VATICAN CITY—Among Pope Francis’ many moments of striking symbolism, one of the most unexpected occurred in 2019 when he met with the leaders of South Sudan’s rival factions at the Vatican. In a scene that stunned observers, the then 82-year-old pontiff dropped to his knees and kissed their feet, imploring them to keep the peace. The moment was emblematic of his belief in personal diplomacy, where grand, physical gestures often replaced formal pronouncements. In a video of the incident, you can hear the labored breathing of the pope, who had had part of a lung removed as a young man.
Francis, 88, died on Monday, one day after Easter. He had endured an extended hospital stay for pneumonia earlier this year, but even after being released, he remained in fragile health.
That scene with the Sudanese leaders exemplified not only the humility for which Francis was famous but also the emphasis he laid on reconciliation and unity. One of his signature phrases was the exhortation to “build bridges, not walls.” And one of his most notable interfaith initiatives was his collaboration with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, widely considered the highest authority in Sunni Islam, which culminated in a landmark declaration on “human fraternity” emphasizing dialogue and peaceful coexistence with the Muslim world.
Within his own church, Francis sought to welcome and include certain groups who felt excluded or marginalized, including divorced Catholics and LGBT Catholics. He promoted women to unprecedented levels of authority at the Vatican and included them in consultations about church teaching that had until then been limited to the all-male hierarchy. He brought the social concerns of Catholics in developing countries to the forefront of the papacy’s agenda and worked to prevent a schism in the church in China.
Fostering unity is essential to a pope’s job description. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an authoritative compendium of teaching, the pope “is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.”
While the late pope was an electrifying leader, he was also a polarizing one and left his church more divided than he found it—both ideologically and geographically. In his efforts to forge a more welcoming church, he stirred up controversies that pitted African conservatives against Western liberals, laypeople against the hierarchy, and Catholics who emphasize doctrine on personal morality against those who prioritize social justice. His overtures to Beijing and Moscow alienated members of his own flock in China and Eastern Europe, respectively.
To be sure, a worldwide organization with more than 1.4 billion members spanning vastly different cultures and traditions will inevitably harbor tensions, especially in an era of rapid global change. The late pope inherited divisions between conservatives and progressives that had been deepening since the 1960s, when the reforms following the Second Vatican Council and the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, which forbade contraception, sparked enduring conflicts over authority, morality, and church governance.
These, in turn, echoed earlier struggles between 19th-century Ultramontanists, who sought to strengthen papal centralization, and reformers who favored greater local autonomy. But Francis’ reign represented a notable shift: For decades, theological conservatives had looked to Rome as a bulwark of doctrinal continuity. Now, it was the progressives who found their champion on St. Peter’s throne, while conservatives increasingly viewed the papacy with unease. The ambiguity of some of Francis’ pronouncements on church teaching—most famously his rhetorical question about gays in the priesthood, “Who am I to judge?”—set conservatives and progressives wrangling with each other over how to interpret them.
Francis’ leadership bore traces of his early exposure to Argentina’s populist politics, particularly in his tendency to challenge entrenched elites, even within the church. He frequently positioned himself as the defender of the faithful against an out-of-touch hierarchy. He warned that bishops who pursued money and careerism were wolves “who devour the flesh of their own sheep” and scorned “airport bishops” whose globe-trotting kept them remote from their flocks. His yearly Christmas addresses to Vatican officials became famous for their biting rebukes, accusing them of bureaucratic inertia, arrogance, and even “spiritual Alzheimer’s.”
The late pope’s combative style inflamed the church’s ongoing crisis over clerical sexual abuse of minors and sparked one of the biggest scandals of his reign, over his support for a Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse. The pope was recorded on video telling pilgrims from Chile at the Vatican that those who protested the bishop were “stupid” and urging them not to be “fooled by left-wingers.” Later, on a visit to the country, he dismissed the accusations against the bishop as unproven “calumny,” which earned an extraordinary rebuke of the pope by his leading adviser on abuse prevention, Cardinal Seán O’Malley. Following the uproar, the pope accepted the Chilean bishop’s resignation and took a number of other measures, including new rules for investigating bishops who commit or cover up abuse, although critics said that the process was not sufficiently transparent.
Francis’ primary vehicle for change in the church was the Synod of Bishops, which Pope St. Paul VI had founded in 1965 as a representative body of prelates to advise the pontiff. Under Francis, the synod evolved into a platform where long-settled debates were reopened, with discussions spanning issues such as the status of divorced Catholics, the role of women in ministry, clerical celibacy, and the church’s approach to LGBT Catholics. By revisiting questions that had been considered closed, these assemblies widened the spectrum of acceptable opinion far beyond what had been imaginable when Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013.
A majority of bishops voted in 2019 to recommend that the pope permit the ordination of married men as priests and the ordination of women as deacons, a lower rank of clergy, to respond to the clergy shortage in Latin America’s Amazon region. Francis did not act on these recommendations, for reasons that he never explained, but they now remain among the open questions that his successor will be expected to address. During his final hospital stay, he approved from his room a new cycle of synodal activities to culminate with another assembly at the Vatican in October 2028.
Francis often invoked “synodality” to sum up his vision of a church with more participation by the laity, including in the development of doctrine. The last two Vatican synods of his reign, in 2023 and 2024, were unprecedented in that they included a minority of non-bishops, half of them women, as full voting members. Though he was Catholicism’s supreme bishop, he repeatedly denounced exaggerated deference to the church’s anointed leaders, and there was no more pejorative epithet in his abundant arsenal of invective than “clericalist.”
Francis took aim at the small but passionate group of Catholics dedicated to the traditional Latin Mass, dismissing their attachment to the old rite as a form of “backwardism.” He argued that, rather than being merely a matter of preference, the Latin Mass had become a symbol of opposition to Vatican II. He sharply curtailed access to the old rite, arguing that its continued use was fostering division rather than unity within the church.
Francis found himself at odds with U.S. bishops, most of whom insisted that abortion should be the dominant focus of the church’s public policy agenda. While Francis consistently condemned abortion, he urged Catholic leaders to give equal weight to issues such as poverty, immigration, and the environment—an approach that rankled many in the American hierarchy.
There was also tension between the Vatican and the bishops of Germany, the hierarchy’s progressive vanguard, who joined with lay leaders to hold their own multiyear synod that called for major overhauls of church governance and teaching, including lay oversight of bishops and acceptance of gay relationships. Francis criticized the German synod as “ideological” and “elitist,” but crucially let the process go forward.
During Francis’ reign, Africa’s bishops emerged as a prominent conservative voice in the church, particularly in response to the pope’s conciliatory approach to LGBT Catholics. After the Vatican permitted priests to bless same-sex couples in December 2023, the African bishops swiftly protested. Remarkably, the pope backed down and agreed that the permission would not apply on their continent. It was a rare case of a practice being forbidden in one part of the universal church while it was sanctioned in the rest. The episode recalled more advanced divisions in another church, the Anglican Communion, which has fragmented in recent decades as conservatives led by African bishops have rejected the acceptance of gay clergy and same-sex marriage by their liberal counterparts in the West.
In China, Francis attempted to bridge the long-standing divide between state-recognized Catholic leaders and underground clergy who resisted government oversight. His decision to strike a deal with Beijing over the appointment of bishops was meant to unify the church, but instead left many underground Catholics feeling sidelined. The agreement, historically not unique, was deeply controversial, as it effectively allowed the Chinese Communist Party a say in the selection of church leadership—something critics saw as a dangerous concession that would compromise the church’s independence.
Francis’ approach to Russia frustrated many Catholics in countries long wary of Moscow’s influence. His reluctance to directly condemn Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine—paired with his controversial praise of Russian imperial rulers in 2023—heightened concerns that he was prioritizing diplomatic engagement over moral clarity. He frequently lamented the suffering of Ukrainians but avoided casting blame, a stance that infuriated church leaders in Ukraine and beyond.
The debate over Pope Francis is far from over with his death. For some, he will remain a symbol of renewal and reform; for others, a reminder of the turbulence his leadership stirred within the church. The upcoming conclave will not only select a new pope but determine whether the late pontiff’s vision of a more expansive and adaptive Catholicism endures. The cardinals’ choice will shape the church’s direction, either deepening the changes of the past decade or steering back, at least temporarily, toward the traditions Francis so often unsettled.
