The departure of the most significant personality of the 21st century

Flying back from a trip to South Korea in August 2014, Pope Francis said in a conversation with journalists: "In two or three years, I will return to the Father's house." However, that return happened on Easter Monday 2025, when from Vatican the news arrived that the Roman bishop Francis died at 7.35 in the morning. The public was flooded with messages of mourning, analyzes of his pontificate also appeared quickly, but millions of ordinary people, Christians and Muslims, atheists and of various faiths, wrote - a good man is gone. If only that was the judgment of the world about someone who had so much power in his hands and so many opportunities for that power to change him, and it didn't, it would have been quite enough. And the good list is much longer.

photo: ap photo

MERCY AS TRUTH AND DOCTRINE

American Jesuit Thomas Rees, a journalist, remembered on the tenth anniversary of the Pope's pontificate how, when Pope Francis was elected in March 2013, he sat in front of the BBC cameras, having no idea what to say. "All I knew about Jorge Bergoglio was that my friends from Latin America, the liberation theologians and the Jesuits, disliked him, calling him conservative and authoritarian. I was not alone in this ignorance."

And it didn't. Many were confused - who is this man? The public had been speculating with names for days before, but his almost never came up. How will the first pope from the southern hemisphere, the first Jesuit and the first non-European head of the Vatican behave?

From the very beginning - already when he went out on the balcony to greet the people gathered in the central Vatican square, without red shoes and red cane, asking them to pray before God for him before he blessed them, and then joking that the cardinals were looking for the new bishop of Rome at the end of the world - Pope Francis showed that he is different from his predecessors.

It didn't take long, and it was clear: the cardinals elected a pope who puts mercy first - answering the question of whether there is an opposition between truth and mercy or between doctrine and mercy, he once said: "Mercy is doctrine and truth."

They elected a pope who will empower the laity, open the Church, turn the Vatican plateau into an accommodation for migrants...

And the big question is - could they have predicted how their brother would behave when he became the first man of the Catholic Church.

He was considered much stricter and more conservative when he was at the table in Buenos Aires. And there are many religious dignitaries who, when they get more power, get lost in the labyrinths of (worldly and secular) authorities, become unquestionable to themselves and forget not only the basic principles of faith but others, especially those left behind and wounded. With Pope Francis, it was exactly the opposite - the fact that she was on the throne made him more compassionate and open to the world. He was revolutionary in that. He kept his modesty.

"He was a pope you could approach," Thomas Bremer, former professor of ecumenical theology at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Münster, told Vreme.

And then he remembers some moments, pictures, anecdotes about Pope Francis: as soon as he was elected, he leaves the Sistine Chapel with the cardinals, while the others get on the bus, a car is waiting for him, of course he refuses to go alone, sits on the bus with others and the photos reach the media - all the red caps are photographed from behind, and suddenly - a white one; on those days he pays the bill himself in the home for priests where he was housed before the Conclave began; he quickly calls the seller at the newsstand in Buenos Aires - where he used to buy daily newspapers and whom he told to keep them until he returns from Rome - to tell him: "Don't keep them anymore, I've become pope."

Stories about his phone calls quickly spread to the public - he would read letters sent to him by believers and then call them. One of them, the Italian Michele Ferri, told how someone called him from an unknown number for the third time in one day. When he finally answered, he heard: "Hello, Mikel, this is Pope Francis." A month before, Michele's brother was killed in a gas station robbery. Desperate, he turned to the Pope to tell him that he would never forgive his brother's killers. After the conversation, the Pope asked if he could also speak with Michele's mother. "I could hear him writing down numbers as I dictated her phone to him. He called her a few days later."

The Pope went among the people, meeting the sick and wounded. When he was chosen as a Time magazine personality, part of the explanation read: "He hugs the ones you wouldn't even look at." He simply changed the way the pope behaves.

"On the one hand, it was about his personality, but perhaps this has much deeper consequences for the papacy than was initially thought. The service of the pope has become more human. It is a problem for everyone to maintain a balance between authority - he is the leader of one billion and 400 thousand Catholics in the world, that is a huge power - and the Christian teaching that says that he is a limited man. In this balance, he was a role model, he set the path that his successor should follow," Bremer points out.

Pope Francis lived in the world, not by or above it. He spoke more often about the deep causes of contemporary problems, and not about the consequences, without endearing himself to either the political or economic elites. It was enough to see how he treats people, wash the feet of prisoners and hug refugees, hear him talk about women who have had abortions or the LGBT population, and it would immediately become clear that this is not about some kind of simple, good form of a church dignitary or the need to please (part of) the public, but about authentically lived faith and compassion. Hence, his calls for peace in Gaza, Ukraine or South Sudan did not sound like pious phrases, which can often be the case.

"He was the pope of closeness, he wanted a Church that goes out among people, and not one that passively waits for people to come to it. He spoke of the Church as a field hospital that is not afraid to enter people's lives even when they are difficult and chaotic. In fact, first of all when people are struggling with poverty, relationships with others, their sexuality and if they do not live in accordance with the Church's doctrine," the Vatican correspondent of the Dutch newspaper "Nederlands Dagblad" told "Vreme" and theologian Hendro Munsterman.

For him, the most important legacy of Pope Francis is twofold - first, that fundamental decision to get closer to people, and then synodality, that is, the renewal of the Church that no longer divides the faithful into clergy and laity, but sees them as jointly responsible for church life.

"We are currently in the midst of reform. We had a three-year Synod, which ended in October last year, but the implementation of synodal decisions is yet to come," added Munsterman. And it probably depends on the successor of Pope Francis how and to what extent they will be implemented.

This is precisely the attitude of Thomas Bremer: in the structural sense, the most important discovery of Pope Francis is the emphasis on synodality - he invited the laity to the Synod of Bishops for the first time - while in the pastoral sense, his most important legacy is going to the periphery, among the rejected.

"He was not a 'prince of the Church', one who plays the game of the important and powerful. He was aware that he had authority, but he used it to support those without privileges. The way he lived - not in the Apostolic Palace (thereby breaking a decades-long tradition), but in a side lodge for guests and the kind of car he drove - shows that he tried to remain normal and that he recognized the authority of the rejected, those who have no authority in this world," points out Bremer.

photo: ap photo

RESISTANCE TO GOSPEL MESSAGES

The resistance he encountered in the Church itself was enormous, be it from the Vatican structures, or from more conservative Catholics in Poland, America or Croatia...

Perhaps an illustrative, personally experienced miniature would convey it well. The signatory of these lines found herself in the Vatican in 2016, at a seminar for journalists from all over the world. The speakers were professors and theologians from one of the Catholic theological faculties there, bishops and cardinals. At one of the sessions, a certain journalist asked a very influential cardinal what he thought about the possibility of receiving communion for remarried couples (in the Catholic Church, those who have remarried after a divorce cannot receive communion), which the pope had previously discussed with journalists on the plane. Coldly, with a cynical smile, the cardinal answered us: "The fact that Jose Mario Bergoglio talks at 10000 meters above sea level is not my problem."

"Of course there was resistance among believers, especially in the USA, but the biggest resistance came from the ranks of the clergy, especially among younger priests," Munsterman believes. Why? Because Pope Francis required them to walk with their people, told them that shepherds should "smell like their sheep", not just tell people what to do, but be a part of their lives. It's a completely different way of shaping and understanding the priestly ministry than what they were taught in seminaries," adds Munsterman, continuing that there was a shift from orthodoxy to orthopraxy - from merely correctly pronounced teaching to correct action. And Francis was the pope of orthopraxy. That way of leading the Church represented a challenge for many who were taught that the most important thing is to transmit the doctrine correctly and that the essence of the Church is the preservation of pure dogma.

Simply, Pope Francis advocated and loved the Church that goes out into the world and thought that it was better to be soiled but sick of self-obsession.

"His message was nothing but the message of the Gospel. So if you had a problem with this pope, then you had a problem with Jesus," says Munsterman.

When it comes to the resistance of the clergy, Bremer also states that the Pope's modesty was a finger in the eye of those who are used to enjoying luxury, the bishops who live "courtly style".

Finally, for conservative church trends, he was excessively, almost unforgivably open and liberal. As one American analyst of the Catholic clergy noted, there was an irony in how conservatives used the freedom brought by Pope Francis to attack him for allowing free debate, concluding: "Those who previously branded anyone who questioned the actions or teachings of John Paul and Benedict as apostates now themselves became vocal in their dissent. 'Loyalists' became rebels, showing that their true loyalty was not to papacy, but according to their own views."

Speaking about the criticisms of the conservative movement against Pope Francis, German Cardinal Walter Kasper said at one time that he did not remember such an organized resistance directed against a pope who wanted to bring about changes.

Liberals, again, saw him as too conservative – although he deeply sympathized with those on the fringes, did he change anything they expected? Married people still cannot become priests, priests are still only men, the Church's teaching on abortion or same-sex marriage has not changed. Although he was criticized by feminists for many things, Pope Francis introduced changes that in the long run opened the door for women to various roles within the Vatican. For the first time in history, women were given a seat on the 70-member body that participates in the election of bishops, as well as on the 15-member Council charged with overseeing the Vatican's finances.

Even at the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis said that he would not obsessively deal with issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage because it is known what the Church teaches about it. But he changed his attitude towards man, as well as the priorities of church criticism - now they were at the expense of unregulated capitalism and unequal distribution of wealth, those who wage wars and arms dealers, a culture that treats people as expendable goods...

DIVISION IN THE CHURCH

What did he fail at? Professor Bremer believes that Pope Francis did not solve the problem of clericalism (after all, he himself was part of it), and that he did not succeed in reforming the Roman Curia. When the days of mourning are over, there will certainly be a lot of talk about it.

WHAT NEXT POPE FRANCIS?

There are many reasons for the new pope to be different, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but, according to Munstermann, Pope Francis has laid a foundation that cannot be broken: "The next pope will have to continue on the path of synodality. Because the synodal process has clearly shown that this is the future of the Church and there is no going back. Also, he will have to understand that the Church in the third millennium is a pastoral church, close to people in everyday life."

Bremer again points out that the synodal path is irreversible in Germany, but the attitudes of Catholics in, say, Western Europe are quite different compared to Africa or South America. He also points out that the Church is divided on these issues - and this division goes far.

SERBIA, THE VISIT THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

When it comes to relations with other religions, as well as ecumenical ones, Pope Francis deeply respected others and was also open to dialogue. It will also be recorded that a pope proposed the establishment of a mixed Orthodox-Catholic commission that examined in detail the life of a man who had already been beatified by the previous pope.

During the lifetime of Pope Francis, Cardinal Stepinac was not canonized. Just imagine some patriarch of the Orthodox Church setting up a mixed commission because the Catholic Church or the Jewish community has evidence that the future saint is not worthy of his halo. In short, Serbia missed the visit of one of the most important figures of the 21st century.

photo: ap photo

WORLD HERITAGE

Finally, the aforementioned Cardinal Casper once said that the Catholic Church had long had a very clear doctrine on ethical issues, but that charity was hidden. And then Pope Francis came to openly live and preach it. Hence, he gave, especially in times hungry for mercy and compassion, an important lesson not only to his successor, but to all religious dignitaries, but also to people in general.

Also, his insistence on synodality came at a time when the Orthodox Church, from which this principle originates, generally does not live that synodality, whether it is about the local churches from the inside, or about the mutual relations of the churches. Pope Francis' commitment to authentic dialogue and an attempt to limit the power of church leadership comes at a time of power grabs by both secular and religious leaders. By the way, the Pope did not hesitate to criticize the Trump administration for the deportation of migrants and to say in a letter to the American bishops that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were migrants and refugees; he did not even hesitate to speak with the Russian Patriarch Kirill, although he harshly and reasonably criticized him, considering that not all doors can be closed; he did not hesitate to persistently call for peace in Gaza and Ukraine. He talked about Gaza often. Every evening, for a year and a half, he called the only remaining Catholic priest in Gaza to ask how he could help the people there. He used to call him several times a day. In an interview, a journalist asks him - what do you say to him every day, and Franja answers: "I listen."

He knew how to listen. And when he spoke, he spoke clearly and warmly. It simply should not have been translated. And it wasn't that he couldn't do otherwise (his encyclicals - whether he dealt with the environmental crisis or relations between people - are deep philosophical and theological essays), but that he didn't want to. Because that was also a way to bring the Church, far away from people, closer to them.

He tried to maintain a balance between leadership and service (believing that true leadership is service), between liberal and conservative currents, between fidelity to church teaching and fidelity to man who suffers and searches. Hence, it is certain that he was crucified, which means that he fulfilled the essence of the Christian life.