The legacy of the Papacy and Pope Francis

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, April 21, 2025, having done several things which, in hindsight, imply he had a premonition of his likely departure from the earth. He had been bedridden for more than a month and his doctors preferred his taking things easy. He chose to come out and enjoy Easter Sunday with the people at St. Peter Square, giving audience to US Vice-President J.D. Vance, greeting worshippers and blessing babies. His death at 88 was, therefore, a surprise which sent many to reflect on the meaning of his twelve-year papacy.

Proper beginnings of papacy can be traced to Leo I, the Great, who issued the doctrine of Petrine Primacy that declared the Bishop of Rome to be head of Christianity. Two Roman emperors seeking to govern in harmony by eliminating religious differences, Constantine and Theodosius, had previously tried to have Christianity defined. Constantine, in 325 CE, at Nicea, ordered roughly 300 bishops to settle the dispute between Arius and Athanasius on the nature of Jesus and they came up with the Nicean Creed that decreed that Jesus was both Fully God and Fully Man. Theodosius abandoned the title Pontifex Maximus, which Roman emperors, starting with Caesar Augustus, had expropriated. He also accepted a reprimand from Bishop Ambrose of Milan and issued a decree in 380 CE to require acceptance of the Nicean Creed as the ‘Catholic’ position in the empire. As the Church influence increased and the empire disintegrated, Christianity was blamed for the disintegration. The blame drove Aurelia Augustine to use his command of history to write The City of God in defence of Christianity. All past history, he essentially argued, was preparation for Christianity.

As a central authority in Rome withered in Europe, the influence of the Church increased, especially after Leo I’s proclamation of Rome as the centre of Christianity. Subsequently, popes acquired enough power to assume leadership of fragmented Europe and to self-allocate earthly powers. They organised crusades to ‘free’ Palestine from the Muslims, without much success. Pope Nicholas V and Leo X authorised slavery and slave trade on people who were not ‘Christian’ or white. On his part, Pope Alexander VI purported, in 1494, to divide the world outside Europe between the emerging powers of Spain and Portugal.

The concentration of powers in the papacy generated its own contradictions that created religious uprisings called the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Perceived abuses in the Church led to religious reformation associated with Martin Luther who questioned Pope Leo X’s claim that ‘salvation’ could come through the sale of indulgencies. John Calvin, not bothered with how ‘salvation’ was attained, preached predestination and ‘Christian living’ in Geneva. There was also Henry VIII breaking from the Church he had defended from Luther’s defiance of authority, simply because he wanted a wife to give him a son. It was to counter the Reformation challenge that Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits, with himself as ‘Father General’. The Jesuits fought back and established a lasting culture of intellectual brilliance in defending Catholicism. The Jesuits run Hekima University College in Nairobi. Pope Francis was a Jesuit from Argentina in South America, where ‘liberation theology’ had flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. His concern for social justice seemingly emanates from ‘liberation theology’.

Francis became pope because Pope Benedict XVI, previously known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, resigned in February 2013. Ratzinger, a Church intellectual and ‘Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith’, had in 1990 made a presentation in which he referred to Paul Feyerebend’s claims that the Church had been rational in punishing Galilei Galileo. In making that claim, Feyerebend had equated science to religion because people accept ‘science’ by faith, just as in religion. And the accepted ‘science’ of the day was that the sun goes around the earth. When La Sapienza University invited Pope Benedict in 2008, the La Sapienza dons blocked the invitation. Due to other challenges, Benedict chose to resign and thus opened the avenue for Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first Latin American and Jesuit, to be elected Pope. He symbolically chose the name Francis after Francis of Assisi.

Francis probably did not expect to last long and he gave himself roughly three years to accomplish many things. These included ending wars, bringing different faiths together, and reducing senses of religious exclusivity. Although his preferred faith was Catholicism, he believed that it did not mean that God was not responsible for other faiths. He therefore travelled worldwide to see the practitioners of other faiths, including the Communists in Cuba, where President Raol Castro worried that Francis might make him return to the Catholic Church. In return, other faiths adopted him as possibly one of their own, including a Kenyan Presbyterian minister, Mungai Wakaba, who declared Francis a Presbyterian.

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Francis also corresponded with Fethullah Gulen, the Sufi cleric who inspired the worldwide Hizmet Movement that excels in offering quality education. In Kenya, the Hizmets run the Light Academy Schools and were thinking of establishing a university. Gulen and Francis had discussed the possible start of an Interfaith University. When visiting Kenya and then Central Africa, he symbolically avoided travelling in fancy vehicles. In a Mosque in Central Africa, he begged people to stop killing each other on account of religion.

Francis was more than an advocate of religious inclusivity rather than exclusivity. He talked of the threats to the environment in his 2015 Laudato Si, about the necessity of caring for ‘Mother Earth’. His October 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, showed that his mind and soul were troubled as he called for religious fraternity and moved away from religious exclusivity, which breeds hostilities. He also pushed for a “Healthy Realism” ideology to promote peace by admitting the possible legitimacy of beliefs other than the Christian one. In a way, religious exclusivity is anti-God because it tends to limit God’s power and presence only to a select few people. The limitation implied that God discriminates against his creation. In addition, Francis warned of the dangers of forgetting history and traditions, which lead to a loss of spiritual identity and end up with “aberrant anthropological visions” that impose “strange ideologies” for controlling people to benefit a few.

He could also be defiant. After pneumonia confined him to a hospital bed for more than a month, he insisted on interacting with people. They included such dignitaries as King Charles and Queen Camilla of Britain, US Vice President JD Vance, and he also went to visit prisoners. He wanted to be part of the Easter celebrations and was seemingly aware that this particular Easter might be his last on earth. He looked frail on that Easter Sunday, which became his day of saying goodbye to people. Coming down to where the crowd of thousands was waiting, he seemingly enjoyed receiving salutations and blessing babies. He then faded into his residence for sleep only to die on the morning of Easter Monday. His death, though not totally unexpected, surprised many because his vigorous activities the previous days gave the impression he was recovering properly. 

 Francis commanded global respect and was more than the official leader of 1.4 billion Catholics. His impact was close to that of Pope John XXIII whose Vatican II allowed Catholics to eat meat on Fridays and to avoid religious exclusivity. Francis championed ‘healthy realism’, declared St. Thomas to be the first disciple to recognise Jesus as God, and elevated Mary Magdalene to “apostle of apostles”. He urged mothers to be like St. Monica in praying for their troublesome sons. Monica had prayed ceaselessly for her brilliant but mischievous son, Augustine, until he saw the light of Jesus. Thereafter, Augustine became the great defender of the Church and is in the same league with St. Paul who universalised Christianity and Constantine who helped to define it in the Nicean Creed.

Francis endeared himself beyond Catholicism and became a global thought leader. In his Laudato Si and Fratteli Tutti, he called for action to save the world from climate change and destructive religious intolerance. Believing that all were God’s creations and considering discrimination to be sinful, he reached out to those of different faiths. Although he did not achieve all he wanted, he died satisfied that he had done his best. Not many other leaders, religious or secular, command the universal respect and adoration of the global public the way Francis did.