Farewell to Francisco: the only one who could stand up to him

In 2013, the magazine Time designated the new Pope Francis Person of the Year. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio had surprised world public opinion. Not only because he was the first Jesuit and American pontiff, nor because, with Benedict XVI's resignation, there would be two living popes, but because his attitude shocked the entire world. Upon stepping out onto the balcony of St. Peter's Square, Francis bowed and, referring to himself as the Bishop of Rome, humbly asked for the intercession of the crowd. A small, ecclesially revolutionary gesture! He then rejected driving around in luxury cars and living in the Apostolic Palace. He spoke of "a poor Church among the poor" and said he wanted "shepherds who smell like sheep." His first trip was to the island of Lampedusa, to draw world attention to the thousands of migrants who still die in the Mediterranean today.

The election of Francis, then, was a breath of hope and fresh air in an environment tainted by decades of conservative papacies, first by John Paul II, then by Benedict XVI. It was very clear that the conclave had elected him for an urgent task: to reduce the power of the Roman Curia, the Vatican's bureaucratic and political machinery that had ended up imposing its own laws on bishops around the world and, ultimately, on Benedict XVI himself, who, finding himself incapable of reforming it, had had the courage to make another revolutionary gesture: resign.

However, I'm not so sure that many cardinals were aware of the Pope's progressive profile. After all, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he had openly confronted the Kirchners and led the opposition against the law approving same-sex marriage. But once in Rome, the always grumpy Bergoglio seemed like a different person: cheerful, kind, paternal, discreetly maintaining contact with anonymous people, rejecting the pomp of grand state trips.

This does not prevent Francis from imposing his criteria whenever he has deemed it appropriate, forcefully exercising the absolute power that canon law grants to the Pope. His appointments, for example, have completely disrupted the traditional forms of ecclesiastical careers: forcing the resignation of certain bishops, making new cardinals from remote places, excluding corrupt prelates, and appointing members of Vatican dicasteries, including women in prominent positions.

To Francis's credit will remain important achievements. The Pope has irreversibly incorporated ecology and environmental protection into Catholic doctrine, fought against the grave scourge of clerical sexual abuse, and definitively relegated the predominance of the European Church in favor of a global perception of Catholicism, paying special attention to places with small minority communities, from Nigeria to Papua, via the Maghreb, Gaza, and Mongolia.

Whether the consequences of his policy will be more lasting in other areas will depend, however, on whether his successor maintains it: the insistence on the social activity of the Church, which must be, said the Pope, a "field hospital" to care for those living on the "peripheries" of the system; the acceptance of homosexuals, despite the fact that Francis has not made any regulatory changes on this point; "synodality" as a mechanism of co-responsibility in the Church, reducing its hierarchical rigidity; freedom of theological research; etc.

Ultimately, it will be Francis's duty to not have implemented certain reforms that he himself hinted at: the two commissions to study the female diaconate and the debates of the Amazon Synod on the ordination of married priests have remained on paper. For now, it is difficult to know whether the Pope was not personally convinced of this or if he was afraid of provoking a traumatic rupture in the Church, given the open resistance of the most conservative sector, which, since the death of Benedict XVI, no longer concealed its annoyance with a pontiff sometimes labeled a "communist."

When the life of Pope Francis fades, the magazine Time Donald Trump has just been chosen as Person of the Year. There couldn't be a greater contradiction! The president of the United States symbolizes values antagonistic to those of the Argentine pope. And, with the passing of Francis, perhaps the only world leader with the credibility to confront the wave of xenophobia, warmongering, and cynicism that is upon us is gone. Has the world changed that much in these twelve years?