‘A pope who mattered’: Francis leaves behind ‘roller coaster’ legacy
When Pope Francis was elected to the Throne of Peter on March 13, 2013, he was largely unknown to the wider world. Even many of his fellow Argentines felt they had only a vague, indistinct impression of a man who, in their experience, had tended to shun the spotlight.
Within days, however, the new pontiff had established a narrative about himself which utterly electrified public opinion, and which would endure to the very end: A humble, simple man of the people, “the world’s parish priest,” who spurned luxury and privilege in favor of proximity to the underdogs and the excluded.
This was the pontiff, after all, who took the name “Francis” in homage to Catholicism’s most iconic and beloved saint, the “little poor man” of Assisi; the pope who rejected the marble and gold of the Papal Apartments in favor of the Domus Santa Marta, a modest hotel on Vatican grounds; the pope who returned to the clerical residence where he’d stayed prior to his election to pack his own bag and to pay his own bill; and the pope who, 15 days later, spent his first Holy Thursday not in the ornate setting of St. Peter’s Basilica, but at a youth prison in Rome where he washed the feet of 12 inmates, including two Muslims and two women.