The Argentinian Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a serious contender for the papacy at the conclave which elected Joseph Ratzinger in 2005. The cardinals who voted for Ratzinger saw him as a faithful preserver of all that Pope John Paul II (Karol Józef Wojtyła) had achieved in his long papacy from 1978 until his death in 2005. Ratzinger as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had provided much of the intellectual ballast for John Paul’s theological positions. The election of Ratzinger was a vote for continuity as the Catholic Church continued to wrestle with the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council which had concluded in 1965. Wojtyła had been a key bishop at that council, and Ratzinger was one of the Council’s bright, up and coming theological advisers.

By 2013, the papacy had all become too much for Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). A great intellectual, he was not given to the burdens of administration and political intrigue within the Vatican Curia besieged by scandals of child sexual abuse and financial maladministration. Ratzinger resigned and a conclave convened. Bergoglio aged 76 thought there was no chance of his being elected this time around. He came to Rome with nothing to lose and nothing to gain. He spoke freely in the pre-conclave meetings about the challenges confronting the church. Unlike Wojtyła and Ratzinger, he did not think the major challenges were doctrinal. He was fearless while at the same time preaching a message of mercy, love and inclusion. Unlike his predecessors, he was not from Europe. He had been instrumental in giving the Church in South America new vision and zeal through the meetings of bishops at Aparecida.

He arrived in Rome for the 2013 conclave, having booked his return flight to Buenos Aires, expecting to return home promptly after the conclave. After his surprising election, he phoned his newsagent to cancel his daily newspaper delivery. He never returned to his beloved Argentina.

Unlike Wojtyła and Ratzinger, Bergoglio had not attended the Second Vatican Council. By the age of 36, he was made Provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina. Towards the end of his six year term, he had to deal with corrupt army generals during the Dirty War, trying to protect his men who were working amongst the poor, setting limits on what priests committed to the poor could undertake during a time of such political and social upheaval. The Argentinian Jesuits became very divided and it did not bode well for Bergoglio. As he later admitted in a broad ranging interview just five months after becoming pope:

‘My style of government as a Jesuit at the beginning had many faults. That was a difficult time for the Society: an entire generation of Jesuits had disappeared. Because of this I found myself provincial when I was still very young. I was only 36 years old. That was crazy. I had to deal with difficult situations, and I made my decisions abruptly and by myself. …My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I lived a time of great interior crisis when I was in Cordova. To be sure, I have never been like Blessed Imelda [a goody-goody], but I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems. I do not want token consultations, but real consultations.’

This was the key to his strength as a modern pope. It was also the key to the disaffection towards him both by many conservative members of the Vatican Curia and by those liberal Catholics who expected him to do more about issues such as women’s ordination and reform of the Vatican Curia. He was adamant that it would be up to the Pope to make final decisions. But those decisions should not be made until there has been proper discernment, rather than lobbying. Decisions should be made only after there has been time for ‘real consultations’. Thus he caused more than a little exasperation when convening synods, including synods on the family and on synodality which ran for years, with most of the difficult decisions being put off to another day. And that day was not to come during his papacy, even though it lasted 12 years.

Conservative Catholics became frustrated when he declared: ‘I would make it clear that not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium. Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it. … Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs.’ His predecessors would never had said such things.

By 2022, senior clerics in Rome were circulating to cardinals a document under the pseudonym ‘Demos’, describing Francis’s pontificate as ‘a disaster’ and ‘a catastrophe’, and outlining the priorities for the next pope: ‘restore normality, restore doctrinal clarity in faith and morals, restore a proper respect for the law and ensure that the first criterion for the nomination of bishops is acceptance of the apostolic tradition’.

Shortly before his own death, Australian Cardinal George Pell allowed The Spectator to publish an article condemning the synod on synodality as a ‘toxic nightmare’.

More liberal Catholics were delighted with Francis’s pastoral approach and openness to dialogue. He was happy to give press conferences on the plane after his many overseas visits. He did not require questions to be submitted in writing. When returning from Brazil, he was asked about the Church’s position on homosexuality, and he simply answered with a question of his own: ‘If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?’ Another liberating aspect of his papacy was his willingness to meet with the Jesuits whenever he visited a country. He would have a lengthy conversation with his brother Jesuits, answering any of their questions, then agreeing to having the transcript published. While not pretending to have all the answers, he was not afraid to engage.

He published four encyclicals during his papacy, one being largely the work of Benedict before his resignation. John Paul II had published fourteen. The only encyclical of Francis which is likely to have abiding effect is his Laudato Si’ in which he brought together the call to care for the poor, care for the planet, and care for our own interior life. Australian economist Ross Garnaut says: ‘The most rigorous, comprehensive and influential treatment of the ethics of climate change is Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. In this work he applies Catholic, Christian and general ethical teachings and intellectual traditions to climate change.’ Garnaut went on to observe: ‘Of more importance in the public discussion has been the clearer understanding of the importance of the non-economic values affected by climate change ….Here the leading contribution has been by Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’.’

Not being a European and being from the south with a commitment to those on the margins, Francis was determined to reshape the leadership of the Church with his choice of cardinals. Think only of the situation in our part of the world. While Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Tonga have cardinals of voting age at conclave (80 years), Australia has not had one until four months ago when Francis chose Bishop Mykola Bychok, bishop for the Ukrainian Catholics in Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania. Sydney and Melbourne don’t rate a mention. Though Francis visited Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea, he never made it to Australia.

Francis was the pope of personal encounter and the master of the symbolic gesture. His first papal visit outside Rome was to the island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean where so many boat people from Africa find landfall seeking asylum in Europe. On Holy Thursday, instead of washing the feet of twelve devoted attendees at St Peter’s Basilica, he would wash the feet of twelve prisoners including some who were Muslim. His opening remarks to the US Congress played on his audience’s innate nationalism and immediately challenged them to a broader vision: ‘I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. I would like to think that the reason for this is that I too am a son of this great continent, from which we have all received so much and toward which we share a common responsibility.’ His last public political utterance was his letter to the US Catholic bishops objecting to President Trump’s planned deportations: ‘The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.’

He was to be an interim pope, but having served for 12 years, he became a bridge to a new age. As the church crosses that bridge, we come to a crossroads poignantly highlighted in the movie Conclave where Ralph Fiennes plays the dean of the College of Cardinals. He addresses the cardinals: ‘There is one sin which I have come to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. “Dio mio, Dio mio, perché mi hai abbandonato?” he cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the Cross. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and, therefore, no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts.’

Francis was a pope prepared to blur the edges of doctrine, or at least its application, opening the doors of the Church to all those seeking love, mercy and forgiveness. He never doubted God’s capacity to love and forgive all who sought that love and forgiveness. He maintained the certainty, not of doctrine but of the simple piety of believers.

In one of his homilies, Francis said, ‘A Church of the pure and perfect is a room with no place for anyone. On the other hand, a Church with open doors, that gathers and celebrates around Christ, is a large room where everyone – everyone, the righteous and sinners – can enter.’ At the coming conclave our cardinals from places near and far such as Mongolia and Timor Leste will determine whether it is time to open wider those doors, even allowing the difficult decisions such as women’s ordination to be resolved.

I am one Jesuit who is grateful that a fellow Jesuit has opened such a path of uncertainty for believers in our messy and complex world. As he wished, Francis lived until Easter Day when he said: ‘In the wonder of the Easter faith, carrying in our hearts every expectation of peace and liberation, we can say: with You, O Lord, everything is new. With you, everything begins again.’ And it has. May Francis rest in peace.

Fr Frank Brennan SJ is superior of the Hurtado Jesuit community in Brisbane. An edited version of this piece appeared in The Australian on 21 April 2025.