I remember distinctly the day Jorge Bergoglio was elected pope. Working for a diocese, I was in the middle of a meeting with an older woman and a deacon. They wanted to know if they could start a support group for families with members who were same-sex attracted. The woman’s son was a practicing homosexual, and she wanted to support him in his lifestyle (i.e., endorse sin). I was in the process of putting the kibosh on this idea when we were interrupted, “White smoke!”
Like most American Catholics, I had no idea who Jorge Bergoglio was, so I was open-minded about the new Francis pontificate. But before long I was having misgivings. Only a few months into his pontificate, Francis uttered the infamous “Who am I to judge?” line, and just a few weeks later, that older woman and the deacon were back in my office, insisting that the Church had changed. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to have their pro-LGTBQ group? Even the pope was on their side now!
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Picking up my kibosh where I’d left off, I explained why the group they envisioned could not be approved by the diocese, giving an explanation of what the Church actually teaches about sexuality as a rational basis. I concluded with the soon-to-become-familiar “I think what Pope Francis really meant was…,” but I did have an uneasy feeling that this pontificate was going to make my job a lot harder. Little did I know.
A social convention dictates that we not speak ill of the dead. The deceased person can’t defend himself, and we are liable to hurt the feelings of his mourning loved ones. I think we can all agree that there are times when this social convention is put aside; one of those times is when the person in question was a well-known figure who had taken on the mantle of a great responsibility and wielded power that had a profound impact on the world. It would be not just dishonest but silly to obfuscate the sad reality:
Francis was a terrible pope.
Examples of the problematic nature of his pontificate abound, from his offhand comments, to his choice of close advisors, to his official acts. It would be impossible to list them all, but a small sampling should suffice to demonstrate the failings of his reign.
Who among us did not start to dread his travel by plane? These trips seemed to yield the most notorious sampling of his opinions, ranging from the famous “Who am I to judge?” to the denigrating “Catholics don’t have to be like rabbits” which early on sowed widespread confusion about the Church’s teaching on sexuality and human life. Then of course there were his many obsessive and outdated criticisms of traditional Catholics, which would have been funny for their stereotypical nature if they weren’t so hurtful to sincere and faithful souls.
They say “personnel is policy,” and the radical policies of Pope Francis were reflected in his close advisors. He consistently surrounded himself with questionable and even downright evil men, including Theodore McCarrick, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, Fr. Marko Rupnik, and Fr. James Martin. Any pope can be prone to mistakes when appointing men to high positions, but Francis seemed to delight in having some of the worst people as his closest confidants.
And then there were his official acts, which are the most scandalous because they are the most authoritative. There’s Amoris Latitia, which used tortured logic to open up the reception of Holy Communion to those who were in a state of grave sin. Then there was Traditionis Custodes, which was a petty attempt to crush the very demographic in the Church that was growing, simply because it didn’t conform to his 1960’s version of Catholicism. In 2019 Francis signed the Abu Dhabi Declaration, which claimed that God willed various religions and put Islam on essentially the same footing as Catholicism. Disturbingly, we don’t even know all the details of his scandalous deal with the Chinese government, because it’s been kept secret from us.
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This list could go on ad saecula saeculorum. In fact, I’d wager I’ve forgotten more of the scandalous things Francis did than I can remember. On the few occasions that he said something undoubtedly Catholic, like a statement against abortion, relieved Catholics, in a special variation of Stockholm syndrome, heaped him with extravagant praise.
Those same Catholics will try to gaslight us now into thinking Francis was a great pope. Maybe they supported his progressive agenda, or maybe they’re afraid to recognize the possibility that a pope can simply be a bad one. For the latter group, it’s worth rewriting history, pretending Francis was something he was not. But his words and actions, confusing though they sometimes were, speak for themselves.
What a penance this pontificate has been for Catholics.
Not that everything Francis did was bad; we should be thankful for his efforts for peace among warring nations, particularly between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Palestine. But on the whole, the past twelve years were a disaster for the Church. It will likely take years or even decades to recover from the damage.
