Pope Francis set an example of Christian concern for the marginalized of all kinds
He became known as a different kind of leader from first days of his papacy
If Pope Francis is remembered for one line, it will be his response to a journalist who asked him about gay priests in 2013, early in his reign as the head of the Catholic Church:
If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?
The comment, which alarmed critics but earned widespread praise both within and out of the church, helped set the tone for Francis’s papacy as one who saw God’s love as inclusive of all people.
And thus in an unanticipated way, it became fitting that the day before his death today, Francis had warmly greeted U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Vatican — even though Francis and the Catholic Church have been among the harshest critics of recent changes in U.S. immigration policies that Vance has promoted. Francis was one who invited all people, the celebrated and the disenfranchised, those he agreed with and those he didn’t, to the calling of love and service.
It became obvious very early in Francis’s papacy that he would be a different kind of pope, and not just because the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first non-European pope in more than a millennium. He chose his papal name of Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, to convey concern for the outcast. He rather famously insisted on paying his own hotel bill in person in Rome for the time he was there to, as it turned out, be selected as the pope. During one of his first gatherings with news media, he was seeing wearing well-worn shoes rather than the traditional, luxuriant papal slippers. He chose to live in a small Vatican guesthouse rather than the lavish 10-room apartment previous popes had lived in. When an audience of tens of thousands of well-wishers greeted him at the Vatican immediately after his selection, he broke with tradition by asking them to bless him rather than the other way around. Around the Vatican he often he rode in a minibus rather than getting transport from his own special car.
His acts of mercy for the marginalized were plentiful. He provided facilities in the Vatican for the homeless to shower. He was known for washing the feet of migrants and people with disfiguring illness during Maundy Thursday observances.
And he elevated women to important positions in the church within the constraints he faced by centuries of tradition and doctrine that excluded them from the priesthood.
But it may be his outreach to the LGTBQ community that will be remembered most. Although he was limited by doctrine that sees homosexual behavior as disordered and rejects gender-change surgery, he tirelessly sought to convey that LGTBQ persons are not separated from God’s love. He supported civil protections for gays and gay couples. He changed policies to allow some trans persons to be baptized and to serve as godparents. Most notably, he attracted controversy in 2023 when he authorized priests to give informal blessings to same-sex married couples. His response to the criticism:1
No one is scandalized if I give a blessing to an entrepreneur who perhaps exploits people: and that is a most serious sin. Whereas they are scandalized if I give it to a homosexual. ... This is hypocrisy! We all have to respect each other. Everyone!
Although some of Francis’s symbolic actions of support for the needy caught the most attention during his first days in office, it became clear very early that his concern was more than symbolic. During his decades of service that began long before his promotion to the papacy, he set an example of Christlike love and inclusion that has inspired Christians throughout the world, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.