The Late Pope Francis
The death of Pope Francis in an Italian hospital on April 21, 2025 marks the end of a significant era for the Vatican and the global Catholic following of 1.3 billion faithful.
Pope Francis was elected leader of the Catholic Church on March 13, 2013. He is the first pope from the Americas and also the first to come from outside the West in the modern era.
By the time the Argentinian Cardinal, Jorge Bergoglio, was elected pope in 2013 there was a general feeling that the Catholic church was reaching the end of an era. At the time, the church was beset by crises, from corruption to clerical sexual abuse.
Some of the challenges facing the church which the ageing Pope Benedict XVI could no longer handle included: the readmission of a Holocaust denying bishop into the church, mounting evidence of corruption in the Vatican Bank, multiple cases of clerical sexual abuse in many parts of the world, the confusion created in the English-speaking world with the translation of the New Roman missal into English.
Moreover, the church was reeling from the revelation of papal secrets of his predecessor Pope Benedict by the papal butler. A book detailing these secrets portrayed the Vatican as a corrupt hotbed of jealousy, intrigue and underhanded factional fighting.
The revelations caused the church a great deal of embarrassment.
It meant therefore that Cardinal Bergoglio was elected by the Catholic cardinals with a mandate to clean up the church and reform the Vatican and its bureaucracy. He was to institute processes and procedures for transparency, accountability and renewal of the church and its structures, and address the lingering scandals of clerical abuse.
The Pope’s Global Legacy
Three key things defined his papal role and legacy.
First is concentrating on the core competence of the church: serving the poor and the marginalised. This is what the founder of the Christian religion, Jesus Christ, did.
Francis focused the Catholic Church and the entire world on one mission: helping the poor, addressing global inequalities, speaking for the voiceless, and placing the attention of the world on those on the periphery.
He also chose to live simply, forsaking the pomp and pageantry of the papacy.
Secondly, he changed the way the Catholic Church’s message is communicated. In his programmatic document, Evangelii Gaudium, he called the church to what he calls “missionary conversion”. His thinking was that everything that is done in the church must be about proclaiming the good news to a wounded and broken world.
His central message was that of mercy towards all, an end to wars, our common humanity and the closeness of God to those who suffer. The suffering in the world continues to grow because of injustice, greed, selfishness and pride. He also focused on symbols and simple style to press home his message, like celebrating mass at a wall that divides the United States and Mexico.
In 2015, he made a risky trip to Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic, during a time of war and tension between the fighting factions of the Muslim Seleka and the Christian anti-balaka. He drove on the Pope mobile with both the highest ranking Muslim cleric in the country and his Christian counterpart and visited both a Christian church and a mosque to press home the message of peace.
The third strategy was restructuring the church and reforming the Vatican bank.
He created the G8 (a representative council of cardinals from every part of the world) to advise him, calling the Catholic Church to a synod for dialogue on every aspect of the life of the church. This effort was unprecedented.
He also overhauled the procedures for the synod of bishops, making it more participatory, and gave women and the non-ordained voting rights. He shook up the membership of the Vatican department that picks bishops to include women. He appointed the first woman (Sr Simone Brambilla) to lead a major Vatican department and to have a cardinal as her deputy. Another woman (Sr Raffaella Petrini) was named the first woman governor of the Vatican City State.
Pope Francis and Africa
The pontiff’s legacy will be keenly felt in Africa. Three things stand out.
First, he reflected the concerns of people on the continent with his message against imperialism, colonialism, exploitation of the poor by the rich, global inequality, neo-liberal capitalism and ecological injustice. Pope Francis became a voice for Africa. When he visited Kenya in 2015, he chose to visit the slums of Nairobi to proclaim the gospel of liberation to the forsaken of society. He called on African governments to guarantee for the poor and all citizens access to land, lodging and labour.
In a sense, Pope Francis embodied the message of decolonisation and was driven in part by the liberation theology that developed in Latin America. This theology tied religious faith with liberation of the people from structures of injustice and structural violence.
Secondly, he encouraged African Catholics to develop Africa’s own unique approach to pastoral life and addressing social issues in Africa. Particularly, Pope Francis believed in decentralisation and local processes in meeting local challenges. He said many times that it is not necessary that all problems in the church be solved by the pope at the Roman centre of the church.
In this way, he encouraged the growth and development of African priorities and cultural adaptation to the Catholic faith. He also encouraged greater transparency and accountability among African bishops and gave African Catholic universities and seminaries greater autonomy to develop their own educational priorities and programmes.
Thirdly, Pope Francis had a very deep connection to Africa’s young people. He encouraged and supported initiatives and programmes to strengthen the agency of young people, to give them hope and support their personal, spiritual and professional development. For the first time in history, on November 1, 2022, Pope Francis met virtually with more than 1,000 young Africans for an hour. I helped organise this meeting. He answered their questions and encouraged them to fight for what they believe.
A Reformist Agenda
The reforms of Pope Francis could be termed a movement – from a church of a few where priests and bishops and the pope call the shots to a church of the people of God where everyone’s voice matters and where everyone’s concerns and needs are catered to.
He quietly changed the tone of the message and the style of the leadership at the Vatican.
Granted, he did not substantially alter the content of that message, which is often seen as conservative, Eurocentric, and resistant to cultural pluralism and social change. But he constantly chipped away at its foundations through inclusion and an openness to hearing the voices of everyone, including those who do not agree with the church’s position. In doing this, he shifted the priorities and practices of the Catholic church regarding such core issues as power and authority.
Pope Francis opened the doors to the voices of the marginalised in the church — women, the poor, the LGBTQI+ community, and those who have disaffiliated from the church. Many African Catholics would love to see more African representation at the Vatican, and many of them also worry about the widening division in the church, particularly driven by cultural and ideological battles in the west that have nothing to do with the social and ecclesial context of Africa.
Why His Papacy Mattered
Pope Francis was the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit pope, the first to choose the name Francis and the first to come from outside the west in the modern era. He chose the name Francis because he wanted to focus his papacy on the poor, emulating St Francis of Assisi.
In a sense, Pope Francis redefined what religion and spirituality mean for Catholicism. It’s not laying down and enforcing the law without mercy, it is caring for our neighbours and the earth. This is the kind of religion the world needs today.
By Stan Chu Ilo, Research Professor, World Christianity and African Studies, DePaul University.