The death of Pope Francis (2013–2025): end of an era?
By Roberto de Mattei | 23 April 2025
At 7:35 on Easter Monday, 21 April 2025, the soul of Jorge Mario separated from his mortal body to present itself for Divine Judgement. Only on the day of the Universal Judgement will we know what sentence Pope Francis has been given by the Supreme Tribunal at which each of us must one day present ourselves. Let us pray today for his soul, as the Church prays publicly in its novendiales, and, precisely because the Church is a public society, together with our prayers, let us make an attempt at a historical judgement on his pontificate.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the 266th Roman Pontiff, the first with the name of Francis, was the Vicar of Christ for twelve years, although rather than this title he preferred that of Bishop of Rome. But the Bishop of Rome becomes such when, after his election, he accepts the Petrine munus. By accepting the pontificate, the pope also assumes the titles, reported in the Annuario Pontificio, of Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of Vatican City State, Servant of the Servants of God, Patriarch of the West (this last title was restored in 2024, after it had been removed in 2006 by Benedict XVI).
These titles deserve special honours, especially that of Vicar of Christ, which makes the pope not the successor but the representative on earth of Jesus Christ, God-Man, Redeemer of humanity. The pope receives honours not for his person, but for the dignity of the mission that Christ entrusted to Peter. Just as in the Christian sacraments an action expresses an invisible grace, in the same way honours (titles, vestments, ceremonies) are sensible signs of realities spiritual and also institutional. Authority is a spiritual and invisible reality, but for it to be recognised it must be manifested in a visible way, through actions and rituals. Without these, institutions risk becoming invisible, and religious society, like the political, sinks into chaos. Christianity is founded on this principle: the invisible God took a face, a body, a name: “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14); “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (Jn 1:18). St John the Evangelist is, among the authors of the New Testament, the one who most intensely elaborates a theology of the visibility of the invisible, in his Gospel but above all in the Book of Revelation, in which symbol becomes prophetic vision, to show the hidden action of God in history.
Pope Francis did not show respect for the decorum of the papacy, from the first informal “Brothers and sisters, good evening”, addressed from the loggia of St Peter’s on the day of his election, to his public appearance last 9 April, when he appeared in the basilica in his wheelchair, wearing a blanket striped like a poncho, without any sign of pontifical dignity. Pope Francis replaced sacral symbolism with a mediatic symbolism, made up of images, words and meetings, which often became messages stronger than his official documents, from “Who am I to judge?” to the washing of the feet of women and Muslims, to his participation, in 2025, in the Sanremo Music Festival through a video message. Some say that in doing so Pope Francis “humanised” the papacy, but in reality he trivialised it and made it worldly. It is the institution of the papacy, not the person of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, that was debased by these and countless other actions, which secularised the language and signs that the Church has always used to express the divine mystery.
The first to strip the Church of its majesty was not Francis, however, but Paul VI, to whom is owed the renunciation of the tiara, which he placed on the “altar of the Council” on 13 November 1964, followed by the abolition of the sedia gestatoria — “gestatorial chair”, the noble guard and the papal court, which were not frills, but signs of the honour due to the Roman Catholic Church, as the human-divine institution founded by Jesus Christ. In this respect, the pontificate of Francis does not represent, as some think, a “break” with precedents, but appears instead as the fulfilment of a pastoral tack introduced by Vatican II, which course Benedict XVI only partially attempted to reverse.
The apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia of 19 March 2016 certainly created a situation of disorientation, due to its openness towards the divorced and remarried and couples in “irregular” situations; the Document on Human Fraternity, signed with the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque on 4 February 2019, was a new stage in the journey of false ecumenism; the encouragement of immigration, the promotion of the globalist agenda, the proclamation of “synodalism”, the discrimination against traditionalists, the possibility of blessing homosexual couples and that granted to lay people and women to rise to the leadership of a dicastery, are all events that aroused legitimate reactions in the Catholic world. Thanks in part to this resistance, the goals that the progressive bishops intended to reach, like the diaconal ordination of women, the marriage of priests, the attribution of doctrinal authority to the episcopal conferences, did not occur under Pope Francis, disappointing his most ardent supporters. The most revolutionary aspect of his pontificate, however, remains the succession of words and actions that transformed the public perception of the Primacy of Peter, rendering it worldly and weakened.
Now an era is coming to a close, and one wonders what new era will be opened. The next pope may be more conservative or more progressive than Francis, but he will not be Bergoglian, because Bergoglianism was not an ideological project but a style of government, pragmatic, authoritarian and often left to improvisation. In part because of this lack of legacy, the strong tensions and polarisations that developed under Francis’s government could explode right from the days of the conclave.
It should also be remembered that Francis declared a Year of St Joseph in 2021; he consecrated Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on 25 March 2022; he dedicated his fourth encyclical, Dilexit nos of 24 October 2024, to the Sacred Heart: all actions in line with the traditional spirituality of the Church and quite different from the pagan cult of Pachamama to which the pope also paid homage in the Vatican. Contradictions therefore characterise the Bergoglian era. For example, Francis denied Our Lady the title of Co-Redemptrix and called her a mestiza — “hybrid” — of the Mystery of the Incarnation, but in his will he wrote that he had always entrusted his life and ministry “to the Mother of Our Lord, Mary Most Holy”. So he asked that his mortal remains “rest, awaiting the day of resurrection, in the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major”. “I desire that my last earthly journey conclude precisely in this ancient Marian shrine where I went for prayer at the beginning and end of each Apostolic Journey, to trustingly commend my intentions to the Immaculate Mother and thank her for her meek and maternal care”.
The Blessed Virgin Mary is now entrusted with his final journey, while the Church finds itself facing a moment of extraordinary gravity and complexity in its history. And it is to her, Mother of the Mystical Body of Christ, that we entrust all our hopes today, in the certainty that the days of the Church’s suffering will be followed, as soon as possible, by those of its Resurrection and glory.