A Presbyterian Appreciation of Pope Francis
Sometimes people ask me how I ended up directing a Jesuit social research centre, as a Presbyterian theologian. At this stage, the polite answer rolls out of my mouth with barely any thinking required.
But if I was to tell the truth, I would have to say that it all began on June 18, 2015.
I was a PhD student in Theological Ethics at the University of Aberdeen – not known as a bastion of Catholic Social teaching! But that lunchtime, Pope Francis published his environmental encyclical Laudato Si’ and I gathered with a few fellow students in the garden of our office building to read and discuss this remarkable document.
I remember being personally struck by his lament about “rapidification” – his description of how our way of life just gets ever more hectic. I was consoled by his clear teaching that “profit cannot be the sole criterion to be taken into account” when we are making important decisions. But it was the articulation of what he called integral ecology that captured my attention.
Up to then, I had been alert to the climate and biodiversity crisis but I was baffled as to how it related to other more “concrete” social crises we faced. In one astonishing move, Francis gave me the language to reconcile this apparent dichotomy. After patiently building his argument through a series of careful steps, he declared that “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.”
It was a true epiphany for me.
I couldn’t have known it then, but two years later I would have a chance to sit down with the Jesuits in Ireland to talk about “social theology” and they invited me to work with them. Here I am, almost a decade later. My life has been utterly shaped by Francis’ papacy – for the better.
I was meant to become a minister for some small Presbyterian parish in Dublin. Instead I am immersed in the complexities of policy and the details of Catholic Social Thought as I work with my colleagues at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, in some small way trying to replicate in Ireland what Francis’ pontificate has been all about.
Considering Francis’ “Legacy”
Since the announcement of his death on Monday, much debate has ensued about how to make sense of Pope Francis’ legacy. This is a question that, almost as a matter of definition, will emerge over time. This discussion has not been especially illuminating because the English-speaking world is so constrained by our categories of thought. All the conversation seems to rotate around whether he was “conservative” or “liberal”, a “progressive” or a “reactionary”. It is an amusing quirk of intellectual history that a people as concerned about being open-minded as the English-speaking Western democracies are so willing to have our thinking captured by these tired binaries!
The reality is that Francis marked a decisive turn in style from his immediate two predecessors but in a fashion that is fully coherent with their project. While Benedict XVI is rightly understood as a German intellectual who became Pope, Francis should be seen as a Jesuit spiritual director who became Pope. These are two very different approaches to occupying the seat. But there is no reason to imagine that they are not headed to the same destination.
So, was Pope Francis a conservative? Or was he a progressive? Or was he a liberal? Or was he orthodox?
The answer to all those questions is: “Yes”.
What Francis Meant to Us
If the synodal process that he has initiated becomes embedded in the life of the church globally, the institutional legacy of Francis is likely to be historic. But there is a legacy that operates at a different level that is more significant for us at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. One of his biographers, Mario Borghesi, phrased it beautifully when he described Francis’ approach as “social Catholicism” – an approach that insists that Christian faith demands involvement in the world, without ever lessening its focus on God’s mercy and loving-kindness.
Francis’ environmental teaching had a dramatic effect on my own intellect, imagination, and faith. But it is fair to say that the work of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice has been utterly transformed by thinking through the implications of Laudato Si’. Integral ecology has become the defining lens through which we approach any task. Thus: Housing is the first line of our environmental response in Ireland. Thus: Active transport infrastructure becomes a part of how we welcome life in our society. Thus: Prisoners cannot be confined to the cell, the gym, and the canteen. They need space and soil and time to hear the birds sing.
In his pandemic encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Francis developed his idea of “social friendship” – which is “a love capable of transcending borders”. What seemed like a wise word in 2020 appears powerfully prophetic in 2025.
Again, it is worth noting that while many Western societies flirt with insular, increasingly authoritarian politics, it is the infamously hierarchical Catholic Church that leads the way in maintaining – with crystal clarity – that every other human being really is your brother or sister. The obligation to care does not just extend to those you know or love, or to those who look like you or speak your language.
Francis has been a lone voice of conscience in Europe for those who have drowned in the Mediterranean. Every night, without fail, he spoke in person to Christians in Gaza. It is so profoundly fitting that one of his last public acts was to visit prisoners.
There is no way that we can account for the work that we do in the JCFJ on criminal justice in Ireland without understanding the depth of Francis’ perpetual question, every time he found himself behind bars – “Why them and not me?” He had a fundamental grasp of how unfair our so-called justice system can be. He stood in solidarity with the prisoner not because he was possessed of some super-human level of empathy. He embraced the prisoner because he was humble and understood the truth: if his life had gone differently, the systems that held them captive would detain him instead.
We are still thinking through the implications of “social friendship”. On a basic level, Francis was pushing us to understand politics as the cultivation of the loves we share in common with our neighbour – that Christians should stand at a distance from the technocratic approach to governance that has become so ubiquitous. But on a deeper level, he was calling us to understand on a radical, personal basis, that we truly are all in the same boat. “Everything is connected!” as he sometimes said. “Everyone and everything matters!”
Continuing on Francis’ Path
When we try to distill Francis’ influence on our work, a series of words come to mind. Mercy: He was a man utterly possessed by the certainty that God was quick to forgive and that this confidence should shape every single step we take. Justice: That mercy subverts human conceptions of justice but in no way dilutes our obligation to fight in our own context to ensure that right relationships are established. Encounter: Whether it is with a neighbour who is just like us, a stranger who appears utterly different, and ultimately God himself (who is both neighbour and stranger!), Francis invited us to live lives of joyful expectation of rich encounters.
These trajectories combine for us in a story we heard this week from the head of a Jesuit community in Europe. On the day after Francis’ death, he received a call to his office to say that there was someone at the front door. He went down to encounter a stranger – a young Muslim man who was studying in the university in the city. This stranger (who was also a neighbour) knew that Francis was a Jesuit and wanted, therefore, to express his sadness at his passing. He gifted his new friend two closed tulips, with a prayer, that by the time the flowers blossom, we would have a new Pope. Such a beautiful gesture of solidarity. Such an encounter of grace!
Francis would have loved this story.
We thank God for the remarkable ministry of this most unlikely Pope. We look forward to continuing on the path he helped mark out. And we pray that those tulips blossom soon.
