Pope Francis Dies at 88 Marking the End of a Tumultuous and Divisive Pontificate

By Edward Pentin

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ death this morning marks the end of a modernising and seemingly benign pontificate for most of the world, but for those who have followed it with any closeness, a time of turmoil, disruption and deep division.

Elected on a mandate of reform, Francis set out to make the Church less self-referential and more mission oriented, closer to the faithful and the peripheries, and more relevant to the times. In many ways he achieved this: those who would never give the Catholic Church a second glance, perceiving that she would not accept them, felt accepted and welcomed.

He strove to embrace Muslims, people with disabilities, migrants, the poor and the homeless, opening facilities for the latter in Rome and creating a Vatican department for the poor headed by the papal almoner whom he elevated to the rank of cardinal. His mission, he said, was to transform the Catholic Church into a “field hospital,” tending to people where they are, not judging them but offering them the Lord’s mercy and love instead.

Francis sought to give women more leadership roles in the Church and was noticeably and controversially eager to embrace LGBTQ people, forcefully speaking out against laws criminalizing homosexuality, disturbing many Catholics — especially in Africa — by allowing non-liturgical blessings of same-sex couples, and permitting civil unions, even though previous popes had firmly opposed such changes.

“He’s my hero,” said the singer Elton John in 2014, the first of many other celebrities, politicians, and well known figures — most of whom support liberal positions at odds with the Church’s teaching — who would go on to express their admiration for the Argentine pontiff.

Francis had a clear ideological vision. The Church’s teaching, he wrote in his 2013 manifesto apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), must “radiate forcefully and attractively” but not be based — although it ultimately was — on “specific ideological options.”

He aimed to create a more listening Church, an “inverted pyramid” that takes the People of God as its starting point — in sum, a grand vision of decentralization ostensibly geared towards creating a more democratic, localized Church “permanently in a state of mission” and seemingly capable of dealing with the complexities of the faith and human relationships in the world today.

But critics warned that such an approach was more akin to a Protestant model that departed from the Church’s apostolic tradition, threatening to undermine Rome’s authority, and the hierarchy in general. Cardinals expressed alarm, notably after a synod on the family in 2014 was rigged to produce a radical and modernist ideological outcome.

More significantly, in his eagerness to embrace the progressive tenet of inclusivity and his own, broad concept of mercy, Francis often set aside canonical limits to papal power, especially when it came to defending some of his friends accused of clerical sex abuse. This also applied to areas of the liturgy (on Holy Thursday, he washed the feet of Muslims and women which had previously never been allowed).

He ruled autocratically, not unusual for a pope who has all legislative, executive and judicial powers, but Francis issued more papal decrees, not dissimilar to executive orders, than any pope in modern history.

Under his watch, bishops, priests, religious and laity who had been bearing good fruit in terms of reverence, spiritual life, fidelity to Catholic doctrine, and booming vocations were cancelled or ostracized. “The more spiritual and supernaturally orientated they were, the more persecution they seem to suffer,” a Portuguese priest told Newsmax on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals. “Meanwhile, in other quarters, those who committed abuses against doctrine, moral teaching and the liturgy seemed to go unpunished and were allowed to thrive.”

Francis was criticized for departing from apostolic tradition, not infrequently contradicting, or at least weakening, the Church’s moral teaching and, on occasion, promoting indifferentism, the idea that all religions are valid paths to God – a belief long considered a heresy in the Church as it undermines the unique role of Christ and the Catholic Church in salvation.

Together with his strong belief in what he called “synodality” — a democratization of the Church allowing Catholics, often untrained in theology and with progressive leanings, to have a significant say in the Church’s future — Francis introduced ambiguities and allowed doctrinal confusion to reign with significant consequences.

This became most evident in Germany. A four-year “synodal way” there (2019-2023) led to the German Catholic Church voting to support the blessing of same-sex couples, a push towards the ordination of women as priests, revisions of sexual morality, the abolition of priestly celibacy, and intercommunion with Protestants. The Pope and the Vatican opposed their reforms, but only tacitly, and so they have continued.

Synodality as a whole has remained suspect throughout Francis’ pontificate and has become viewed by many practicing Catholics as simply a vehicle for legitimizing heterodoxy. The Vatican’s former doctrinal chief, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, called the 2023-24 synod on synodality a “hostile takeover of the Church,” while a synod dedicated to the Amazon in 2019 caused uproar when an animist Indian statue, which Francis referred to as a Pachamama, was idolized in the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.

Beyond the Church, Francis spearheaded efforts to engage in global politics. He tried to act as a papal peacemaker, organizing a prayer vigil early in his pontificate to avert the escalation of the conflict in Syria and working behind the scenes to restore US-Cuban diplomatic ties. In May 2023, he sent Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna as his peace envoy to Kiev, Moscow, and Jerusalem to try to resolve the conflicts there. The efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, and unguarded remarks by Francis upset both Ukraine and Israel. But he did much to contribute humanitarian aid to those caught up in the conflicts, sending his almoner, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, on missions to the war-torn regions.

Some of his strongest opposition came from signing a highly controversial secret agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops in 2018. Critics slammed the accord, influenced in its creation by the disgraced former Archbishop of Washington DC Theodore McCarrick, as an “incredible betrayal” and “absolutely incomprehensible” as Beijing further clamped down on religious freedom and would propose episcopal candidates for the Pope to approve. The Vatican said patience was needed for it to bear fruit and highlighted limited successes, but as it waited, it held back from publicly criticizing China’s human rights abuses, or coming to the defence of two prominent Catholics persecuted by the CCP: Jimmy Lai and Cardinal Joseph Zen. Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn called the approach a “disaster” and “demoralizing.”

Francis travelled extensively, visiting over 60 countries. He became the first pontiff to ever set foot in the Arab peninsula (the United Arab Emirates) and Iraq, and was unafraid to travel to dangerous places, visiting Egypt at a time of heightened Islamist terrorism, and the Central African Republic during a civil war. He visited communist Cuba twice, the second time making history by being the first pope to meet the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church since the Great Schism of 1054. For reasons unknown, he never returned to his native Argentina as pope.

Francis’ relationship with the United States was cool at best. Although he made a largely successful visit to the country in 2015, he held a common Latin American grudge against its more prosperous, neoliberal northern neighbour. He had a particular dislike of American conservativism, despite its vigorous defense of Christianity, and expressed a preference early on in his pontificate for more “moderate” (i.e. progressive) bishops in the US. He said in 2019 it was “an honor that Americans attack me.”

The Pope received President Donald Trump at the Vatican in 2017 but his preferred candidate at that election was the socialist populist Bernie Sanders whom Francis invited, against the wishes of Obama-administration diplomats, to speak at the Vatican during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Four years later, his preference for Joe Biden was clear and the two had a close alliance, despite Catholic Biden’s public stance on abortion, same-sex marriage and other issues opposed to the Church’s teaching.

Critics said Francis’ closeness to Democrat-run globalism weakened the Church’s position on critical moral issues such as abortion, gender ideology and a host of other concerns, and that it epitomized his friendship with worldly powers and values in general. His supporters, such as fellow Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, would frequently say they had no other choice but to cooperate with them if they were to have any say in the public square at a time when religion was being steadily “privatized.”

Still, the complicity caused damage. The Pope’s position on the Covid-19 vaccines, insisting that to be vaxed was an “act of love” while having the Vatican stage a conference with Big Pharma CEOs, was just one example of problematic complicity. The Vatican drew especially close to the UN, including its Sustainable Development Goals that advocate contraception and reproductive rights, code for abortion. Under Pope Francis, the Vatican had a close alliance with population control advocates such as the SDGs chief architect Jeffrey Sachs, who became a frequent visitor and trusted adviser.

“All this and more demonstrates a line of obsequiousness to the current system of social control,” said Professor Stefano Fontana director of the Cardinal Van Thuan International Observatory on the Social Doctrine of the Church. The policies that the Church supported, he added, “either by proposing them itself or by remaining silent about their negative aspects, have caused great damage.”

A large part of that complicity and silence owed itself to Church dependence on government funding — something that grew under Francis and a reality that was exposed when the Trump administration effectively shuttered USAID. Some of the strongest reactions to that decision came from the Vatican and US bishops, including Francis’ open letter criticising the Trump administration’s policy on illegal migration. Catholic charities received millions of dollars from USAID, and probably many other similar agencies around the word, affecting the Church’s moral voice as the funding naturally came with explicit or implicit conditions.

Francis was mysteriously partial to those whose views were diametrically opposed to the Church, and freely received in private audience such figures as the philanthropist Alex Soros, former US President Bill Clinton, and pro-abortion Catholic politicians Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden. He praised the abortionist and Italian politician Emma Bonino, honouring her with a private visit armed with flowers and chocolates. He had had little time for right-wing politicians, and never granted interviews to conservative media or orthodox Catholic media outlets.

Within the Vatican, he mostly consulted a small coterie of close advisers, creating a parallel governing structure and resulting in changes that took many cardinals by surprise, perhaps the most significant being when he arbitrarily amended the catechism to fully reject the death penalty.

Much of Francis’ pontificate could be read through his appointments. He promoted some worthy candidates such as Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a popular and able Franciscan, whom he appointed the Patriarch of Jerusalem. But at other times he ignored protocol and personally hand-picked bishops, who more often than not tended to be Churchmen of dubious moral character.

Regarding structural reforms of the Roman Curia, the Pope merged several dicasteries into “super-dicasteries,” demoting the once supreme doctrinal office and promoting evangelization instead. He overhauled Vatican communications, and successfully reformed some aspects of Vatican finances even as scandals continued to mount under his watch. One led to the trial and unprecedented conviction of one of his closest collaborators, Cardinal Angelo Becciu. A Sardinian diplomat, Becciu has always maintained his innocence and insisted Francis knew about all his actions.

In many ways Francis was his own worst enemy in this regard. He allowed himself to be hampered by an “old guard” who were unwilling to change their management of finances for fear of exposing them, and by his own autocratic management style that critics say fostered a climate of fear, especially of retribution, and demoralization. His formal structural overhaul of the Roman Curia, while praised for emphasizing evangelization, was criticized for centralizing authority through the Secretariat of State while relegating doctrinal authority to national bishops’ conferences, a move viewed by some as leading to doctrinal inconsistencies.

Francis showed relatively little interest in liturgical issues, but he continued what he and his aides said was an “irreversible” path of reform that they claimed was consistent with the Second Vatican Council. However, his decision to suppress the traditional Latin Mass in 2021 courted significant controversy, even from those who did not adhere to Tradition. Welcomed by supporters who, like Francis, saw many traditional Catholics as dissenters from his pontificate, the Pope’s decree Traditionis Custodes shocked adherents of the old Mass in its severity. Many bishops initially ignored its instructions.

So how will history likely judge him? Under Francis’ leadership, the Catholic Church drew closer to worldly powers and non-believers, but arguably further away from the practicing faithful, especially in the West. Numbers of Catholics worldwide rose, but Church attendance and vocations were down, and most people during his pontificate continued to look elsewhere for salvation.

The pontificate bore fruit, but perhaps not the fruit wished for by Francis as he unwittingly revealed much inner corruption almost by default. With a progressive pope like Francis, many cardinals, bishops, and priests who dissented from Church teaching viewed him as one their own, and so felt emboldened to reveal themselves.

As the conservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke, known for his respectful criticisms of the Pope, once put it: Francis “brought out into the open all the terrible corruption, sexual, financial, doctrinal.” He “opened up a lot of people’s eyes to realise how lethal and how harmful” was the “rebellion” that took place after the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, Cardinal Burke added. He also noted how, by suppressing the traditional liturgy that had been celebrated in the Church for centuries, it made Catholics appreciate it more. “Adherence to tradition is growing stronger every day,” he observed.

The Canadian Catholic writer Hilary White called this pontificate the “Great Clarification,” a period when a “polite middle way” of compromise with the modern world — a feature of all the pontificates Francis, Benedict XVI and John Paul II — began to die. It was a middle way, or status quo, White wrote, that “has no place in the crystalline world of absolute truth in which God dwells and which the Church is supposed to model here on earth.” It has never worked, White said, as the Church is supposed to be a beacon of truth in a world of lies and deception. Francis, unintentionally, through the harm caused by such a close collaboration with the modern world and its values, helped shine a light on this basic truth.

Francis also exposed a false understanding of the papacy that had grown up in the Church, especially since Pope John Paul II, but which dated back to Pope Pius IX in the 19th century. The English philosopher John Rist called it “creeping infallibility” leading to a kind of “papal absolutism” or “hyperpapalism,” and culminating in the kind of autocratic papacy that Francis embodied.

Francis may, therefore, be best remembered as the chief human protagonist of an apokalupsis — Greek for uncover or reveal. He provided the Church with the opportunity to address problems that would probably not have arisen under a less disruptive pontificate. That won’t of course excuse the mayhem, disunity, and anger he generated among faithful Catholics, but without the errors and malfeasance that occurred under his watch, the problems might never have come to light.

And for all the criticisms levelled against him, he will also leave a positive mark, showing the world, albeit often illicitly, a central aspect of the Catholic Church which is that the hand of God’s mercy extends to everyone, especially those who most need it, if they would only turn to Christ for help and forgiveness.

All this naturally has repercussions for the next conclave. Given the turmoil and divisions of Francis’ pontificate, the chances of the cardinals voting for a moderate, bridge-building, conservative candidate remain relatively high. This would align with the old Roman saying that a “fat pope follows a thin one,” meaning that the cardinals tend to choose a pope quite different to his predecessor.

They will also probably be looking for someone to make a serious effort to confront the internal Church problems that have existed for many years and which, through the Lord’s permissive will, Francis’ tumultuous pontificate brought to light.

This is the updated version of an article that was published in the April 2025 edition of Newsmax Magazine.