Pope Francis is dead. The 266th Bishop of Rome passed this morning at 7.35am. He was the first Latin American and the first Jesuit to occupy the papacy. It is a testament to his tenacity in the face of illness that he managed to bid Happy Easter to thousands of worshippers in St Peter’s Square yesterday, just hours before he ‘returned to the House of the Father’, as the Vatican described it. Yet for all of Francis’s strength of will, his 12-year-long pontificate was ultimately a tragic one. Rome’s ‘instrument of God’ too often let himself be an instrument of the global elites, and both faith and politics suffered as a consequence.
He was born Jorge Bergoglio in Buenos Aries in 1936, the son of Italian immigrants who had journeyed to Argentina to escape Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. There’s sweet historical music in the fact that their son later returned to Italy to take up the holiest office in Catholicism: he was elected pope in 2013 following the resignation of Benedict XVI. He sought to bring to the Vatican the virtues he’d embraced as Bishop of Buenos Aries: love for the poor and marginalised. But he was haunted his whole life by accusations that he had abetted the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. He was head of Argentina’s Jesuit Order back then, and the order backed the junta.
This is the tragedy of Francis: having, in part, been an instrument of the mercenary rulers of Argentina, he later let himself be an instrument for the equally mercenary if not quite as tyrannical influencers of the cultural establishment. In the eyes of the Conclave that elected him, Francis’s pontificate would be a ‘corrective’ to that of Benedict XVI. Where Benedict had been a traditionalist, Francis would be a reformer. Where Benedict was fiercely intellectual, Francis would be humble. Where Benedict waged ceaseless war on the ‘dictatorship of relativism’, on that cursed ideological cult that recognises ‘nothing as definitive’, Francis famously said in response to a query about gay men serving as priests: ‘Who am I to judge?’
It was the original vibe shift. From a pope who sought to save moral judgement from the swirling seas of relativism to a pope who eschewed judgement. From a forbidding pope to a pope who adopted a ‘radical posture of welcome’, with the church’s doors flung open to everyone ‘without censure’. Francis even won plaudits from the aloof influencers who had branded Benedict a ‘bigot’ and a ‘tyrant’. ‘The pope’s gone woke – and we should celebrate’, said a headline in the Independent. They even called him ‘queer friendly’ after he okayed priestly blessings for same-sex unions in certain circumstances. Yet this favour Francis won from the post-God elites came at a high price for the church he governed.
There is a myth that the then Bishop Bergoglio was reluctant to become pope, as propagated by the Netflix drama, The Two Popes. In truth, as John Cornwell of Jesus College, Cambridge has written, the Argentine had a ‘well-planned set of policies ready ahead of his election’. And it was all thoroughly post-Benedict. The Argentine’s papacy would entail acceptance of ‘LGBTQ communities’, a rejection of clericalism, an openness to the idea of having female deacons, a reform of the church to make it less centralised around Vatican diktat, and – most strikingly – a new focus on the ‘climate crisis’. As Cornwell summarised it, Bishop Bergoglio, if elected, would ‘emphasis[e] sins against the environment’ rather than sins relating to ‘sex and “life” issues’. Forget fornication – it’s failing to recycle that will land you in Hell now.
When he became pope, he made good on these policies. Especially in relation to climate change. He promised to minimise the Vatican’s ‘carbon footprint’. Where once the Vatican was seen as a glorious monument to God, now it was treated as a pox on Earth. A place of wonder, art and prayer was reimagined as a drain on Mother Nature, a ‘footprint’ to be shrunk. Catholics must ‘repent’ for their sins against nature and ‘modify [their] lifestyles’, Francis decreed. One couldn’t help but wonder what god he served: the god of Christendom or the god of environmentalism? Where once Catholics pleaded with God for forgiveness, now they were instructed to appease the gods of weather with ‘lifestyle changes’. Neo-paganist rituals like recycling and carbon offsetting competed with the older ritual of communion with God.
Climate alarmism was not the only fashionable ideology that Francis, in his keenness to reform, let into the Vatican. He became an advocate for the post-borders doctrine of the neoliberal elites, as evidenced in his recent clash with JD Vance. There he was in his walled city, sentries at every gate, lamenting the Trump administration’s ‘mass deportation’ of illegal immigrants. More recently he appeared to embrace the Israelophobia of Europe’s chattering classes. He devoted numerous sermons to slamming the ‘cruelty’ of Israel’s actions. This earned him a stinging rebuke from the Chief Rabbi of Rome, who accused him of ‘selective indignation’, of obsessing over Gaza at the expense of other human tragedies. The pope should not ‘divide the world into children and stepchildren’ but rather should ‘denounce the sufferings of all’, the rabbi said.
Where under Benedict the Vatican had been something of a bastion against the post-truth delirium of the new elites, under Francis it too often let itself be overrun by the preoccupations of that political class. It seems the suspension of Benedict-style moral judgement, and the adoption in its stead of a ‘radical posture of welcome’, can let in questionable beliefs alongside sinners seeking redemption. There’s a lesson here for all of us, non-Catholics too: namely, that post-judgementalism is more often a recipe for moral confusion than moral clarity. Approaching life ‘without censure’ can leave one dangerously exposed to voguish delusions. Absent conviction, even the earthly representative of God can end up a representative of earthly follies.
Under Francis, the meaning of the church changed. Were congregants now pollutants? Were their churches eco-scars on Earth rather than temples to something heavenly? If the church is anything, surely it is a fort against the vagaries and pressures of life in a market society. Even as a very lapsed Catholic who long ago rejected the faith of his youth, I see the virtue in that. I’m an atheist who finds himself having to explain to New Atheists that it makes sense people still attend church. In a world in which their labour is exploited, their way of life is demeaned and their every act is denounced for its polluting impact, why would they not seek refuge in an institution in which they at least enjoy the implacable equality of being a ‘Child of God’? Yet even that is put at risk when churches embrace postmodern ideology. Is nowhere safe from the castigations of a ruling class that has lost its faith in humankind?
The Vatican is not a ‘carbon footprint’ – no, it’s the finest illustration of Marx’s understanding of religion as mankind looking ‘for a superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and [finding] nothing there but the reflection of himself’. It is a monument to human ingenuity that no more needs to apologise for itself than the Pyramids do. Listen, Francis was not ‘woke’ – for one thing he was a critic of ‘cancel culture’ and he sought to balance his reformism with principle. But his papacy is a testament to what can happen when we surrender to the bullying of self-serving elites. Benedict discovered that the price of moral conviction is unpopularity. Francis discovered that the price of moral compromise is disarray. This is the stark choice we all face in these tumultuous times, believers and non-believers alike.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
