“Francis’s views disrupted the easy narratives of each side, whether it was Francis the liberal reformer or Francis the threat to orthodoxy,” our friend John J. Miller writes in the Boston Globe, remembering what is likely to be a largely unappreciated legacy of Pope Francis.
He points out:
He spoke plainly and often boldly about abortion. “An abortion is a homicide. . . . It kills a human being,” he said last year, talking to journalists on a flight from Belgium to Rome. Then he turned to a grim metaphor that he had used before: “The doctors who carry this out are hitmen.” Finally, for good measure, he added: “On this there is no debate.”
And:
in the homily he delivered on Jan. 1 during Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, he called for entrusting 2025 to Mary. “May we learn, like her, to discover God’s greatness in the little things of life,” he said. “May we learn to care for every child born of a woman, above all by protecting, like Mary, the precious gift of life: life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely, and the dying.”
And there is no understanding Pope Francis without understanding his opposition to our throwaway culture. Pope John Paul II called it a culture of death. They were talking about the same thing.
John writes:
“The throwaway culture says, ‘I use you as much as I need you. When I am not interested in you anymore, or you are in my way, I throw you out,’” he said in 2023. “It is especially the weakest who are treated this way — unborn children, the elderly, the needy, and the disadvantaged.”
He continued: “But people are never to be thrown out. The disadvantaged cannot be thrown away. Every person is a sacred and unique gift, no matter what their age or condition is. Let us always respect and promote life! Let us not throw life away.”
As John points out, Francis doesn’t get credit from the right or the left for this. But you don’t get Francis if you don’t get his commitment to the preciousness of vulnerable human life. All human life.