Americans greeted Pope St. John Paul II with open arms during his seven visits to the United States. Pundits often said he received a rockstar welcome, but perhaps only the Beatles in 1964 were met with greater adulation than the Polish pontiff.
Pope Francis received a more tepid response during his lone visit to America in 2015, perhaps because we had grown accustomed to papal visits. But perhaps it was the Argentinian pope’s subtle — and sometimes overt—disdain for the United States, its wealth, influence, and ever-increasing embrace of traditional Catholicism.
Or it could be that Francis viewed himself not only as a priest, pastor, and pope, but also as a politician.
Here are just a few examples.
In 2016, Francis challenged Donald Trump’s policy of securing the U.S.-Mexico border by celebrating Mass, which drew 200,000 people, in the border city of Ciudad Juárez.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” he said aboard the papal plane hours later when a reporter asked about Trump’s policies.
The pope heightened that rhetoric a few months ago in a letter to American bishops, criticizing Trump’s treatment of migrants and claiming that deportations violate the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families.”
The pope’s letter essentially told people that they are obligated to allow migrants to cross their borders with impunity as long as they weren’t violent criminals. These politically minded statements from the pope did not do much to endear him to many devout Catholics in the U.S.
By contrast, John Paul II used his visits to the U.S. not to scold or lecture people, but to challenge them to live up to our founders’ high ideals.
“America has opened her heart to me,” he said on his arrival in Boston during his first visit to the U.S. as pope in 1979. “I come as one who already knows you and loves you, as one who wishes you to fulfill completely your noble destiny of service to the world.”
Eight years later, during his farewell address in Detroit, he challenged, “The best traditions of your land presume respect for those who cannot defend themselves. If you want equal justice for all, and true freedom and lasting peace, then, America, defend life!”
American Catholics embraced the Polish pope’s challenges by growing the pro-life movement and embracing his “New Evangelization.”
Francis, meanwhile, stood alongside President Barack Obama on the South Lawn of the White House in 2015 and told the president that “American Catholics are committed to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive” and ending “climate change.”
It was statements such as that one that gave the impression that Francis was hyper-focused on migration, diversity, accompaniment, inclusivity, and climate change. As such, many Americans labeled him a liberal pope. But was he? The answer is not so simple.
In American political parlance, a conservative is pro-life and embraces the Constitution, personal liberty, patriotism, and limited government. A liberal is someone who embraces none of those ideals.
Francis was a mixed bag who did not fit neatly into either camp.
He was unabashedly pro-life. In 2018, he compared having an abortion to “hiring a hitman to solve a problem.” Not once during his 12-year pontificate did he suggest that abortion might be appropriate under any circumstances. He was in lockstep with his papal predecessors. He told reporters in 2021 that “abortion is more than an ‘issue.’ Abortion is murder.”
He was equally blunt when talking about surrogacy, which has become de rigueur among the wealthy elite, including homosexual couples.
Last year, he blasted the idea of carrying a baby to term for another person or couple as “deplorable.” He called for a global ban on the practice, which is already illegal in Italy and several other European nations.
An unborn child must not be “turned into an object of trafficking,” Francis said. “I consider despicable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.”
When it comes to LGBT issues, most Americans consider Francis to be liberal.
His famous “who am I to judge?” quip in 2013 led to a flood of praise from American liberals and disdain and confusion from faithful Catholics. The pope’s ambiguity led to significant confusion among Catholics worldwide.
“If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” he said. Seven years later, he openly endorsed same-sex legal unions in a documentary interview. “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God. You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this.”
Then, in late 2023, Francis set off a firestorm by allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, emboldening LGBT activist priests such as the Rev. James Martin, S.J., who took the new rule as a carte blanche endorsement of homosexuality.
But less than a year ago, the pope reportedly used a slur twice in private meetings while condemning homosexuality among the priesthood and the Vatican curia.
Francis also drew the ire of American Catholics in 2021 when he imposed restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass, often referred to as the TLM, contrasting sharply with Pope Benedict XVI, who had loosened restrictions during his pontificate. It was perplexing to many because the TLM attracted young Catholics and represented a growing segment of the Church worldwide.
The pope of the peripheries was not one to take criticism lying down. In 2021, he quipped that EWTN was “the work of the devil” after some of its news reports challenged him on his liberal and often unorthodox statements.
For some U.S. Catholics, Francis pushed his power too far in 2023 when he removed Bishop Joseph Strickland from leadership of the Tyler, Texas, diocese, and when he laicized Father Frank Pavone from the Florida-based Priests for Life a year earlier. The pope also evicted American Cardinal Raymond Burke from his apartment in Rome with little explanation.
I have to agree with my friend, Paul Kengor, who wrote in The American Spectator a few days ago that “it has been all chaos and arguing since Francis took over the papacy in 2013. No pope in modern times has sowed this much confusion in the Chair of St. Peter. Both liberals and conservatives alike should concede that.”
VATICAN RELEASES FIRST PICTURES OF POPE FRANCIS IN OPEN COFFIN AS FUNERAL RITES BEGIN
Despite being the first pope from the Americas, the first to address a joint session of Congress, and the first pope to canonize a new saint on American soil, Francis leaves the Chair of Peter with faithful American Catholics anticipating a return to orthodoxy. The liberal pope leaves many more liberal-minded Catholics praying for a successor who will continue the Latin American pope’s legacy of moral and theological ambiguity.
Catholics from all political and social backgrounds should start by asking the Lord Jesus to welcome the late pope into heaven. They should also urgently pray that the 135 cardinals (80% of whom were appointed by Francis) entering the conclave next week will heed the Holy Spirit, who will guide them to all truth and a worthy successor to St. Peter, if they only give their assent. Surely, that’s something we can all agree on.
Patrick Novecosky is a Virginia-based journalist, author, international speaker, and pro-life activist. His most recent book is “100 Ways John Paul II Changed the World.“