How Catholics’ ‘believable believer’ became the ‘People’s Pope’

At 4 a.m. on Monday morning, I awoke with a start, turned on the radio and heard the bulletin about the death of Pope Francis. 

The news was shocking. Only the day before, the Pope was driven in his specialized Popemobile and greeted the Easter crowds that filled St. Peter’s Square. What no one knew, with the possible exception of the Pope himself, was that this was his final goodbye. 

Only last week, I published a column in this publication examining the legacy of this remarkable Pope. In it, I cited five pillars of the Francis pontificate: 

• Opening wide the doors of the Catholic Church to everyone  
• His message of mercy and forgiveness
• His condemnation of clericalism and emphasis on the principle of synodality — namely, listening to the faithful 
• Wanting priests to become pastors with “the smell of sheep” 
• His transformation of the Catholic Church from a mostly European and Western institution to include “the peripheries,” namely, those parts of the world that never before had any representation inside the Vatican. 

By naming two-thirds of the 135 cardinals who will soon gather to choose his successor, Pope Francis set the Vatican on a course to ensure those pillars will remain intact.  

But perhaps the most enduring part of Francis’s legacy is the power of his persona. To the very end, Francis’s authenticity and his ability to draw in Catholics and non-Catholics alike shone forth.  

During his last week on Earth, Francis visited a prison, greeted surprised visitors at St. Peter’s Basilica, thanked the doctors and nurses who cared for him during his recent 38-day hospital stay, went to confession and spent a few minutes with Vice President JD Vance.

Nearly a decade ago, I had the privilege of seeing Pope Francis preside over a mass at The Catholic University of America, where I taught for 35 years. The Pope was there for the canonization of St. Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Spanish priest and missionary who spent fifteen years of his life based in California. 

In his homily, the Pope recited the motto that shaped Father Serra’s ministry: “¡Siempre adelante! Keep moving forward!” Remembering this saint, Pope Francis eulogized him as someone who “kept moving forward because the Lord was waiting.”  

Pope Francis moved forward to the very end. 

In his final “Urbi Et Orbi” message delivered on Easter Sunday, the Pope decried the “great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day in the many conflicts raging in different parts of the world! How much violence we see, often even within families, directed at women and children! How much contempt is stirred up at times toward the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants!” 

In 2013, an emotional Archbishop Wilton Gregory appeared on television and was asked to comment on the election of this extraordinary Jesuit to the papacy. His eyes filling with tears, Gregory said the new Pope immediately “won the heart of all the Romans, if not of all of the world. He is a holy man.” In that moment, the future cardinal realized this was going to be an extraordinary papacy, a gift to the church. 

That gift was not always appreciated. In the face of criticism, Pope Francis listened. Facing outright slander and division, he turned the other cheek. 

Pope Francis believed that reaching out to the farthest regions of the world involved more than geography. Instead, he believed the Catholic Church “is called to go outside of itself and go to the peripheries, not just geographic but also the existential peripheries … of sin, of pain, injustice, ignorance.” 

In his autobiography, “Hope,” Francis wrote that at the end of existence, the question will not be “whether we are believers, but only if we are believable.”  

Francis passed that test with flying colors. This “People’s Pope” will be forever remembered for his authenticity and universal appeal. 

I did not know Pope Francis personally, but he knew me. 

Today, the poor, the marginalized, the LGBTQ community, those in war-torn countries, immigrants and those awaiting deportation, and those derided as “the other” are asking themselves, “Who will speak for us now?” 

As the church begins the rituals of saying a final goodbye to this “People’s Pope” and the process of choosing his successor, I remember the final words Pope Francis delivered during his canonization of St. Junipero Serra at Catholic University: 

“Today, like him, may we be able to say. Forward! Let’s keep moving forward!” 

In the spirit of this extraordinary Pope, let this be our motto in the days and years ahead. 

John Kenneth White is a professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America. His latest book is titled “Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism.” He can be reached at johnkennethwhite.com.