The death of Pope Francis was expected given his frail health. But I still received the news with shock and sadness. He was a Pope for our times, the most relevant Pope in my lifetime. He worked to guide his flock through the challenges in our troubled world today.
Pope Francis wasn’t impressed by the pomp and splendor that comes with high office in the Catholic Church. The first pope to come from the Global South, he wanted a Church that prioritizes humility and service, as Christ showed during his earthly ministry.
The writings of Pope Francis reveal a heart that beats for the good of people. His encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers), is an extensive exposition of his concerns. Most relevant to us today is his call “for a better kind of politics, one truly at the service of the common good.”
Bull’s eye on our problem as a Catholic country that has failed to progress economically nor managed to live cohesively as one nation. We have no sense of common good. And our politics benefited our elites at the expense of a decent human existence for those at the bottom of the social structure.
Pope Francis criticized this “lack of concern for the vulnerable as it hides behind a populism that exploits them demagogically for its own purposes.”
Pope Francis warned of “an unhealthy ‘populism’ when individuals are able to politically exploit a people’s culture, under whatever ideological banner, for their own personal advantage or continuing grip on power. Or when, at other times, they seek popularity by appealing to the basest and most selfish inclinations of certain sectors of the population. This becomes all the more serious when, whether in cruder or more subtle forms, it leads to the usurpation of institutions and laws.”
In an article in Project Syndicate, Antara Haldar, a professor at the University of Cambridge, observed that “One of the most surprising – and often-overlooked – aspects of Francis’s 12-year papacy was his emergence as an incisive economic visionary. In a world where economics is dominated by models, markets and metrics, Francis insisted on a different standard: a moral one.
“Throughout his papacy, Francis consistently challenged the assumptions of today’s prevailing economic orthodoxy. In his 2013 exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), he issued a stinging rebuke of what he called ‘an economy of exclusion and inequality’ – a system that, as he put it, ‘kills.’”
Prof. Haldar pointed out “Francis recognized a profound threat: economics had ceased to be a tool for advancing human prosperity and had become an ideology that corrodes solidarity and encourages indifference. In theological terms, what he diagnosed was not mere inefficiency or imbalance but sin: structural sin, embedded in the systems we take for granted.
“Francis’s critique is striking precisely because it comes from outside the technocratic priesthood of academic economics. While he did not propose marginal tax rates or carbon-pricing mechanisms, he was returning economics to its foundations in moral philosophy and placing himself within a humanist tradition deeply rooted in the history of economic thought.
“That tradition is exemplified by Nobel laureate economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, who has exposed how information asymmetries distort market ‘efficiency,’ and Amartya Sen, who has argued that development should focus on expanding human capabilities rather than GDP. It also includes Dani Rodrik, who has advocated re-embedding markets within democratic governance and Thomas Piketty, who has laid bare the structural dynamics of wealth concentration.”
Pope Francis went beyond the academic debates as he zeroed in on what most affects people everywhere.
“The biggest issue is employment. The truly ‘popular’ thing – since it promotes the good of the people – is to provide everyone with the opportunity to nurture the seeds that God has planted in each of us: our talents, our initiative and our innate resources. This is the finest help we can give to the poor, the best path to a life of dignity. Hence my insistence that, ‘helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work.’ (Looks like he doesn’t believe in ayuda).
“For there is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work. In a genuinely developed society, work is… not only a means of earning one’s daily bread, but also of personal growth, the building of healthy relationships, self-expression and the exchange of gifts. Work gives us a sense of shared responsibility for the development of the world, and ultimately, for our life as a people.”
Prof Haldar: “Francis’s message feels especially urgent. It speaks directly to the spiritual ailments at the heart of our failing economies. While he did not present an alternative model in spreadsheets or regression tables (the kind of economic language that often alienates ordinary people), he offered something more intuitive: the capacity for moral imagination.
“Most importantly, Francis was not an enemy of economics. He was its custodian, reminding its practitioners of their forgotten calling: to serve the common good. Economists would do well to heed his message.”
A Hindu wrote this about Pope Francis: “He chose love over doctrine. He chose compassion over judgment. And most remarkably, he chose action over applause. He walked with the poor. He knelt before the discarded. He challenged the powerful not with anger, but with moral courage. And he did all of this with a smile that felt like a prayer.”
May the ongoing conclave be guided by the Holy Spirit and choose a successor to Pope Francis who, like him, will follow the specific instructions of Christ to Peter, the first Pope as related in John 21:15-17 to: “Feed my lambs”… “Tend my sheep” … “Feed my sheep”…
Afterall, it is a shepherd’s duty to focus on pastoral care with the humility of a servant.
Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco
