David Lantigua, associate professor of theology and the William W. and Anna Jean Cushwa Co-Director of Cushwa Center for the Study of America Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, researches Catholicism's role in the Americas, social justice and human rights issues. Lantigua shares his thoughts on how Pope Francis led the papacy with humility and determination:
"Francis is the pope of many firsts: he is the first Jesuit pope, the first South American pope, and the first pope to write a social encyclical on the environment. He is also the first pope of the twenty-first century who did not attend and participate in the momentous global meeting of over 2,000 bishops known as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). With nearly sixty percent of those bishops at Vatican II coming from outside Europe, and nearly half of those outside Europe from Latin America, the papacy of Francis appears to be a sign of the times for a religion that comprises one-fifth of the world’s population, most of which resides outside of Western Europe and in the global South.
"Like Pope Benedict XVI before him, Francis has interpreted Vatican II as a much-needed reform of the modern Catholic Church to authentically proclaim the gospel to a world starving for hope after the tremendous loss of moral credibility due to the clergy sex abuse scandal. To pursue this Herculean task of rebuilding the Church in the third millennium, Francis has followed in the radical footsteps of his medieval namesake from 12th-century Assisi. He has vividly embraced the poor and the planet, and advocated for peace and nonviolence without ignoring conflict and a convergent polycrisis—ecological, political, economic and epidemiological. His resolute, sometimes stinging, stances on specific pastoral and moral issues have generated outspoken critics and declared enemies both inside and outside the Church.
"True reform, according to Pope Francis, is an antidote to clericalism, which he has consistently identified as the greatest internal threat to a self-enclosed Church departing from the mission of love and mercy. Reform neither ditches tradition nor conforms to the Zeitgeist of Western cultural progress. Rather, it relies on the apostolic tradition and the sense of the faithful as authentic sources for renewing ecclesial faith on the journey through history. Respectively, evangelical poverty and popular piety, a mainstay of Francis’s papal writings from Evangelii gaudium (2013) to Dilexit nos (2024), open the life of God’s Spirit for the authentic reform of the Church. Francis has challenged the whole Church, beginning with bishops and priests, to imitate Jesus Christ and be among the people they serve, especially in the trenches and margins. His preamble to the 2022 constitution reforming the Roman Curia (Praedicate Evangelium), a centuries-old governing body often depicted with the sterile bureaucratic secrecy of the recent Conclave film, identifies the role of the Church as bearing “witness to the mercy that she herself has graciously received.”
"When asked who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio in an interview after becoming pope in 2013, Francis began by saying in humility, “I am a sinner.” The experience of receiving God’s mercy of forgiveness as a sinner or God’s healing touch as a neighbor in need are catalysts for Christian discipleship, biblically portrayed in Francis’s favorite gospel stories like the conversion of St. Matthew the tax collector or the parable of the compassionate Samaritan. The act of divine mercy toward human frailty, miserando (mercy or “mercy-ing”), belongs at the center of the Church’s ministry and Francis has made it the motto of both his episcopal and papal coat of arms during the last three decades.
"Pope Francis has taught us that "mercy-ing" is not just an individual action but a great social virtue that takes political form through a solidarity desperately needed in today’s polarization, social isolation, cancel culture and bullyism. He teaches and lives out his deep conviction that mercy is not about paternalism over the needy, but about humble solidarity shared among friends, sometimes even enemies, as Christ taught his disciples. Media images throughout Francis’s papacy show him touching and kissing the severely handicapped, the disfigured, the imprisoned, beginning with stateless migrants in Lampedusa in his first visit as pope outside of Rome. From choosing not to wear a jeweled pectoral cross and requesting a simple wooden casket for burial, Francis has symbolized his accompaniment of simple and poor peoples from the world’s peripheries by making their wisdom and faith in the living God an essential part of proclaiming the gospel today."