The first clue was in the name.

In 2013, Argentinian bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio, newly elected as pope, greeted the world on St. Peter’s balcony with the chosen name of an Italian saint known for his devotion to poverty and the environment. Like his namesake, the new pope’s commitment to humility ran counterculture to the whims of the times. He exchanged a 12-room papal apartment for modest quarters in the guest house. He ate his meals with ordinary priests and swapped the papal cape for a simple white cassock and black shoes. In Buenos Aires, he had earned the reputation of “Slum Bishop” for his insistence of taking public transport to visit the poor.

Throughout his papacy he was what Anna Rowlands, General Secretariat of the Synod and professor of theology at Durham University, described as a “spiritual leader who feels like a parish priest.”

“He made the church more transparent and accountable,” says Rowlands, “Some in the church have welcomed the freshness of his approach and his determination to reform structures. Francis has used his position on the world stage to make the church more relevant in terms of social justice.”

 “Dung of the devil”

His commitment to social justice did not come without criticism. After Pope Francis called “unfettered capitalism” the “dung of the devil”, Argentinian president Javier Milei denounced him as, “the representation of evil on Earth.”

Francis’ critique of capitalism was centred around exploitation not just of individuals, but of the planet. In his famous 2015 cyclical letter “Laudato si” (Praise be to you), he drew attention to the harm extractive capitalism caused on the earth, calling for a “conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.”

According to Rowlands, Francis’ approach went beyond advocating for piecemeal green policies, and instead called for a model that integrates spirituality: “In a capitalist model, the focus is on extraction and profit without understanding the land,” explains Rowlands, “His entire framework was to understand that the only way to approach environmentalism is to see everything as connected and to understand those connections.”

His publication of Laudato si came just months before United Nations discussions of the Paris Agreement. Following the summit, US climate envoy John Kerry asserted that the Pope was one of the strongest voices on climate change, “Pushing to get things done.”

In addition to making The Vatican a voice in climate, the Pope went directly to the oil and gas industry, hosting a closed-door meeting with executives from ExxonMobile, BP, and Shell. During the meeting he warned oil bosses that, “Civilisation requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilisation.”

Advocate for migrants

His changemaking advocacy was not limited to climate, and included criticism of harsh policies on migration. In a letter to bishops Francis explained, “The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defencelessness.”

He affirmed the right of migrants to seek asylum in foreign countries by sighting biblical stories from the Book of Exodus and Jesus’s experience fleeing into Egypt with his parents.

“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” Francis wrote. “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.”

The limits of influence

As the Vatican considers his potential successors, news and opinion pages have filled with pieces assessing the pope’s legacy.

This is a thing that’s hard to judge.

Church attendance in the West decreased rapidly in the pope’s lifetime. The past decades have seen the church embroiled in sex abuse scandals and controversy over cultural flashpoints such as abortion and gay marriage which have led fewer people into the pews on Sundays. In the US, Catholic church attendance has dropped from 55% in 1970 to 20% in 2019.

But there are now 1.4bn Catholics globally, a figure that continues to rise, particularly in the Global South, where messages about climate change and migration are particularly resonant. Laudato si has been credited with creating the ‘Francis effect’ in discussions on climate globally.

While many Catholics wished the late pope had been more progressive in areas of gender equality and reproductive rights, his real legacy is in his humility. On his first day as Pope, Francis stunned the crowd assembled below St Peters square when he quietly asked them for a favour: “Before I bless the people, I hope that you will bless me, the benediction from the people towards the Bishop of Rome.”

Francis demonstrated not just through his words, but also his actions, that spirituality is more than a strict adherence to rules. His life was the embodiment of the prayer to his namesake, Saint Francis: “Where there is hatred, let me sow love.”

In a time when policy is increasingly driven by public opinion, having global leaders pushing for positive change is not to be underestimated.

The world waits to learn of his successor, and how his approach may differ.