This article was first published by the Business Day South Africa on 5 May 2025. 

Francis provided hope and succour to the destitute, downtrodden and desperate

Pope Francis I (Jorge Bergoglio) who died recently, was the first pontiff from Latin America and the first non-European in 1,300 years. The 88-year-old Argentinian’s 12-year papacy transformed the 1.3-billion strong Catholic Church into one more inclusive of Global South perspectives, and 80% of the more diverse cardinalate that will shortly elect a new pope was appointed by Francis.

Pope Francis described himself as a callejero (a man of the streets), insisting: “My people are poor and I am one of them.” He thus declined to live in the plush Apostolic Palace, opting instead for a modest suite in the Vatican guest house. As a “Slum Bishop” in Buenos Aires, Francis had similarly given up his official residence for a modest room and travelled by public transport.

His first trip outside Rome as pope was to the squalid migrant camp on Italy’s island of Lampedusa, where he comforted desperate African migrants fleeing poverty, persecution and conflict. These were the invisible people who had been widely despised and denigrated across a Europe rife with xenophobia.

The new pope castigated the “global indifference” towards Africa’s boat people, calling for a “reawakening of conscience”. During Europe’s 2015 “migrant crisis”, he gave sanctuary at the Vatican to a dozen Syrian refugees. When Donald Trump pledged to build a wall to keep Mexican migrants out of America during the 2016 presidential campaign, the pope chided him as “not Christian”, arguing that countries should build bridges rather than walls.

Francis was the good shepherd who tended his flock, providing hope and succour to the destitute, downtrodden and desperate, often washing their feet while feeding and sheltering the homeless. Though a Jesuit, he did not embrace the Marxist-inspired “liberation theology” of many radical Latin American theologians. Francis was more pragmatic, arguing that while the left worshipped the state, the right tended to overglorify the market. He was scathing about capitalism, castigating it as exploitive and insisting that “money must serve, not rule.”

Francis not only defended Catholics but spoke out forcefully against Israel’s brutalities in Gaza. He championed the rights of the Rohingya people on visits to Myanmar and Bangladesh; defended Yazidis in Iraq; and apologised for the failure of the Catholic Church during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and abuse of indigenous children forcibly placed in Canadian Catholic schools.

The pope was a peacemaker who visited the world’s neglected “peripheries”, falling at the feet of South Sudan warlords Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, exhorting them to turn swords into ploughshares. He did the same in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, urging a silencing of the guns and an end to widespread rape. He further preached peace and reconciliation in Mozambique.

Francis called on everyone to protect “Mother Earth”, railing against the impact of climate change on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. He bemoaned Washington’s withdrawal from the UN’s Paris Agreement forged in 2015 to fight climate change, because “the future of humanity is at stake”.

For all his smiling charisma and understated humility, Francis was an astute and sometimes ruthless political operator. He faced much opposition from powerful conservative cardinals in the US, Australia and Canada, who often challenged Francis’s “heresy” and his perceived threat to a Western Christian identity.

Even in death Francis embodied humility, choosing to be buried in the St Mary Major basilica with a simple tombstone bearing the inscription “Franciscus”. As we await the white smoke to emerge from the conclave of the College of Cardinals that will elect a new pontiff, the world has much to celebrate in the legacy of the Global South’s “poor people’s pope”.

Professor Adekeye Adebajo is a professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Pretoria.