Pope Francis the Catastrophic
Pope Francis’ papacy left a complex legacy, with controversies over reforms, authority, and his response to global challenges, from persecution to climate change. Some have even called it catastrophic.
Editor’s Note: The team at the Canberra Declaration holds deep respect for our brothers and sisters in Christ within the Catholic Church, which represents 50.1% of the global Christian population, totaling 2.5 billion people. We also honour Pope Francis for his leadership of the Church over the past 12 years. Our passion is for unity in Christ, as expressed in John 17. That said, many Catholics have expressed grave concerns about the Pope’s actions and statements, which have often been misrepresented by secular media seeking to discredit the Christian faith. The Canberra Declaration team shares these concerns. To ensure fair and respectful coverage, we consulted our managing editor, a devoted Catholic herself, for guidance on addressing these issues following Pope Francis’ passing while also paying proper tribute to his leadership. This story was selected for publication by a devout Catholic committed to God.
Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday morning at 88 years of age, has been described repeatedly as ‘a pope for the people, for the marginalised’. However, it is important to give an account of the pontificate of the 266th pope that balances up the fawning ‘eulogies’ all of us have no doubt heard and read.
The late Cardinal George Pell, in the Demos document attributed to him, described Francis’ papacy as ‘catastrophic’.
It seems the makings of this were present in Jorge Maria Bergoglio’s youth. As reported by George Neumayr in the American Spectator a few years ago, Antonio Caponnetto, the Argentinian author of several books on Pope Francis, informed him that, ‘At the seminary, Bergoglio’s classmates called him “Machiavelli”.’
Indeed, it is during his time as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, during which he was elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II, that Bergoglio became known as a master of manipulation.
When appointed Archbishop, he dispensed with his driver and used public transport to get around the city. The citizens of Buenos Aires were made aware of this many times since Bergoglio often was accompanied on the bus by a photographer. He was the virtue-signaller par excellence before it became fashionable. So much for Jesus’ exhortation that ‘when you give alms, the left hand must not know what your right is doing’ (St Matthew vi 3).
On 13 March, 2013, Bergoglio was elected pope on just the second day of the conclave. Many have argued that his election was a result of a longstanding and coordinated plan by the secretive St Gallen mafia, named after the Swiss town in which they often met. Several of their number had publicly declared that after John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Church needed ‘a change in direction to bring it into the modern world’.
However, Francis was anything but a positive reformer. While he claimed he wanted to decentralise Church decision-making through his ‘Synod on Synodality’, he continuously issued decrees cementing his authority, including removing heads of religious orders – traditionalist ones in particular. Further, Cardinal Pell’s scathing Spectator Australia article, published a day after his passing, spoke of the ‘toxic nightmare’ of the ‘Synod on Synodality’, stating that it was ‘largely irrelevant to the preaching of the gospel and the threat of decline, being more concerned with redistribution of power’.
Many other prelates were critical of Francis’ approach, the most prominent being Cardinals Raymond Burke, Robert Sarah and Gerhard Müller, all of whom were removed from their posts in the Curia, with Burke being infamously kicked out of his Rome apartment by Francis. Müller declared that Francis’ reforms of the Curia were disastrous, reducing it to ‘a business that works to provide assistance to “clients”, as if it were a multinational enterprise and no longer an ecclesial body’.
Totally at odds with Papa Bergoglio’s stated concern for the Church on the margins, in 2018 the Vatican signed a secret agreement with the Chinese Communist party on the appointment of Catholic bishops. In doing so, the Vatican abandoned loyal Catholics in China who have been intermittently persecuted for their loyalty to the papacy for more than 70 years.
Indeed, Pope Francis’ voice on the persecution of believers throughout the world was muted, to put it mildly, over the 12 years of his papacy. Rather, he focussed his attention on persecuting those, mainly young, Catholics in the Church who preferred the Traditional Latin Mass, whom he accused of having a ‘mental imbalance, emotional deviation, behavioural difficulties, a personal problem that may be exploited’. Further attempts to restrict the Latin Mass entirely last year faced stiff opposition from many bishops and laity, and thus far have not been carried out.
He had a similar treatment for those who called out the draconian nature of Covid restrictions, including the mandating of Covid vaccines – the taking of which he said was a ‘moral imperative’.
Another of Francis’ ‘moral imperatives’ was climate change. In his encyclical Laudato Si, (named after the first words of St Francis of Assisi’s famous prayer), he called for an approach that hears ‘both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’. Cardinal Pell observed that this approach advocated a ‘Hindu-style pantheism’. Francis also made numerous calls to action for global leaders to implement the Paris Climate Agreement.
While Francis’ trolled those who were most devout in their faith, thumbing his nose at one of the few growth areas of the Church, he repeatedly welcomed prominent LGBT activists at the Vatican, such as the Jesuit Fr James Martin, who he appointed as one of his key communications advisers.
Despite his numerous declarations of ‘zero tolerance’ of clergy sexual abuse, such declarations were undermined by his reported involvement in the cover-up of a number of high-profile cases, including two where the individuals concerned had been convicted of sexual abuse.
One case goes back to Bergoglio’s time as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, which may explain why Francis never returned to his native Argentina during his papacy, unlike John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who returned to their native Poland and Germany respectively soon after their elections.
The fact that the vast majority of the world’s media, usually rapacious in their reporting of Catholic clergy accused of sexual abuse, remained largely silent on these matters, is a scandal in itself.
So where to now for the Church? The most talked about papabili presently are the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, an Italian and chief protagonist of the pact with China. However, this time a ‘diversity pick’ might be good for conservatives, with Cardinal Sarah from Guinea also being mentioned.
There is a saying, though: Chi entra papa nel conclave ne esce cardinale (He who goes into the conclave a pope comes out a cardinal). Whoever the next pope is, he must, as Demos declared, ‘understand that the secret of Christian and Catholic vitality comes from fidelity to the teachings of Christ and Catholic practices. It does not come from adapting to the world or from money’.
The next successor to Saint Peter must unify and inspire Catholics, not divide and confuse them. Otherwise, a schism will ensue, the results of which will be disastrous, not just for the Church, but for the world.
___
Republished with thanks to The Spectator Australia. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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It is a great shame you have published yet another slander of the late Holy Father on your website. Please remove it. We Catholics are duty-bound to love, honour and pray for the Pope – not criticise and judge him. You are displaying your bias. You are giving oxygen to a small – very small – cohort of influencers who publicly and scandalously opposed Pope Francis.
I respectfully ask you leave this comment and what follows as a true, faithful Catholic tribute to our late Holy Father.
April 22, 2025
For LA NACION
Mariano Fazio
At this pivotal moment in history, amid the pain of his death and the gratitude for his legacy, I offer here some reflections on the teachings of Pope Francis—reminders of the theological and pastoral richness that can continue to grow within us and bear fruit over time.
“The name of God is mercy”, which titles one of his books, could be considered the central message of his pontificate. In continuity with Saint John Paul II, Francis repeatedly preached that Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy, and that the salvific kerygma—the first proclamation of the Gospel—is foundational to the life of the Church. As Christians have just celebrated at Easter, God became incarnate to save us, dying on the cross and opening the gates of forgiveness through His infinite mercy. A Church with open doors that offers a path to redemption.
Directly connected to this first proclamation, the Pope presented the Beatitudes and the works of mercy from Matthew chapter 25 as the heart of the Gospel. These passages clearly reveal divine mercy and identify the needy with the person of Jesus Christ: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Mt 25:40). Francis has been called the Pope of the peripheries—both the visible ones (the poor, migrants, the sick, the marginalized, victims of war or drug trafficking), and the spiritual ones (those who suffer in solitude, who find no meaning in life, trapped in resentment or despair).
In his social encyclical Fratelli tutti, Francis addresses a fragmented and violent world, offering a modern interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan and promoting a culture of encounter. Concerning various forms of closed and violent nationalism, xenophobia, contempt, and even mistreatment of those who are different, Francis said: “Faith, with the humanism it embodies, must maintain a critical sense toward these tendencies and help us respond quickly when they begin to appear. For this, it’s important that catechesis and preaching more directly and clearly include the social meaning of life, the fraternal dimension of spirituality, the conviction of each person’s inalienable dignity, and the motivations to love and welcome all.”
This familial vision of humanity (all brothers, fratelli tutti) is complemented by a vision of the world as a home, a common house. This idea underpins his reflection on integral human ecology, expressed in the encyclical Laudato Si’, titled after the spiritual hymn in which Francis of Assisi speaks to us of nature as a family: Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Fire, and our Sister Mother Earth.
Gaudete et exsultate, his 2018 apostolic exhortation, invites us to value the “next-door holiness” of the middle class—a holiness within reach for everyone: “I like to see holiness in the patient people of God: in parents who raise their children with love, in men and women who work hard to bring home bread, in the sick, in elderly religious who continue to smile. In this perseverance, moving forward day by day, I see the holiness of the Church in action”—those saints who live among us and reflect God’s presence.
The allies of this popular holiness are the devotions and pilgrimages of God’s faithful people. Accordingly, Francis dedicated important reflections to the nativity scene (Admirable Sign), to Saint Joseph (With a Father’s Heart), to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (He Loved Us), to blessings, and to the liturgy. Supporting these reflections is his deep love for Mary, Mother of God, which became the cornerstone of his preaching on the “revolution of tenderness.”
When the kerygmatic message is directed to young people, it becomes an invitation to friendship and joy: God is love and wants to be your friend. “Faithful friends, who are at our side in tough times, reflect the Lord’s affection, His comfort, and His loving presence. (…) Friendship with Jesus is unbreakable. He never leaves, even when He seems silent. When we need Him, He lets Himself be found and walks alongside us wherever we go” (Christus Vivit, 154).
And in Pope Francis’ language, friendship leads to missionary proclamation—to sharing what we have received. “Only from this respectful and compassionate listening can genuine paths of growth be found, awakening a desire for the Christian ideal, a longing to fully respond to God’s love, and a yearning to develop the best that God has sown in our lives” (EvangeliiGaudium, 171). Wherever we are and with whomever we are—at school, in the neighborhood, at sports, out with friends, doing volunteer work or at our jobs—it is always good and timely to share the joy of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium). This is how Jesus draws near to all, offering His light (Lumen Fidei) and His hope that does not disappoint (Spes non confundit). Some of Francis’ final words to young people were a call to “keep walking with enthusiasm in faith, diligence in charity, and perseverance in hope.”
Seeing a deep continuity between Benedict XVI and Francis, I once had the chance to share with the Argentine Pope a personal interpretation of their teachings: the “dictatorship of relativism” that Benedict spoke of is, at its core, the reverse side of the “throwaway culture” described by Francis. Both express the same issue: when the foundations of human dignity are broken, abuse of persons follows—especially of the most vulnerable. His response was positive. Still, what truly unites both pontiffs lies at the heart of the Pope’s mission and the radical newness of Christianity: proposing an encounter with a person—Jesus of Nazareth. Not a lofty doctrine, but a person: one who walked our earth, who lives because He rose again, and who awaits us in Heaven with open arms. That same person whom Francis has now encountered in a final embrace.
Argentine priest, resident in Rome, Auxiliary Vicar of Opus Dei.
To be blunt, from what I’ve heard over the course of the years about this late pope, he was a marxist and therefore not a christian.
We can only hope that the next pope selected is one who actually reads his Bible.
I refuse to speak ill of the dead.
I simply pray that the next Pontiff is more like Pope Benedict or Cardinal Pell.
I object to Censorship as the enemy of Truth . I applaud “The Canberra Daily Declaration” for its balanced reporting and allowing people to speak their minds. As a practising Catholic with a pedigree which includes my cousin, Anna Maria Marovich( on the road to sainthood )+my uncle much -removed , Scanderbeg , “The Champion Of Christendom “, etc, I feel I am free to criticise the Worst Pope in my 81 years. I would call him “The Media + WEF ‘s Pope “! He was a Marxist , the product of a Marxist family who fled Italy for that reason !
He abandoned the kidnapped, raped , murdered, homes + churches destroyed around the World . Not a squeak in their defence ! It was as if they did not exist !He betrayed the devout Chinese priests who operated in secret, risking their lives. He stacked The College of Cardinals with supposedly “modern “prelates whom he hoped would similarly ignore Scripture. It was hypocritical of him to mount an attack on Latin Masses when all ceremonies in St Peters at Easter, Christmas + his funeral are/were in Latin ! It is not as if Masses in the vernacular would disappear since only a small minority favour the Latin Mass.
I hope a Pope is elected who will follow the Scriptures, not seek to be “modern ” because if another clone of Francis is elected who will permit “Gay “marriage + priests, etc there well may be a split in the Church. At that point I will desert the Catholic Church !Both myself + my devout lawyer cousin have considered joining the Orthodox Church , but, the lack of knowledge of Masses inChurch Slavonic has deterred us.
I hope for a miracle, that an African, ie Conservative Pope is elected to return the Catholic Church to God .
Dr Loiacono’s assessment of Pope Francis lacks the rigour that I would expect from an academic, especially a law academic. A basic rule of justice is to assess both sides of story and to assess the evidence.
Let’s begin with the evidence.
(a) “The late Cardinal George Pell, in the Demos document attributed to him, described Francis’ papacy as ‘catastrophic’.” — In other words, we don’t know whether Pell wrote this. Did Pell often write anonymous pronouncements? No to my knowledge. In a court of law this attribution would be shredded.
(b) The second damning evidence submitted is an article by an American I have never heard of quoting a book by an Argentinian author I have never head of, whose credentials are unknown. Bergoglio is called “Machiavellian”. This is a common criticism of every boss. Who knows whether it is correct? This is basically hearsay evidence — it would not stand up in a court of law.
Much of the rest of the article consists of inferences about his character based on actions which Dr Loiacono doesn’t like. He was a master of virtue-signalling? So was Mother Teresa. Perhaps there is a virtuous kind of virtue-signalling. The Pope is supposed to be a teacher. How can a teacher teach without a bit of performative signalling?
Then we get to policies which Dr Loiacono disagrees with: the Latin Mass and negotiations with China. OK, there are disgruntled people who agree with him. Perhaps they are right. History will tell. The Pope is a leader; leaders have to make decisions.
Dr Loiacono is shocked by kindly words Pope Francis had for gays. The gays were shocked by his harsh words about their sins. I wish that he had mentioned that.
Was there another side to Pope Francis? A good side? A holy side? There was. Most of his documents and speeches were calls to prayer and worship. He was scathing about homosexuality, surrogacy, IVF, abortion, promiscuity, co-habitation, divorce, arms-dealing … Dr Loiacono didn’t mention any of those. Did he set his alarm clock to wake up only when the Pope said something he didn’t like? How could a legal academic be so one-eyed?