Pope Francis’ famous exhortation to Catholic youth just months after being elected the 266th pope of the Catholic Church in March 2013 was “Hagan lio!” — “make a mess!” Twelve years later, upon his death Easter Monday morning at age 88, it’s fair to say that Francis took his own advice, making a mess of his pontificate and leaving the Catholic Church in a state of confusion and disarray.
When he ascended the throne of Saint Peter as the first Jesuit pope and first pontiff to hail from outside Europe in over a thousand years, Francis caused a stir. He eschewed the pomp and circumstance of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, donning simpler clerical attire, refusing to take up residence in the papal palace, and referring to himself simply as “the bishop of Rome.” Here, it seemed, was a populist pope, a man of the people who not only promised to clean up the corruption in the Holy See but went out of his way to embrace the poor, the disfigured, the downtrodden — and made sure to be seen doing so.
To many Catholics, he was an unknown. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio, Francis was politically on the left, with strong anti-American and anti-conservative tendencies that would manifest themselves in the years to come. But he also had a reputation in Argentina for personal austerity and humility, doctrinal conservatism, and working closely with the poor. It was possible, in those very early days, to imagine that he could be a pontiff to bring together the warring factions of the church and forge a path into the 21st century for a united Catholic Church.
But it wasn’t to be. Early on in Francis’ pontificate there were signs of the chaos, confusion, and division that would come to define his papacy. What even many devout Catholics didn’t know in 2013 was that Francis’s past was checkered with scandals, including attempts to shield sex abusers from justice in Argentina, and that, as longtime Vatican observer Damian Thompson has written, Francis would govern Rome as an autocrat whose “rule is shaped more by his rages and simmering resentments than by any theological agenda.”
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