When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was appointed pope in 2013, he chose the name Francis, the first pope to do so. After the resignation of Pope Benedict — a deeply conservative intellectual more prone to doctrine than empathy — the choice of the name Francis marked what should have been the beginning of a new era in the church, a return to the basics of mercy and charity, and an openness to new ideas that began at the council of Vatican II in the 1960s. After the death of the reformer pope John XXIII, the church reeled backwards, electing a series of doctrinal and traditionalist popes. Pope Francis, many Catholics thought, was a new beginning.
But Francis’ attempts at reforming the church often clashed with Catholicism’s growing right wing and failed to stop the flood of Catholics abandoning the church. It takes time to turn a 2,000-year-old church around, and ultimately, Francis’ papacy would be a complicated one, marred by the damage done in the church’s past, even as he tried to guide it forward into an unclear and troubling future. But like his namesake saint, he always put being a pastor first.
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