A brave innovator for some, a harmful troublemaker for others, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was elevated to the seat of Peter under the name of Francis, died on Monday, April 21, at the age of 88, the Vatican said. During his pontificate, the first Latin American pope both charmed and challenged Catholics. A tireless defender of the poor, of migrants, of the devastated planet, of inter-religious understanding, a critic of "cancel culture" and "gender ideology", defining himself above all as a "son of the Church", this pope made light of simplistic categories.

The progressives wanted to see in him one of their own after the long conservative era of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. They did not blink when he compared the use of abortion to the hiring of a "hit man." Conservative Catholics choked when he praised a "multicultural" society and marginalized the Latin Mass. With him, the usual political lines did not always intersect with those of the creed.

When he succeeded Benedict XVI on March 13, 2013, Francis took over the leadership of a Church that was closed in on itself, resistant to social change and recriminating against relativism and individualism. Moreover, its governance was dysfunctional. Its finances did not respect any international norms of transparency, relegating the Holy See to the dishonorable rank of tax haven. Hermetic and smug, the Curia was rife with rivalries and its failings were periodically exposed in the press. Francis' German predecessor acknowledged his inability to remedy these shortcomings by resigning from a ministry that seemed beyond his strength on February 11, 2013.

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