Articles
Posted on Tue 28 October 2025
A Pope for the poor - The Church of England Newspaper - April 2025
One aspect of Pope Francis’ life, which everyone noticed was his outgoing nature. I could give many examples of this, but one which comes to mind at once was the occasion when some of us were travelling behind him as he ‘worked’ the crowds. Quite suddenly, he reached out to a man who had sores on his face and kissed him. We were all transfixed by his dramatic gesture which recalled us to Jesus' own custom of touching the blind, the deaf and even lepers.
On another occasion, he spotted a Roma community trying to attract his attention in a vast crowd. He deliberately steered away from his designated route and came to greet them and to speak particularly to the children. They were delirious with joy.
He had asked me to write a paper for him on ecumenism. To discuss this, a private audience was arranged in his office. Although he did not live in the papal apartments, preferring to live in the modest Santa Marta guesthouse, he had his office in the apartments. As I was being escorted by a chamberlain through the grand rooms of the apartments, I notice some elderly women sitting there clutching plastic bags. I asked him who they were. He sighed and told me that the Pope would go out at night and invite ‘down & outs’ to visit him. I asked him what they were going to do with them. He said that they would allow him a few minutes with each of them when he went back for lunch at Santa Marta.
The poor, the abandoned, the underprivileged, victims of war and the disabled provided the paradigm of his ministry. He saw everything through the lens of the Favelas where he had worked as a priest and bishop in Argentina. He certainly believed that the Bible taught a ‘preferential option for the poor’. He chose the name Francis for himself precisely because of Francis of Assisi was associated with poverty but also was seeking peace during the Crusades and also identified with Creation.
He was Impatient with Christian division and wanted to acknowledge all that was good and fruitful in other Christian communities but he did not make the grand gestures of John XXIII in inviting observers from other churches to the Second Vatican Council or of Paul VI with the Orthodox or in his declaration that in any restoration of full communion between Anglicans and Catholics, nothing of the legitimate prestige and patrimony of Anglicanism would be lost, partially fulfilled in Pope Benedict’s establishing the Ordinariates.
It is fair to say that he did not have the grasp of a John Paul II or a Benedict about radical revisionism in both Continental Europe and in the Anglosphere – a revisionism born first from the deconstruction of Europe’s Christian narrative and history and then the constructivism resulting from a denial of any objective purpose or destiny to human life, society or the universe, leaving people to construct their own meaningfulness, unrelated to how the world is and how we have been created.
It may well be that he saw such concerns as trivial in the face of looming disasters like endemic conflict, increasing poverty in some parts of the world and a changing climate which is posing new threats, particularly to the weak and vulnerable.
His desire to involve the whole Church in a synodal process of prayer and consultation led to many thousands of hours being consumed at every level of church life in discussing matters like ending compulsory celibacy for priests in the Latin rite, the ordination of women and attitudes to sexual preferences. For some, inclusiveness did not just mean including the poor in the necessary and good things of life.
The way in which the synods were structured did not always give reassurance that the Church’s ancient understanding of differentiated functions with the body of Christ would always be reflected in the synodal process.
For people to meet, to pray together and to discuss issues in the light of the Gospel can be life giving and fruitful but, as they say, a mountain quaked and a mouse came out. The process must result in result in a weighty reaffirmation of Catholic faith, of the social teaching of the Church and its understanding of the serious moral issues facing humanity in a fast changing world.
Like John XXIII, Francis I has opened windows into the world. The world has seen that the papacy need not be identified with its mediaeval trappings and can recover it apostolic vocation. It will be up to his successor to show how the Faith can address the challenges not only of poverty but of the worldwide persecution of Christians, of rapid technological change, of valuing the person in an age of disposable habits, of setting out the goods of marriage and family in contexts of shifting relationships and much else besides.
As we commend Francis to the safe keeping of our Heavenly Father, we thank God for his vocation to the poor and needy. We pray for whoever will be his successor that he will remember he is not only ‘servant of the servants of God’ but also one whose task is to uphold the Faith handed down from the Apostolic Preaching and to relate it to the dilemmas and difficulties of our times, without compromise with the spirit of the age but also with love and compassion for the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary life.