After 12 years in the papacy, Pope Francis has left behind a legacy that some Catholics view as controversial, but one that stayed closer to the true spirit of the Gospels: to stand with the last and the marginalised, always and everywhere.
The first, and likely the last, Jesuit to be appointed Pope, Francis fully embodied the revolutionary attitude that his order has long represented within Catholicism.
After all, the Catholic Church’s most transformative event in modern history, the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, saw the Jesuits play a crucial role as intellectual and theological enablers.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentinian and the first Pope from the Global South, never hesitated to criticise turbo-capitalism and unregulated markets – two defining features of western liberal democracies – for the state of the world.
From this perspective, his two most important reflections were contained in his encyclical letters: Laudato Si (Praise be to you, my Lord), on the care of our common home, released in May 2015, and Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers), on fraternity and social friendship, released in October 2020.
