Do we like them?

Do we like Pope Francis?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Genuine good for migrants, the poor and the climate, set against a church line on gender and same-sex marriage that stung, plus a slur he apologised for.

Jorge Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires in 1936, ordained a Jesuit priest in 1969, and was running the Argentine Jesuits a few years later, under the military dictatorship. He became a bishop, then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, then a cardinal in 2001. In 2013 he was elected pope after Benedict XVI resigned, the first from the Americas and the first Jesuit.

The dark chapter is Argentina. Critics accused him of failing to protect two Jesuit priests who were kidnapped by the junta, and RNZ's obituary repeats that criticism. The Vatican rejected the claims when they resurfaced in 2013, and no charges were ever brought. That's all the sources I could open cover, so where you land is a judgement call.

On the harm check, it's a split decision. In 2013 he said “who am I to judge?” about gay people of good will, a line that made headlines worldwide, though he also reaffirmed church teaching on gay sex. In December 2023 he approved a Vatican declaration opening the door to non-liturgical blessings for same-sex couples, while ruling out anything that looks like a marriage.

In May 2024 Italian media reported that he used a slur for gay men in a closed-door meeting with bishops about seminaries. The Vatican said he never meant to offend or speak in homophobic terms, and that he apologised to those who felt offended. The apology was real, but it came after the fact and from his spokesperson. Search coverage from 2016 and 2024 also reports him calling “gender theory” an ideology to be resisted, which LGBTQ+ advocates said hurt trans people, even as he urged pastoral care for them. That one counts against him.

The good stuff is big. Four months into the job, his first trip outside Rome was to Lampedusa, where he prayed for migrants who had died crossing the Mediterranean and called their deaths “a thorn in the heart”. In 2015 he issued Laudato si, an encyclical urging action on the climate crisis. For a man who led an institution this size, that's a lot of people and a lot of planet on the right side.