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Key quotes from Pope Francis’s papacy:
– Humility –
“Pray for me” – pronounced at the end of every speech, because, he once explained, “I am a sinner too.” His first tweet and first post on Instagram were versions of the mantra.
– The poor –
“How I would like a poor church for the poor” – setting the tone for his pontificate, three days after his election in March 2013.
– Tolerance –
“If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” – groundbreaking signal of a more tolerant church, July 2013.
– Inequality –
“The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose” – opposition to economic inequality spelled out in 2013 Apostolic Exhortation.
– Environment –
“The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth” – from his June 2015 encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si.
– Clerical sex abuse –
Speaking in February 2019 of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors, he said: “I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings — frequently children — in pagan rites.”
And on his own failings, after initially defending a bishop accused of covering up abuse in a row that rocked the Church in Chile, he said in April 2018: “I have incurred grave mistakes of judgement and perception of the situation, especially due to the lack of truthful and balanced information.”
– Developing world –
“The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is structurally perverse,” – advocating the cause of the southern hemisphere in Laudato Si.
– Migrants –
“In this world of globalisation we have fallen into a globalisation of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn’t concern us, it’s none of our business” – railing against the world closing its eyes to the plight of migrants, on the Italian island of Lampedusa in July 2013.
– Old Europe –
“We encounter a general impression of weariness and ageing, of a Europe which is now a ‘grandmother’, no longer fertile and vibrant” – addressing the European Parliament in November 2014.
– Shooting from the hip –
“Some people think, and excuse the term, that to be good Catholics, they must be like rabbits” – typically pithy, improvised comment to reporters on the papal plane, January 2015.
– Church reform –
“A Curia that is not self-critical, that does not stay up-to-date, that does not seek to better itself, is an ailing body… It is the sickness of the rich fool who thinks he will live for all eternity” – from his December 2014 attack on the Vatican establishment, which he accused in the same speech of suffering from “spiritual Alzheimer’s.”
– Donald Trump –
“Anyone, whoever he is, who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian,” the pontiff said in February 2016, on the return from Mexico, when asked about the then-US presidential hopeful’s anti-immigration stance.
When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, Francis condemned the president’s migrant deportation plans as a “calamity” and a “major crisis”.
– Mercy –
“There is no sin that God’s mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father,” – extending permanently his decree allowing priests to grant absolution to women who have had abortions, at the end of his Jubilee Year of Mercy in November 2016.
– Common touch –
“When I pray, sometimes I fall asleep,” he said in an episode of a Catholic TV2000 television programme in October 2017.
And every Sunday after leading the Angelus prayer, he wished the crowd: “Buon pranzo” — have a good lunch.
– Vaccines –
Pope Francis urged people to get the coronavirus vaccine in the middle of the global pandemic in early 2021, saying those who opposed it were in “suicidal denial”.
