In the annals of the Catholic Church, few figures have stirred the soul of the faithful like Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on December 17, 1936, in the vibrant Flores neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a social justice and climate change advocate and promoted interfaith dialogue in his desire to open up the Catholic Church and embrace modernism. In his 12-year papacy, Francis, against all odds, implemented significant reforms, including overhauling Vatican finances, updating liturgical books. Like all mortals, he left the job unfinished, writes NTAKOBONG OTONGARAN
Tens of thousands of people yesterday again lined up in the Vatican City to catch a final glimpse of Pope Francis as he lay in state for a second day and the Italian authorities stepped up security arrangements before his funeral tomorrow.
Francis died aged 88 on Monday morning in his rooms at the Vatican’s Santa Marta guesthouse, having only recently left hospital after five weeks of being treated for double pneumonia.
About 61,000 people had filed past the late Catholic leader’s red-lined wooden coffin in the first 26 hours since Francis began lying in state at St Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday morning, the Vatican said.
Such was the demand to see him that authorities extended visiting hours on Wednesday from midnight (22:00 GMT) until 5:30am (03:30 GMT) yesterday.
After a break of just one and a half hours, the doors opened again with Italian authorities saying the window might again be extended till yesterday night if necessary.
A day earlier, the flow of mourners was slower as many people tried to take photos and videos of Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, and the first from the Southern Hemisphere.
He ascended to the papacy on March 13, 2013, carrying the hopes of 1.2 billion Catholics. His pontificate, marked by a radical humility and a clarion call for mercy, sought to reorient a church mired in scandal and tradition toward the margins of the world—where the poor, the displaced, and the disenfranchised dwell.
Yet, as the sun set on his life on April 21, 2025, at the age of 88, felled by a cerebral stroke and irreversible heart failure, in his modest Vatican residence, Francis left a legacy both luminous and incomplete.
From Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and a Catholic stronghold, his journey resonates as a beacon of hope and a reminder of the limits of even the most audacious reformer. This is the story of the pope who came, saw, and tried to conquer.
A childhood forged in simplicity
Jorge Bergoglio’s roots were humble, woven from the threads of Italian immigrant life in Argentina. The eldest of five children born to Mario José Bergoglio, a railway accountant, and Regina María Sívori, a homemaker, young Jorge grew up in a working-class barrio where Italian and Argentine cultures melded. His childhood was marked by a love for milonga dancing, literature, and the communal spirit of Buenos Aires’ Jewish and working-class communities.
Peronism, with its championing of the working class, captivated his young mind, planting seeds of social justice that would define his life. Yet, a brush with mortality at 21, when severe pneumonia necessitated the removal of part of his right lung, deepened his spiritual resolve. It was a crucible that led him to the Society of Jesus in 1958, forsaking a brief stint as a chemical technician and even a job as a nightclub bouncer—a detail that later humanised him to millions.
Rising through the church
Bergoglio’s path through the Catholic Church was neither swift nor smooth. Ordained a priest in 1969, he served as Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina from 1973 to 1979, a tumultuous period marked by the country’s military dictatorship (1976–1983). Critics accused him of complicity, alleging he failed to protect Jesuit priests jailed and tortured by the regime.
Bergoglio maintained he worked quietly to save lives, a claim the Vatican upheld, though whispers of compromise lingered. His ascent continued: auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992, coadjutor archbishop in 1997, archbishop in 1998, and cardinal in 2001 under Pope John Paul II.
Known as “Father Jorge,” he lived simply, cooking his own meals and riding public buses, earning a reputation for pastoral care and advocacy for the poor during Argentina’s economic crisis.
Several factors converged to propel Bergoglio to the papacy. The unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, the first in nearly 600 years, opened the door for a non-European pope as the Church sought to address its Eurocentric decline and global scandals, particularly clergy sexual abuse.
Bergoglio’s humility, his focus on the poor, and his outsider status as a Latin American Jesuit resonated with cardinals seeking a pastoral reformer. His role in drafting the 2007 Aparecida document, a blueprint for Latin American Catholicism emphasising evangelisation and social justice, showcased his vision. In the conclave, his simplicity and the rallying cry to choose a pope “from the ends of the earth” secured his election.
A papacy of radical
From his first words—“Fratelli e sorelle, buonasera!” (Brothers and sisters, good evening) —delivered from St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis signaled a break with pomp. He chose the name Francis, honouring St. Francis of Assisi, champion of the poor, and took the motto Miserando atque eligendo (“By having mercy and by choosing”).
Shunning the papal apartments for a modest suite in Casa Santa Marta, paying his own hotel bill, and washing the feet of prisoners and the elderly, he embodied a church “bruised, hurting, and dirty” from being in the streets (Evangelii Gaudium).
His early trips, like his 2013 visit to Lampedusa to honour drowned migrants, underscored his commitment to the marginalised, a message that reverberated in Nigeria, where millions flee Boko Haram’s violence.
Francis’s pontificate was a whirlwind of action. His 2015 encyclical ‘Laudato Si’ (which translates to “Praise Be to You,” is Pope Francis’s second encyclical, a formal letter of teaching on the environment and ecology) framed climate change as a moral crisis, urging rich nations to protect the poor from environmental devastation—a call that echoed in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, scarred by oil pollution.
Addressing the U.S. Congress in 2015, the first pope to do so, he pleaded for stewardship of “Mother Earth.” His diplomacy restored U.S.-Cuba relations, negotiated a deal with China on bishop appointments, and saw him pray for peace with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
In April 2019, Pope Francis stunned the world with a dramatic plea for peace in South Sudan by kneeling to kiss the feet of President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar.
The act, which took place during a spiritual retreat at the Vatican, was meant to encourage the two rivals to honour a fragile peace agreement and move the country away from a cycle of civil war that had already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
In the wake of the Pope’s death, President Kiir paid tribute to him as a “beacon of hope, compassion, and unity”, whose devotion to South Sudan’s peace left an indelible mark.
Recalling the 2019 moment, Kiir described it as a “turning point” that deeply moved the country’s leadership and reinforced their commitment to the 2018 peace accord.
In 2022, he apologised for the church’s role in Canada’s Indigenous “cultural genocide,” a gesture Nigerians hoped might extend to colonial-era wounds.
He tackled the clergy sexual abuse scandal, though with mixed success. Appointing survivors like Juan Carlos Cruz to a Vatican commission and mandating bishops to act against abusive clerics marked progress. Yet, scandals persisted, particularly in Latin America, where corruption and cover-ups in countries like Chile frustrated reformers.
In Nigeria, where the church is a moral anchor, Catholics like Lagos-based priest Fr. Anthony Odion praised Francis’s apologies, but lamented ongoing transparency issues, citing local cases of abuse hushed by dioceses.
Francis’s inclusive tone reshaped debates. His 2013 remark, “Who am I to judge?” about a gay bishop, and his 2023 allowance of blessings for same-sex individuals (not unions) sparked hope among progressives but suspicion among conservatives, including Nigerian bishops who publicly opposed the ruling.
His synodic approach, culminating in the 2023 Synod on Synodality, invited laypeople and women to vote, a democratic shift that inspired Nigerian Catholics like Adaobi Nwosu, a Lagos catechist, who saw it as empowering the laity. Yet, his traditional stances—opposing abortion, contraception, and women’s ordination—aligned him with predecessors, frustrating those expecting doctrinal change.
Achievements
Francis’s achievements were profound. He appointed over 140 cardinals, many from the Global South, including Nigeria’s Peter Okpaleke, shifting the church’s centre to Africa and Asia. His encyclicals—Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel”, an apostolic exhortation released on November 24, 2013, and focuses on the church’s mission of evangelisation in the modern world), Laudato Si’, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love”, released on March 19, 2016, focuses on love in the family, offering reflections and pastoral guidance based on the deliberations of two Synods of Bishops held in 2014 and 2015)—reframed evangelisation, environmental ethics, and pastoral care, and influencing global discourse.
His travels, drawing millions in Brazil (3 million at Copacabana Beach) and the Philippines (6 million at a record-breaking Mass), reinvigorated Catholicism.
Through his gestures of mercy and compassion, Pope Francis became a beacon of hope for the poor. His 2017 message to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, urging peace amid the violence of Boko Haram, underscored his commitment to reconciliation and solidarity with the suffering.
Francis’s emphasis on the Global South was groundbreaking. He appointed more than 140 cardinals, many from Africa and Asia, reflecting a shift in the Church’s center of gravity away from Europe. This was a significant moment for countries like Nigeria, whose own Cardinal Peter Okpaleke was appointed in 2018 after the controversial Ahiara Diocese crisis.
The unfinished work
Despite these triumphs, Pope Francis’s reforms remained an unfinished symphony, a testament to the intractable challenges he could not fully conquer. His push for Vatican financial transparency stumbled amid persistent scandals, like the London property deal involving Cardinal Angelo Becciu, which exposed mismanagement.
The Vatican Bank, once synonymous with scandal, still operates with opacity, and key figures often escape accountability, leaving the church’s financial house disordered.
In Nigeria, where diocesan funds vanish without trace, Catholics like Chukwuma Eze in Abuja lamented the Vatican’s silence on local graft, yearning for the proactive reforms Francis promised but couldn’t fully delivered.
The clergy sexual abuse crisis, though met with heartfelt apologies and survivor-led commissions, remained a festering wound. High-profile cases, such as Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s decades-long impunity, underscored the church’s slow bureaucracy and culture of secrecy.
In Latin America, particularly Chile, cover-ups persisted, while in Nigeria, Fr. Anthony Odion noted dioceses still hush abuse cases, betraying survivors’ trust. Francis’s zero-tolerance rhetoric, while powerful, lacked consistent enforcement, leaving many disillusioned.
On inclusion, Francis’s gestures toward LGBTQ+ Catholics—his “Who am I to judge?” remark and 2023 blessing allowance—raised hopes but stopped short of doctrinal change.
Francis’s vision of synodality—a participatory, bottom-up church—clashed with his occasionally centralised approach. In Nigeria’s Ahiara Diocese crisis, his 2017 ultimatum to priests to accept a bishop or face suspension was seen as authoritarian, undermining the collaborative spirit he championed.
His environmental leadership, crystallised in ‘Laudato Si’, inspired Nigeria’s Niger Delta communities battling oil pollution, yet the Vatican’s own lack of sustainable practices, like using cleaner energy, weakened his call for global action
Pope Francis came to the church at a time of profound crisis, saw its wounds, and sought to heal them with mercy, humility and a radical vision. He shifted the church’s gaze to the Global South, and his environmental advocacy was a bold response to the moral crisis of climate change. Yet, the deep-rooted issues of corruption, scandal, and doctrinal division remained beyond his reach.
Will his successor carry on with his vision and the battle to reform the church? That is the question on the lips of faithful as the Pope Francis is interred today.
