The People’s Pope in an Age of Power

There was something unmistakably out of step about Pope Francis from the moment he appeared on that balcony in 2013. He didn’t wave like a man crowned with spiritual dominion. He didn’t beam. He bowed. It was subtle, but telling. Here was a new pontiff not seeking awe, but eye contact. His first words to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square were not a proclamation but a prayer request: “Pray for me.”

For a Church still reeling from decades of scandal and disillusionment, the gesture felt almost radical in its humility. And in many ways, it set the tone for everything that would follow. Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, was a man deeply rooted in the ordinary. He took the bus to work as a cardinal. He cooked his own meals. He read Dostoevsky, listened to tango, and supported San Lorenzo, a local Argentinian football club. He was not a man of spectacle, but of symbol, and his symbols mattered.

Francis always offered a different model of leadership. Where others built walls, he washed the feet of refugees. Where others stirred hatred, he reminded the world, often to its discomfort, that compassion was not a political stance but a moral one.

His papacy was marked by tension. To conservatives within the Church, he was reckless, even dangerous. His comments about same-sex unions, capitalism, and climate change shook traditionalists who expected the Vatican to be a bulwark, not a battleground. To progressives, he often seemed to pull his punches, too gentle, too slow, too careful. And yet, the slow burn of his vision reshaped the global Catholic imagination: one less obsessed with rules and more engaged with realities.

Francis never claimed to change doctrine, though critics insist otherwise. What he changed, subtly, stubbornly, was emphasis. He de-centered judgment in favor of mercy, shifted attention from orthodoxy to outreach. “The Church does not have its doors closed for anyone.” once he said.

Underneath this was his Latin American identity, a factor often under-examined but deeply formative. Argentina gave him not only his accent, but his theology. The legacy of dictatorship, the presence of poverty, and the influence of liberation theology, stripped of its Marxist roots but infused with its attentiveness to the poor, all shaped how he saw the Church’s role. It wasn’t merely to govern, but to accompany; not to dominate, but to serve. He called for a “poor Church for the poor,” an idea that unsettled many in a Church long aligned with power.

Francis also inherited the full weight of the institution’s failures: its silence in moments of violence, its protection of abusers, its fortress-like opacity. He did not erase those failures. But he faced them. He met with victims. He apologized, sometimes haltingly, sometimes fiercely. He changed policies, introduced reforms, demoted princes of the Church once thought untouchable. Still, for many, it wasn’t enough. Yet for an institution built for centuries, even the attempt at reckoning felt rare.

What perhaps made Francis so singular was not his politics or policies, but his tone, his fierce gentleness, his insistence on dignity in a time when even empathy feels politicized. He never spoke in soundbites. His speeches were winding, pastoral, even awkward. He quoted poets and philosophers, invoked the saints and the suffering. He prayed for peace, even when it made no headlines.

In 2016, I remember he came to Mexico. I wasn’t sure I’d see him. I learned his motorcade, the “Papamovil” as Mexicans call it, would pass down Avenida Cuauhtémoc in Mexico City. So I waited. For hours. Just for the chance to catch a glimpse of him and maybe take a photo. And I did. The picture is now lost somewhere in an old hard drive, buried among thousands of images I took during that time. 

But the memory remains vivid. I remember the feeling, not of awe, but of nearness. He passed by, and even though I no longer identify as Catholic, I grew up in that world. And in that moment, I recognized the weight and rarity of having a leader like him in the Vatican.

To call him a global icon is not an exaggeration, it’s an understatement. He visited slums and synagogues, prisons and parliament chambers. He embraced lepers, hugged atheists, kissed babies, and, sometimes, unexpectedly, scolded priests. He even made the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. How cool is that? And through it all, he never asked to be liked. He asked to be listened to.

In the end, Francis was not perfect. He was often misread, occasionally inconsistent, and rarely as bold as his reputation suggested. But in a world obsessed with fascism, with brute strength and absolute certainty, his was a voice that reminded us of the human scale of things. He looked for God not in power, but in presence.

He walked slowly. He bowed. He asked for prayers. And in doing so, he reminded the world that leadership, at its best, is not domination but devotion, a small light in the dark, offered not from above, but alongside us.