He was known, for instance, for making random and unannounced visits (in addition to his planned visits after his Apostolic trips) to Santa Maria Maggiore, the Papal Basilica where the crib of Bethlehem is preserved, to pray in front of In fact, he would do so so frequently that security at the church had to develop a protocol for when the pope showed up unannounced, and kept his prie-dieu easily accessible.
He adopted the name of the poor man of Assisi with a vengeance, declining the traditional red ermine cape worn by papal electees, and explaining that he wanted “a poor Church, for the poor.” Just weeks after his election in 2013, he celebrated Holy Thursday’s Mass at “a prison in Rome, washing and kissing the feet of 12 inmates as part of the liturgy.”
As Romans prepare to attend his funeral, they will be attending a liturgy Francis planned without many of the more pompous rites typically reserved for papal funerals. The Holy Father wanted to be buried simply in a tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore between the Pauline and Sforza chapels. “The tomb must be in the ground; simple, without any particular decoration and with the sole inscription: Franciscus.”
There is a tendency in modern life to criticize freely. We seem, sometimes, to have forgotten the very basic social rule that one does not speak ill of the dead. Such rules exist for a reason. The dead, after all, cannot defend themselves. No one denies that Pope Francis was, like most of us, an imperfect man. Sometimes he made imprudent blunders; at other times, he was wildly misunderstood by both his friends and his enemies. But unlike the rest of us, he was Papa to more than a billion souls, and, as such, the soul of Jorge Bergoglio deserves our prayers.
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The post Pope Francis Leaves Behind Complex Legacy appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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