Objection to Francis: This is how the head of the church is remembered

Just one day after Easter blessing, Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at the age of 88. “This morning at 7:35 a.m. the bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the father’s house” ,. “His whole life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and his church,” it says.

In fact, Francis has taken new ground as a Pope. In his autobiography “Hope” that appeared in January, he outlined his own life. The unusual situation in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio rose to the head of the Catholic Church in 2013 was also immortalized …

Two popes meet in the Vatican and in the summer residence Castel Gandolfo: The reigning receives his successor. They chat about God, eat pizza, drink Fanta. They are collegial, also controversial conversations in which the German Pope Benedict XVI. (1927-2022) rejected the resignation of the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The modest Argentinian wants to work again as an ordinary parish priest, Benedikt senses protest against his politics behind the resignation application.

Finally, the Pope opens up to the cardinal that he was tired of office and was fed up with the lonely fight against the curia. He will step down, Bergoglio should be his successor. The rejects that he was not worthy enough. It goes back and forth between the spiritual gentlemen, both take each other’s confession, after all, the Argentinian tries to teach the German some tango steps.

Whether and how far the brilliant feature film “The two Popes” from 2019, in which two brilliant actors shone – Jonathan Pryce (77) as Bergoglio, Anthony Hopkins (87) as Benedikt – the true history, only a few initiated in the Vatican. However, one thing is certain: the film portrays the essence of Bergoglio 1: 1. The British actor Jonathan Pryce not only sees Francis astonishingly similar, he shows the same body language and demonstrates absolutely convincingly the true character traits of the Holy Father, who has now died.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a charismatic man. Friendly, humorous, modest, but also persistent and assertive – and unconventional. One who was in the fan scarf of the Argentine first division club San Lorenzo during football broadcasts in front of the television and has also been a member of TSV 1860 Munich since 2014. It is quite conceivable that he practiced with the nine-year-old, fragile and spiritual Benedikt Tango, because the jovial opera fan loved tango.

Pope Francis was not afraid of contact and, in contrast to the German theology Ass Prof. Dr. Joseph Ratzinger, a secular past: Before his calling to the priest, the young Bergoglio worked as a caretaker, bouncer and cheman technician.

In fact, as described in the film, both men always had contact, despite all the opposites: Bergoglio, like the tired tired Benedict XVI. We want to be the new Pope after its resignation on March 13, 2013. The new and resigned head of the church lived in a close neighborhood for over nine years to Benedict’s death in the Vatican.

Benedikt confessed to the Argentine: “He is my Pope!” And Francis said Benedikt was “a grandfather who lives in the same house for him.” He has “a great clarity, and when I hear him speak, I will be strong”.

That 2013 on the traditionalist and theological keeper Benedict XVI. A reformer would follow the conclave in the evening: the new one was on the loggia of the St. Peter’s Basilica and welcomed the people with “Fratelli e Sorelle, Buona Sera!” – “Brothers and sisters, good evening!” He gave the believers the feeling that one of us is up there.

That’s how he saw himself. Not as the head of the church, but as a servant in the name of God. “The carnival is over,” he said, decided not to attract the usual red papal shoes, not even the magnificent robes. He was not wearing a stole and moderated Mozetta, the papal shoulder collar.

He also did not use his Mercedes with chauffeur, but took the bus to his accommodation, paid his room bill and walked back to the Apostolic Palace, the residence of the Pope, in which he did not move into the papal apartment, but into the Vatican guest house in Santa Maria. There he had breakfast with guests he had invited to the morning. Then he walked to the Apostolic Palace.

He repeatedly invited gardeners and cleaning staff of the Vatican as well as homeless people and prisoners to eat to the guest house in Santa Maria and sometimes drove with a used R 4, a gift, through the Vatican, he gave away sleeping bags to homeless people and had showering around St. Peter’s Square.

This Pope Francis was the first and most important signal after the begging monk Franz von Assisi (1181-1226). For him, Francis is the man of poverty, peace who love and preserve creation. To strive for a “poor church for the poor”, their material reluctance and more help for the needy. The relationship between people to creation, that is, to nature, is “not very good”.

Pope Francis drove – as the first business trip – to the refugees on the island of Lampedusa and spoke about the rampant indifference: “The culture of prosperity that makes us think only to think of ourselves makes us insensitive to the screams of others. It makes us live in soap bubbles that are beautiful, but nothing. Which are an illusion of the void, the fleeting, which lead to the other.”

This demonstrative commitment to the oppressed, to modesty and early Christian devotion was probably a legacy of his parents, who fled from Turin from Turin to Argentina in the 1920s in order to build up a new existence. In addition to Argentine citizenship, Francis also owned Italian. Italian was his second mother tongue alongside Spanish.

He was born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, entered the Jesuit order in 1958 and initially studied in Chile humanities and after returning to Buenos Aires Philosophy and Catholic theology. In 1998 he was appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires, three years later as a cardinal.

After the pope election, allegations were made that Bergoglio had delivered opposition priests and other critics of the state arbitrariness during the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). Others like the human rights activist Graciela Fernández Meijide said that he saved many and hidden who were persecuted by the Junta.

Is he Petri on the chair to Benedict XVI. The so eagerly awaited reformer has become? The German emeritus Kurienkinal Walter Kasper said in 2023 in a report by the “Tagesschau”: “A Pope is not as almighty as people imagine. He has to pay attention to the situation of the church and do justice. He must not split the church.”

Francis has struck new tones towards homosexuals: “If a person is gay and for good will seek the Lord, who am I that I could judge?” He asked the church not to exclude gays. He rejected women’s ordination. Nevertheless, he has opened the management level of the church for female laypersons. In contrast, he compared a termination of pregnancy with order murder.

In view of the big problem of the global abuse of minors by church people, Francis has tightened the church’s criminal law and was looking for the proximity of affected victims. In this almost instinctive donation to other people, the great strength of this Pope became visible. According to Cardinal Kasper, he made the Catholic Church a world church.

Francis has been plagued by diseases for years. He had to be operated on several times because of an intestinal disease, had knee problems and at times sat in a wheelchair, but he joked: “I’m fine. It’s all normal for my age.” In February 2025 he fell ill with pneumonia. The Pope is said to have been particularly susceptible to lung infections after he had a rib fur infection as a 21-year-old. Afterwards, the doctors told him that he had three great cysts on the lungs “which would have to be removed surgery as soon as possible”, as he wrote in his book “Hope”. The upper part of the right lung wing was then taken from him.

In the event of his death, Francis had ordered a review of the papal funeral. The dead guard for his predecessor Benedict XVI. It was the last one in which the dead Pope was laid out on a catafal. He rejected the public representation of the body, also Popes “should be buried like any other child in the church. With dignity like every Christian”. He does not want to be put on pillows, but in a simple coffin like everyone else.

Francis also ordered that he is not buried in St. Peter’s Basilica, but in Santa Maria Maggiore. He often visited the largest Marienkirche in Rome, even before his pontificate. “You will get me where the Kandelaber are now kept, very close to the Regina della Pace, to which I have always prayed for help in the course of my pontificate and from which I have been hugged more than a hundred times,” explained Franziskus in his autobiography.