Pope Francis

Jesuit

Pope Francis became a member of the Society of Jesus in 1958. He was made a priest in 1969. In 1973, he was named "provincial" or head of the Jesuits in Argentina. In the mid-1980s, he began working on a doctoral degree at Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt, Germany.

Bishop

Pope John Paul II appointed Bergoglio the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998. During the 2001 Consistory, Pope named Bergoglio as a Cardinal.

Celibacy of priests

When Pope Francis was a Cardinal, his views about the celibacy of priests were recorded in the book On Heaven and Earth. The book is a record of conversations he had with a Buenos Aires rabbi. In this book, he said that celibacy "is a matter of discipline, not of faith. It can change." However, he added: "For the moment, I am in favor of maintaining celibacy, with all its [positive and negative parts], because we have ten centuries of good experiences rather than failures [...] Tradition has weight and validity."

He also said that "in the Byzantine, Ukrainian, Russian, and Greek Catholic Churches [...] the priests can be married, but the bishops have to be celibate". He said that many of those in Western Catholicism who are pushing for more discussion about the issue do so from a position of "pragmatism", based on a loss of manpower. He states that "If, hypothetically, Western Catholicism were to review the issue of celibacy, I think it would do so for cultural reasons (as in the East), not so much as a universal option." He emphasized that, in the meantime, the rule must be strictly followed, and any priest who cannot obey it "has to leave the ministry."

National Catholic Reporter Vatican analyst Thomas Reese, also a Jesuit, called Bergoglio's use of "conditional language" regarding the rule of celibacy "remarkable." He said that phrases like "for the moment" and "for now" are "not the kind of qualifications one normally hears when bishops and cardinals discuss celibacy."

Beliefs about homosexuality

Pope Francis supports the Catholic teaching that homosexual acts are immoral. However, he said that gay people should be treated with respect. Bergoglio opposed same-sex marriage. In 2011, he called it "the Devil's work".

Argentina considered legalizing same-sex marriage in 2010. Bergoglio objected. He called it a "real and dire anthropological throwback." In July 2010, while the law was under consideration, he wrote a letter to Argentina's cloistered nuns in which he said:

In the coming weeks, the Argentine people will face a situation whose outcome can seriously harm the family…At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children. At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God. At stake is the total rejection of God's law engraved in our hearts.

Let's not be naive: This is not a simple political fight; it is a destructive proposal to God's plan. This is not a mere legislative proposal (that's just its form), but a move by the father of lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God… Let's look to St. Joseph, Mary, and the Child to ask fervently that they defend the Argentine family in this moment... May they support, defend, and accompany us in this war of God.

After L'Osservatore Romano reported this, several priests expressed their support for the law. Gay people believe that the church's opposition and Bergoglio's language actually helped the law get passed. They also think that Catholic officials reacted by taking a less harsh tone in later debates on social issues such as parental surrogacy.

On July 29, 2013, Pope Francis gave an interview to some journalists who were traveling with him. When asked if there should be gay priests, Pope Francis replied:

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?

In 2023, Francis wrote a text called Fiducia Supplicans. In this text, he states that Catholic priests can bless couples, who have not been married according to the teaching of the Catholic Church. This includes same-sex marriages.

Role of women

Francis was opposed to the idea that women should be able to become priests. In the same interview by L'Osservatore Romano of 2013, Francis was asked if women should become priests, He replied:

The Church has spoken and says no ... that door is closed.

Early in his papacy, he started a dialogue, to explore if women should be able to become deaconesses. In 2016, he created the Study Commission on the Women's Diaconate to research the role of female deacons in early Christianity. Its report was not made public. In 2019, Francis said that the commission was unable to come to a consensus. In April 2020, Francis started a new commission, led by Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi with a new membership, to study the issue. Francis delayed a decision on the issue for several years. In interviews in late 2023 and 2024, he appeared to reject the idea of women deacons, saying that "holy orders is reserved for men." Francis said that "the fact that the woman does not access ministerial life is not a deprivation, because her place is much more important" and that women had a charism separate from "the ministerial way."

In January 2021, Francis issued Spiritus Domini, which allowed bishops to institute women to the ministries of acolyte and lector. These functions had been reserved to men beforehand. In many parts of the world,, Catholic women already had these functions. In contrast to men, women were not ordained. Francis wrote that these ministries are fundamentally different from those reserved to ordained clergy. The following month, Francis appointed women to several positions previously held only by men: a French member of the Xaviere Missionary Sisters, Nathalie Becquart, was appointed co-undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, and Italian magistrate Catia Summaria became the first woman Promoter of Justice in the Vatican's Court of Appeals.

In April 2023, Francis announced that 35 women would be allowed to vote at the Sixteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops ("just over 10%" of all voters), marking the first time women are allowed to vote at any Catholic Synod of Bishops.

Divorced people who married again

Francis published Amoris Laetitia in 2016. Amoris Laetitia is mostly about the role of the family and about marriage. It also addresses the problem, that the Catholic Church does not really accept a divorce. There is only an annulment of marriage. People whose marriage was not annulled, who marry again have a problem: they should be excommunicated, and excluded from all Church rituals. There was some disagreement, about the question, if Amoris Laetitia changed the practice, that these people should have access to the sacraments of the church. Francis had written: "It is important that the divorced who have entered a new union should be made to feel part of the Church." He called for "a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases". He went on to say: "It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations."

Amoris Laetitia had been implemented in different ways by bishops around the world. In 2016, four cardinals asked Francis to clarify his position. This is known as dubia, and is in the form of a direct question, that can be answered with either yes or no. They wrote him a letter, containing five such questions. In November 2016, the cardinals made their letter public, as they had not received a response from Pope Francis. Their questions focus on "whether there are now circumstances under which divorced and remarried persons can receive communion, whether there are still 'absolute moral norms' that prohibit Catholics from taking certain acts, and how the pope understands Catholic teaching on the role of conscience in making moral decisions".

Beliefs about non-Catholics

Three days after being elected Pope, Pope Francis told thousands of news reporters:

[Since] many of you do not belong to the Catholic Church, and others are not believers, I give this blessing from my heart, in silence, to each one of you, respecting the conscience of each one of you, but knowing that each one of you is a child of God. May God bless you.

It is very rare for a Pope to bless people who are not Catholics. By doing this, the Pope was showing that he accepted people who belonged to different religions.

In a speech on 20 March, Pope Francis said that some people do not follow any religion, but still search "for truth, goodness and beauty." He said these people are important allies in protecting human dignity; making peace; and caring for the Earth. This meant the Pope was saying that atheists could be allies of the Catholic Church, instead of enemies.

In the same speech, the Pope said that Catholic and Jewish people are connected "by a most special spiritual bond." To Muslim leaders at the speech he said: "[To] Muslims, who worship God as one, living and merciful, and [call on] him in prayer ... I greatly appreciate your presence ... [In] it, I see a ... sign of a will to grow in mutual esteem and in cooperation for the common good of humanity."

In September 2013, Francis wrote a letter that was published in la Repubblica newspaper. The letter said that atheists would be forgiven by God if they followed their consciences and did what they thought was right. The newspaper's editor, who is not a Catholic, wrote back with a list of questions. Francis wrote back:

You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don't believe and who don't seek the faith. I start by saying—and this is the [most important] thing—that God's mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and [truly sorry] heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience. Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.