Modern popes, for better or for worse, tend to be defined in soundbites. John Paul II’s clarion call of ‘Be not afraid’ became emblematic of his invitation to young Catholics to embrace their faith and his rallying of the West against the spectre of international Communism.
Benedict XVI’s great theological career, and his term as a pope in the model of priest and professor, remains summed up in his simple declaration that Deus caritas est.
For Francis, who has died at the age of 88, the world will likely remember, in the immediate weeks after his death anyway, his often quoted, though often misrepresented, motto of ‘who am I to judge?’
Uttered during one of his habitual in-flight press conferences in response to a question about gay clergy who sought to live their ministry and their lives faithful to the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, it became a shorthand for a pope committed more than anything to a radical posture of welcome – a ‘Vatican Council II pope’, he was dubbed in the media, dedicated to throwing open wide the Church’s doors to Catholics, and indeed to everyone, without censure or reservation about their complicated lives.
But if that is how the world saw Francis, those living with and within the bubble of the daily life of the world’s largest Church will remember a different kind of pope – a contradictory and mercurial pontiff who often appeared less like a sure helmsman of the bark of St Peter and more like a man struggling to ride a horse bolting in several directions at once.
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