WHAT HAVE BEEN THE HALLMARKS OF Pope Francis’ papacy?

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to the papacy on 13 March 2013. We asked six of our friends to tell us about their experience of the Church in its first ten years under a Jesuit pope.

Sr Nathalie Becquart XMCJ

Undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops

Over the course of his ten-year pontificate, it has become clear that Pope Francis has deliberately chosen to exercise his governance of the Church in a missionary key and a synodal style. In a way, the main hallmark of Francis’ papacy could be understood as missionary synodality. Francis has tried to embark all the people of God on a journey together. This path of synodality – understood as the call of God for the Church in the third millennium – has unfolded through his encyclicals and apostolic exhortations, which have paved the way for an outgoing Church capable of reaching the peripheries, promoting a culture of encounter and acting as a field hospital.

But Pope Francis has also put into practice missionary synodality through the succession of the synods of bishops and moreover through many of his meetings, travels, gestures, decisions... implementing a synodal way of being and a missionary style highlighting the need for a pastoral conversion based on listening, discernment and accompaniment. To put it in a nutshell, Pope Francis has put the Church on the move to serve a fast-changing world.

Severine Deneulin Director of International Development at the Laudato Si’ Research Institute

If I am allowed to identify three hallmarks of Francis’ papacy, these would be: freedom of speech; returning to gospel basics; and integrating a preference for the earth into the Church’s preferential option for the poor.

Pope Francis has often emphasised parrhesia, speaking frankly with courage, without fear. As a member of an academic research institute at the University of Oxford, intellectual freedom is essential. Pope Francis asks us to let the reality of people’s experiences speak to us, challenge us. We have seen this with the Amazon Synod in October 2019: the voices of indigenous peoples are developing the Church’s social tradition.

It is not a coincidence that Pope Francis started his pontificate with his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, ‘The Joy of the Gospel’. How can the good news proclaimed by Jesus liberate the oppressed, make the lame walk, open the ears of the deaf, and bring healing to the wounded earth? This has been the central question of Pope Francis’ papacy. In his 2015 encyclical Laudato si ’, he offers a response to that central question: by taking the path of integral ecological conversion. The Laudato Si’ Research Institute at Campion Hall seeks to deepen within higher education this integral ecology paradigm, and to build the intellectual foundations of a re-ordering of society, and of ourselves, towards care for the earth and for the poor.

Julian Filochowksi

Chair of the Jesuit Fund for Social Justice and Co-Chair of The Archbishop Romero Trust

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. We had a surfeit of doctrinal teaching – hammering away on truth. We urgently needed to emphasise Jesus Christ as the way and the life, pastorally. Pope Francis has done just that.

Francis has opened the doors for a more inclusive Church; and we are ‘to go out’ and ‘to bring in’. A refreshing wind is blowing through Christian communities worldwide. This is evident to us all in Francis’ pastoral leadership, his gestures of welcome to LGBTQ+ folk, his palpable concern for those divorced and remarried, and his practical solidarity with refugees, migrants and the street homeless.

Francis lives humbly and modestly, leaving aside the trappings of power. His embrace of creation, not as a self-standing ‘green issue’, but part of a God-centred notion of the earth and nature as gift and grace, has seen him admired even on an Extinction Rebellion sticker on Blackfriars Bridge! Francis’ championing of social justice as central to our faith life, and his determined commitment to synodality, has been transformative.

All this has provoked immense joy, cheered us up no end and renewed our faith in the Church.

Austen Ivereigh

Fellow of Campion Hall, biographer of Pope Francis and collaborator with the pope on Let Us Dream: the Path to a Better Future (Simon & Schuster, 2020)

It took me a while to grasp, but over the years of following Francis I have come to see the defining trait of his papacy as spiritual direction. The Jesuits call it ‘discerning leadership’. Francis leads the Church – and humanity, because the Church does not exist for itself – like a spiritual guide accompanying someone on an Ignatian retreat. He reads the signs of the times, and asks: where, in these experiences, is God’s grace trying to break through, and what stops us seeing and receiving it? How do we need to change in order to allow the Spirit to develop us, lead us in the direction of the Kingdom?

There’s no dark pit from which Francis will not extract these spiritual prompts, because he sees God’s mercy as the real power in our lives and in our world, and God’s mercy never recoils from sin and suffering. That mercy begins by revealing the truth we need to face, allows us to feel shame, and gives us space to change. From the sex abuse crisis he saw the call to a synodal conversion of the Church. From the ecological crisis he saw the need to restore our place of partnership with creation. From the wall-raising politics of populism he saw God’s dream for us of fraternity. From the pandemic he heard the call to become a people once more. In our book Let Us Dream, he quotes the poet Hölderlin: ‘Where the danger is, also grows the saving power’. Over this past decade, Francis has plugged us back into that power. The rest is up to us.

Pope Francis has put the Church on the move to serve a fast-changing world.

Amaya Valcarcel

International Advocacy Officer at JRS International

One of the distinctive features of Pope Francis’ papacy has been his concern for people on the peripheries who, together with the places they inhabit, ought to be at the centre of God’s project, entrusted in a particular way to the Church. Humanity understood as ‘a common family’ and the planet as ‘a common home’ call us morally towards a constant commitment to take care, defend and work for their development.

This double concern can be seen as the thread that connects the apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium and the encyclicals Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti. Pope Francis calls us repeatedly to ‘welcome, protect, promote and integrate’ migrants and refugees, as a core common mission. Repositioning refugees and migrants at the centre – with the sick, the elderly, people with a disability – follows the logic of the building of the kingdom and is a necessary part of that project.

Thus, there should not be two categories of humanity: a privileged one, destined to govern the planet, with access to all its resources; and a deprived one, with limited access to power and resources. There is only one humanity, which prioritises those who are more fragile and chooses leaders with a long, global view; one family who is seriously concerned about its common home and the causes of migration, and seeks a new world economy founded on justice and sharing.

Pope Francis has been able to convey his concerns to local churches and has also been able to go beyond the Catholic audience, inspiring women and men of other faiths or non-believers, who have discovered in the Christian message many shared values.

David Willey

Former BBC Rome correspondent and author of The Promise of Francis: The Man, The Pope, And The Challenge Of Change (Simon & Schuster, 2015)

There are five hallmarks which Francis has stamped on the Vatican.

First, his quick decision not to move into the huge papal penthouse apartment at the top of the apostolic palace. ‘Why, there’s room for 200 people to live here!’ He turned on his heels, and returned to his modest suite at the Santa Marta Vatican guest house.

Secondly, his refusal to jump to blanket condemnation of gays in the Church. ‘Who am I to judge?’ he pondered during one of his 35,000 feet airborne talks with accompanying journalists.

Thirdly: ‘I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.’

Fourthly, his abhorrence of gossip and his willingness to stand up in front of his cardinals and denounce clerical elitism.

Finally, his gradual remodelling of the College of Cardinals. Francis’ appointees will have a two-thirds majority at the next conclave. The college now includes a truly global selection of church leaders. The ‘universal Church’ had hitherto failed to live up to its description, with local leadership not being fairly represented at the Vatican.