Millions mourn as Vatican prepares for transition

What happened

Catholics worldwide mourned the death this week of Pope Francis, the first Jesuit to lead the Catholic Church and a strong voice for the marginalized and the dispossessed. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, he was also the first non-European pope in over a millennium, and he broke from the conservatism of his predecessors to introduce reforms such as allowing priests to bless same-sex unions, restricting the use of the Latin Mass, and inviting women to attend meetings of bishops. Francis, 88, had long suffered from lung problems, and a bout of double pneumonia had him hospitalized for more than five weeks earlier this year. On Easter, the visibly ailing pope gave a brief audience to Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert. Vance, a vocal supporter of the mass deportation effort that Francis once called "a disgrace," said the discussion centered on persecuted Christians; the Vatican said it focused on "migrants, refugees, and prisoners." The pope managed to give a brief Easter blessing to the crowd at St. Peter's Basilica but was too weak to deliver the homily, and he died of a stroke the next day.

Tens of thousands of mourners lined up outside the basilica to view his simple zinc-lined coffin, but unlike most popes, Francis will not be buried in the Vatican. True to his lifetime devotion to austerity—he lived in a two-room apartment rather than the luxurious Vatican palace and rode in a Ford Focus instead of a limousine—he requested a modest tomb at Rome's Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, an Irish-born American citizen, will act as interim head of the church until a papal conclave of cardinals is held to elect a new pope.

What the editorials said

An increasingly turbulent world has lost "a needed voice for peace and human compassion," said the New York Daily News. The Jesuit who once ministered to Buenos Aires slum dwellers, washing their feet, "never let the trappings of the papacy change his worldview." While his condemnations of greed seemed increasingly "against the grain" as society grew "coarser and more ruthlessly individualistic" over his 12-year papacy, he was steadfast in his devotion to the poor and the outcasts. His "many humane gestures" are laudable, said National Review, but a full accounting of his papacy "requires clarity and truth." Francis had a bad habit of "often needlessly characterizing orthodox Christian belief as an enemy of charity." And though he would eventually "dramatically and abjectly apologize" for the church's role in covering up the epidemic of child abuse among priests, he spent years turning a blind eye to the misdeeds of church leaders who were close to him.

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What the columnists said

Francis' liberalism had limits, said Joseph Shaw in First Things. His statements on divorce and same-sex unions "stopped just short" of full acceptance. His appointments of women to high positions in the Vatican and elsewhere did not satisfy feminists' demand for female priests. And on abortion, his statements of compassion for women did not soften the Catholic Church's staunch opposition to abortion. At times, his gestures at compromise often "seemed to open rather than paper over" ideological rifts among Catholics.

Yet he put his stamp on the future of the church, said Gaya Gupta in The Washington Post. He appointed 108 of the 135 cardinals who are eligible to vote for his successor, and they are the most diverse bunch in history, with a majority coming from outside Europe. Still, these men will not necessarily "look for a carbon copy" of the late pontiff. Top candidates for the next pope include liberals such as Cardinal Luis Tagle of the Philippines, but also the deeply conservative Hungarian Archbishop Peter Erdo, who has "opposed allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion" and equated accepting migrant arrivals with human trafficking. Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, Francis' top deputy, falls somewhere in between.

Papal conclaves routinely "defy the prophecies of even the most seasoned Vatican watchers," said Eric Bazail-Eimil in Politico. Francis himself wasn't on the short list of most observers when he was chosen in 2013. At a time when so much is at stake for the future of a faith beset by scandal, "no ideological faction of the church is at ease." The Catholic Church, with its more than 1 billion adherents, "now stands at a crossroads of Francis' construction."