As the world Pope Francis consistently called for — one that cared for migrants, safeguarded the health of the planet and protected human rights — collapsed around him in recent years, Francis would react to the newest setback by going quiet.
When Francis was “disappointed by certain political choices that governments are making,” Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister and a close aide to Francis, said, “Silence comes upon him.”
That silence is now permanent. The death of Pope Francis on Monday morning has now deprived the world of a persistent advocate for the downtrodden. As mass deportations become the norm, authoritarianism expands and the alliances that governed the post-World War II era are turned upside down, it is clear that Francis has left behind a world quite unlike the one he joined as pope in 2013.
When he first stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis had joined a world stage packed with leaders, including President Barack Obama in the United States and Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, who broadly shared his views. Twelve years later, the pope’s funeral will be attended by a new crop of leaders whose politics align less closely with his own, including President Trump and President Javier Milei of Argentina.
As progressive leaders successively left the world stage, Francis became an increasingly lonely voice in a world that has seemingly become ambivalent about many of his priorities. Now that he is gone, there is no obvious alternative to fill the void.
“His voice is certainly missing,” said Archbishop Gallagher, who met with Vice President JD Vance in the Vatican on Saturday and stressed the Vatican’s concerns about migrants and refugees. “People are suddenly realizing that that voice was significant, and people were listening to it,” he said. It had been “one of the very few points of reference that people have in the world,” he said. “There’s a new world disorder being established.”
Francis didn’t speak up only in support of those he considered vulnerable. He used his enormous platform as the spiritual leader of an estimated 1.3 billion Catholics to push back against world leaders who he and his supporters worried demonized migrants, the poor and the marginalized for political gain.
And throughout his pontificate, Francis both appealed to and criticized leaders for policies that he said visited suffering on regular people, who became caught up in others’ brutal pursuit for geopolitical and financial power. It was a message that held until the end.
Before Francis took ill in February, he criticized President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy. “What is built on the basis of force,” Francis warned in a letter to American bishops, “and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.” In his last public appearance, during the Urbi et Orbi Easter address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday, Francis lacked the strength to speak, but a prelate reiterated his concerns for migrants, victims of violence and conflict across the world and a growing climate of anti-Semitism.
But Francis’ warnings had a tendency to go unheeded.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a close aide to Francis who is widely credited with writing some of his most important documents, including those on the subject of the environment, said Francis had provided a “prophetic voice,” though he pointed out that it had often been “more applauded than followed” on the world stage. While more liberal leaders, including President Obama, got a photo op, he said, they eventually followed policies that were sometimes in direct opposition to what Francis had preached.
During his pontificate, which began with his visits to migrant camps in southern Italy, Europe became increasingly reluctant to accept migrants, and nationalist parties — feeding off the economic frustration, populist politics and xenophobia of voters — have steadily risen.
Francis repeatedly warned of a return of authoritarianism, and nationalism’s tendency to reintroduce history’s horrors. By the end of his pontificate, right-wing parties had scored major victories throughout Europe, and President Trump, whose Christianity Francis had once questioned, was back in power.
But Cardinal Czerny said Francis was never motivated by the desire to make alliances among leaders, but instead by looking out, and speaking up, for the world’s meek.
“It’s really unusual, the gift to have that sense of reality that other people can count on,” Cardinal Czerny said. The pope’s extraordinary gift of empathy, he said, and connection with regular people who felt he had their best interests at heart, was something “his successor is unlikely to have.”
The shift in global politics, said Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Sweden, made Francis’ voice and message “even more important.” He said that he hoped Francis “has helped the church to see the necessity of continuing to be the voice of those who have no voice.” Cardinal Arborelius said that even as it was the church’s duty to speak up for the weak, “it might be more difficult in the future to do so.”
Hours after the Vatican announced the pope’s death on Monday, that sense of a void was dawning on those who shared the pope’s concerns.
“The least among us have lost their voice,” said Pino Caporale, 64, who manages a soup kitchen in Rome. He had come, with a migrant he met at the kitchen, to St. Peter’s Square after Francis’ death was announced on Monday morning. “Pope Francis was the pope of the poor, of the migrants, of the incarcerated,” he said, adding that his death “leaves a huge void.” With world leaders who “sew divisions,” he added, “Francis was alone against everyone.”
Amy Pope, the director general of the International Organization for Migration, described Francis as “a beacon of moral clarity, an unwavering voice for the rights of migrants and for victims of injustice.” She added that “his legacy of compassion and human dignity should continue to inspire the world.”
Anthony Ssembatya, 38, a researcher from Uganda, worried during a recent trip to the Vatican that without Francis the world would forget about the migrants who are dying crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. “Nobody will speak up for them,” he said.
But Archbishop Gallagher said he didn’t mistake the pope’s silence after he delivered what he called “bad news” for dejection. Francis, and the church, he said, took the setbacks in stride as a reminder of “our smallness, of our limitations.”
Francis, he said, looked optimistically at the setbacks, as he did all else, as moments in history. “OK, this is the way things are going at the moment,” Archbishop Gallagher said. “We just have to keep working and keep plugging away and hopefully rebuild something from the ruins of what’s going on.”
Reporting was contributed by Emma Bubolain Vatican City and Elisabetta Povoledoin Rome.
Jason Horowitz is the Rome bureau chief for The Times, covering Italy, the Vatican, Greece and other parts of Southern Europe.
The post Francis’ Death Silences a Voice for the Voiceless appeared first on New York Times.
