Pope Francis's Legacy

New York Times Op-Ed:  Francis and the End of the Imperial Papacy, by Ross Douthat (Author, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (2025):

Pope Francis, who passed to his reward on the morning after Easter at age 88, was a version of the liberal pope that many Catholics had earnestly desired all through the long reign of John Paul II and the shorter one of Benedict XVI — a man whose worldview was shaped and defined by the Second Vatican Council and whose pontificate sought a renewal of its revolution, a further great modernization of the Catholic Church.

In one way, at least, he succeeded. For generations, modernizers lamented the outsize power of the papacy, the anachronism of a monarchical authority in a democratic age, the way the concept of papal infallibility froze Catholic debates even as the world rushed forward. In theory Francis shared those concerns, promising a more collegial and horizontally oriented church, more synodal, in the jargon of the Catholic bureaucracy. In practice he often used his power in the same way as his predecessors, to police and suppress deviations from his authority — except that this time the targets were dissenting conservatives and traditionalists instead of progressives and modernizers.

But just by creating that novel form of conflict, in which Catholics who had been accustomed to being on the same side as the Vatican found themselves suddenly crosswise from papal authority, Francis helped to demystify his office’s authority and undermine its most imposing claims.

That’s because the conservatives whose convictions he unsettled were the last believers in the imperial papacy, the custodians of infallibility’s mystique. And by stirring more of them to doubt and disobedience, he kicked away the last major prop supporting a strong papacy and left the office of St. Peter in the same position as most other 21st-century institutions: graced with power but lacking credibility, floated on charisma without underlying legitimacy, with its actions understood in terms of rewards for friends and punishments for enemies. ...

\Francis’ election was made possible by the resignation of Benedict, itself a modernizing gesture by an otherwise conservative pope, suggesting in its own way a demystified papal office, more corporate than paternal.

As an admirer of Benedict and a critic of Francis, I bitterly regretted that decision; as an observer of the larger pattern of recent history, I wondered if in setting down his burden prematurely, Benedict had set some strange new age in motion.

But whatever the truth of that intimation, it is very important that Francis did not resign, that he let himself die in the office, very much in public, making his weakness manifest, even to the very last. Whatever his choices meant for the institutional role of the papacy, he played the paternal role of Peter to the end. May God bless him for that, and may Francis rest in peace.

• The Atlantic, The Real Legacy of Pope Francis
• Catholic University of America, The Life & Legacy of Pope Francis
• CNN, How Pope Francis’ Progressive Legacy Changed the Church
• The Dispatch, After Francis, What Now for the Catholic Church?
• Rev. Patrick Gilger (Loyola-Chicago), How to Remember Pope Francis
• National Catholic Reporter, The Legacy of Pope Francis
• New York Times, After Pope Francis: A Round Table With David French
• New York Times, The Complicated Legacy of Pope Francis
• New York Times, My Selfie With Francis: The Digital Legacy of an Approachable Pope
• New York Times, Pope Francis’ Legacy in the U.S.: A More Open, and Then Divided, Church
• The New Yorker, Pope Francis’s Legacy and the Coming Conclave
• Newsweek, We Are Pope Francis' Legacy
• NPR, A Look Back at Pope Francis' Life and Legacy
• Politico, The Complex Legacy of Pope Francis
• Reuters, Pope Francis' US Legacy Defined by Growing Divisions as Catholic Right Surges
• Francis Rocca, A Pope of Inclusion and Polarization
• Time, The Powerful Legacy of the First Latin American Pope
• Vatican News, Honouring Pope Francis’s legacy: A Call to Action For Global Justice
• Washington Post, What will Pope Francis’s legacy be? It depends on what comes next.

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