Pope Francis’ pontificate was marked by his “theology of the people,” which reflected his Latin American background and his vision of Christian unity and ecumenism, says Peter Casarella, a professor of theology at Duke Divinity School.
“It was a kind of Jesuit Ignatian humanism focused on the cross of Christ and the suffering of the people of God. All of that influenced him and affected the doctrines that you find in his pontificate,” Casarella said.
Casarella’s field of study includes systematic theology, the world church and Latinos in the American Catholic Church. He is the author, co-author or editor of more than 90 books and articles, including “The Whole Is Greater Than Its Parts: Ecumenism and Inter-religious Encounters in the Age of Pope Francis.”
Previously Casarella was an associate professor of systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame and served as director of the Latin American/North American Church Concerns (LANACC) project in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Prior to that, he was a professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University.
Casarella spoke with Faith & Leadership’s Sally Hicks after Pope Francis died April 21. The following is an edited transcript.
Faith & Leadership: What do you think will emerge as the primary theme of Pope Francis’s legacy?
Peter Casarella: It’s a big question. When he was elected, he said, “My brother bishops have brought me from the ends of the earth,” highlighting that he was the first Latin American pope, the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit pope.
The second thing is that he took the name of Francis, [emphasizing] care for the poor and care for the revelation of God’s beauty and all of creation. And he followed up on both of those things.
The third thing happened in 2013, on the very day of his election. He bowed down and asked for a blessing from the whole crowd in St. Peter’s Square. That was an indication of his rapport with the people. And it wasn’t just a psychological or public relations gesture. It was his theology of the people.
That gesture harkens back to something that happened in Argentina earlier. There was a soccer stadium called Luna Park in which the pope [then Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires] appeared with Baptists and Pentecostals and asked to be blessed by them. He leaned over, and there was a famous shot in the Argentine newspapers the next day with very disparaging remarks from the Catholic press.
But this idea of being blessed by the world, being blessed by Protestants, was ingrained in his own pastoral attitude. That opens up the whole question about his vision of Christian unity and ecumenism that also developed in the pontificate.
F&L: What is his theology of the people, and how does it relate to his origins in Argentina?
PC: The theology of the people was not primarily a sociological category. It was an understanding of how, both in the church and also in the larger world, the basic categories for deciding what the good is is people/anti-people, not a class struggle between the working class or the owners of the capital and the means of production. Social justice concerns and the faith are not juxtaposed, are not working against one another.
This people/anti-people tension became the hallmark of his role as a provincial of the Jesuits when he was in his late 30s through his time as archbishop and later cardinal of Buenos Aires. And he brought that to Rome.
F&L: The sense of who he was as a person and his personal humility seemed to influence the way people perceived him. Was it primarily a personal style or was it more rooted in theology?
PC: I think there might not be such a sharp divide in the Latin American context. The Argentines say that the pope has two kinds of encyclicals: an encyclical of words and an encyclical of gestures, and he often spoke with his gestures.
We have this phrase we use in English a lot: servant leader. He was an Argentine servant leader. That fits exactly his understanding of leadership and what he was trying to do and to display.
A good way to unpack this would be to look at his trip to the United States in 2015. There’s a number of important gestures and talks, including the U.S. Congress speech. But my favorite was his trip to Philadelphia. He did an event at Independence Hall, where the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence were signed, overlooking a crowd on Independence Mall.
The address was delivered in Spanish; there was a largely Hispanic audience. The talk was about religious liberty, which is a theme in the Constitution and the Declaration, the First Amendment theme. It’s something he believed in passionately, something that modern papacy, especially since John Paul II, has argued for — not just for Catholics, but for all people of faith. It was a beautiful address on themes that are important to the general public in the United States, the world, and especially Hispanics.
But the point I would make is that he used a lectern made of wood. And what was the lectern? It was the same lectern that Abraham Lincoln used when he delivered the Gettysburg Address. So in a sense, he didn’t have to say anything.
F&L: Did you have the chance to meet him?
PC: I met him in the context of ecumenical dialogues. The second time [we met], we were supposed to have five minutes for the Catholic-Baptist dialogue we were concluding, and there was a speech by a fellow Argentine Baptist who knew him. And then the pope said, “Let’s talk.”
His assistants were getting kind of edgy because they had four or five things set up in the next two hours. He talked about baptism and he said, “Catholics remember the day of their first Communion and have cards and celebrate it. But do we remember our baptism day?”
Frankly, I have never looked it up. I mean, I have a certificate somewhere.
He was challenging Catholics to celebrate their baptism day, not just for Baptist-Catholic unity, but he thought if we enter the body of Christ through our baptism in Christ, then we should not just have our saint’s day or little first Communion. We should have a baptism day celebration. That took me by surprise.
Then there was an actual exchange. I was too nervous to ask him a question, but there were questions in French and English and Spanish. He went on and said, “Do you have any more questions?” And his aides were like, “We were supposed to be out of here 20 minutes ago, buddy.” But he just wanted to talk to us about our baptism. I thought that was very beautiful.
F&L: How did the mercy of God and the belief in unity fit into those issues that he either chose or was asked to engage with?
PC: It’s a very important and very Catholic theme, God’s mercy. In 2013, the big debate was, “Is he going to be like Pope Benedict? Is he going to be like a Ratzinger pope or is he going to be some other kind of pope?” We now know what Francis is; this is 12 years later. But that was the big issue in 2013.
[In his first papal address, he referred to] a book by Cardinal Walter Kasper on the mercy of God. Now, insiders said, “Oh, Kasper had debated with Ratzinger and he was Ratzinger’s opponent.” The reality of the situation is a little more complicated than that. But anyway, that was the press item: He’s choosing Kasper over Ratzinger.
That’s not the point. The point was that he had found a biblical, theological exploration of the theme of the mercy of God. The mercy of God transcends our understanding. It’s something that is a mystery, and its beauty lies in the fact it transcends the understanding of the Holy Father. That was, I think, what Francis communicated — with his own Ignatian Franciscan Argentine accents.
So you could look at Amoris laetitia, “The Joy of Love,” which is an encyclical about love and mercy in which he made it a little easier for divorced and remarried Catholics to enter back into communion. Most of his innovations are in footnotes, so it’s not like he’s radically changing doctrine. His Feb. 10, 2025, letter to the U.S. bishops on migrants, against xenophobia, shows the same love.
With respect to women, he talked — sometimes in very old-fashioned categories, kind of a male Argentine category —about the feminine genius, that women have a special role. Those who want the Catholic Church to ordain women were disappointed and felt that he fell short. From those who wanted permanent deacons who are women, he got mixed reviews.
But what he did was try to get his fellow male clergy bishops and cardinals to be more accepting — and even hospitable and generally warm — toward the role of women, who are the majority of pastoral leaders in the Catholic Church. Everyone knows this.
There’s also the appointing of Sister [Simona] Brambilla as prefect for the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. I mean, that’s a small gesture, but you have women leading Vatican departments. And lay women, women religious, do play leadership roles in the Catholic Church. His predecessors tried to acknowledge it, but he had a more full-throated and, I think, honest way of dealing with it.
F&L: Do you think that the pope being from Latin America had a particular meaning for American Latino Catholics?
PC: Let’s just go back to February of this year. He issues a public letter to the U.S. bishops. He said specifically, “Try to stop the mass deportations and the xenophobia. This is your job. Serve those most in need, including those who are undocumented.” And he went into the hospital four days later for 38 days. So it was important enough for him to act in that way at that time.
It wasn’t a new message and it’s not a message really in conflict with what the bishops have been saying for the last 20, 30 years. It’s just that people don’t want to talk about it now that it’s unpopular or that you can get defunded for talking about it.
U.S. Catholics are polarized and divided. The social justice Catholics have, from the beginning, loved Pope Francis. The conservative Latin Mass Catholics were suspicious and grew more suspicious over time.
Whether the next pope is more liberal or more conservative than Pope Francis, the challenge moving forward will be how to maintain unity. And that’s not just in the Catholic Church. Christian unity is a mandate from Christ for all of us. I think Pope Francis believed we have to enter into conflicts, not avoid them.
In his first apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” part of it says, “unity prevails over conflict” — not by avoiding conflict but by a willingness “to face conflict head on.” He was trying to teach Catholics, fellow Christians, about entering with a spirit of openness to learn from others, entering into the conflicts we see around us and getting rid of polarization. But it’s not an easy task.
