Open this photo in gallery: Pope Francis is pictured at the Municipal Theatre in Rio de Janeiro, July 27, 2013.GABRIEL BOUYS/Getty Images Miles Pattenden is a historian of the Catholic Church and teaches at Oxford University. Pope Francis was an unexpected but much-anticipated first pope from the Global South – the very model of a modern man of faith who transcended politics, healed divisions, and led by example in a way that secular figures could not. He won himself a global fanbase as a “People’s Pope” who reached out far beyond practising Catholics. Who can forget the time he embraced and kissed a man disfigured by neurofibromatosis? Or when Francis let a little boy occupy the papal throne as he stood to give a speech? Or the sight of his lonely figure in an empty St. Peter’s Square, as he prayed for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic? Francis did not choose his papal name for nothing. As the first ever Jesuit pope, he probably wanted to reassure the church that it was safe to entrust St. Peter’s keys to that oft-suspected society. But he also wanted to represent a decisive break with the recent papal past. No traditional papal name like Benedict or Pius, or even the double-homage John Paul, for him. He claimed descent not from those who founded his own order, but from the medieval St. Francis of Assisi. That great holy man had inspired countless others as an uncomplicated servant of God, the poor and nature. St. Francis famously appeared naked before his local bishop to persuade him of the virtue of “holy poverty.” He talked to the birds in the trees, urging them to sing God’s praises. Pope Francis took up the Saint’s proverbial mantle, retiring his predecessor’s sartorial extravagances. He also used his encyclical letter Laudato si’ (the title takes its verbiage from St. Francis’s song of praise, Canticle of the Sun) to embrace an ecological outlook that extolled “care for our common home.” Pope Francis also viewed himself as a sort of “anti-pope”; a champion of the downtrodden and oppressed, who rejected pomp and flummery. He preached tolerance – “Who am I to judge?” was his celebrated answer to a question about gay Catholics. Open this photo in gallery: Italian Arcigay gay rights association activists hold banners and flags during a demonstration in front of The Vatican, Jan. 13, 2009.Sandro Pace/The Associated Press Progressives had high hopes that his would be the pontificate to bring the Catholic Church into the 21st century. But Francis also enraged his conservative critics. He was less a ‘People’s Pontiff,’ they said, than a priestly incarnation of that fairy-tale emperor whose “new” clothes turned out to be no clothes at all. Such critics found the nature of Francis’s Vatican administration to be chaotic and corrupt, that the Pope was both controlling and surrounded by incompetent lieutenants. The spectacular fall of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu after he was accused of embezzlement and abuse of office in 2020 wounded Francis, who meted out justice to his wayward subordinate by demanding his resignation. Yet Francis’s efforts never quite cast off the whiff of a show trial. The browbeating of priests and bishops who wished to celebrate the old Tridentine Rite (or traditional Latin mass), previously encouraged by Pope Benedict XVI, also looked vindictive. Most recently, Francis was accused of protecting the Slovenian Jesuit priest Marko Rupnik, alleged to have abused multiple women. So much for the Pope who was going to reset the church’s relationship with such victims. Francis’s critics also carped about a double standard, whereby liberals in global media always gave him the benefit of the doubt – even after they had crucified Pope Benedict XVI as personally responsible for every unseemly happening or discovery on his watch. For his part, Francis compounded the alienation of his opponents by appearing to reserve more and more moral authority to the Holy See. Francis did not deliver much for his liberal supporters in the end. The Catholic Church’s official teachings have remained much as they were at the start of his pontificate, with only minor concessions to the place of women in the church’s formal life. A much-hyped Synod on Synodality, held from 2021 to 2024, was meant to examine many issues, including the role of women, but ultimately led nowhere. Still, he did get the conversation going, and he may yet prove to be a significant figure in church history. Even so, he leaves behind a church divided and bequeaths the next pope with a tricky task in overcoming conflicts and politicking. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love,” goes St. Francis’s most famous prayer. Pope Francis, for all his ardent emulation of that great Christian leader, failed to realize the Saint’s vision. All too often, he merely preached to the converted. The church he leaves behind may end up paying a price.