OPINION
Pope Francis knew what it was like to live under a dictatorship and would not be silenced (Image: Getty)
Pope Francis used the power of the papacy to shine a bright spotlight on the issues that stirred his conscience. He had lived under a ruthless junta in Argentina and had no intention of censoring himself as leader of the world’s Catholics.
This Pope was unafraid to tackle some of the most controversial topics in world politics – taking every opportunity to champion the cause of migrants and refugees.
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The pontiff was a man in a hurry, not worried about ruffling feathers. While he was hard to pin down on some matters of theology – and regularly appalled traditionalists with his off-the-cuff utterances – when it came to telling the powerful about the plight of the vulnerable he communicated loud and clear.
In 2015, when he became the first Pope to address both US Houses of Congress, he called for the abolition of the death penalty and described a “refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War”.
Fully aware of the fierce controversies over immigration in the US, he declared to his American audience, speaking as a fellow son of the Americas: “We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners.”
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That same year he fired a blast at anyone not taking climate change seriously. He warned in his encyclical Laudato Si that young people “wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded”.
Climate change, he said, is “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day”.
A cardinal rule of diplomacy is avoiding interfering in a foreign election. But he showed no hesitation about riling Donald Trump.
Ahead of the 2016 election – in an unsubtle dig at the future president’s plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico – he said: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
It is easy to paint Francis as a textbook example of a Lefty priest but this misses the point.
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His faith led him to the fervent defence of the marginalised and he sought to build a more merciful, welcoming church. But he also spoke up for the unborn.
Ahead of the last US election he made it clear he was impressed by neither Trump nor Kamala Harris.
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He said: “Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies.”
Francis infuriated people on both the Left and the Right as he tried to use his limited time in the Vatican to build a better world. He literally opened the doors of the Church to the destitute when he founded a homeless shelter and took in Syrian refugees.
Such authenticity won him the respect and affection of people who would not agree with all his pronouncements. His successor may focus on bridging the ideological fissures that have opened up within the Catholic Church, but Francis will be remembered as a Pope for the world.