By Currents News
It’s been 12 years of Pope Francis’ pontificate and 12 years of reform.
On one hand, economic concerns forced Pope Francis to make more internal controls in the Vatican accounts.
The objective was to avoid scenes like the arrest of a monsignor accused of alleged money smuggling.
“The auditors pointed out to the Pope the situation that can be summarized in this sentence: there is almost no transparency in the Holy See’s balance sheets,” journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi tells Currents News.
On the other hand, there was the reform against sexual abuse in the Church.
In 2019 the Holy Father summoned the presidents of all the bishops’ conferences of the world. The aim was to sensitize them to the need for action. Pope Francis made reforms to better prevent and prosecute alleged abusers, although there are Vatican officials who point out that the processes are still not transparent.
“The permanent, constant complaint is the lack of communication. A canonical process begins and then many of these victims know absolutely nothing about this process,” Monsignor Luis Manuel Alí Herrera of the Pontifical Commission for the Guardianship of Minors, explains. “This same situation, this same complaint, is not only said of the organisms of the Roman Curia, but also of the particular churches, the dioceses, of those in charge of their canonical processes.”
Perhaps the pope’s least understood position within the Church, or the one that has raised the most controversy among Catholics, has been the question of the relationship with homosexuality and the LGBTQ field, especially when he decided to explore if a type of blessing could be performed for same-sex couples.
“There has been a masterful innovation, an innovation in the way we understand blessings. The pope wanted to broaden the understanding of blessings to develop its pastoral richness,”
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect, Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, notes. “In other words, it helps us understand that there are blessings that do not confirm, do not sanction, do not consecrate, do not justify anything. They are just a prayer of the minister to express God’s help to continue living.”
Controversies aside, what cannot be left out is Pope Francis’ travel history: 47 trips and almost 70 countries. He took the longest trip of all at the age of 87 in 2024, Among the places he visited: the country with the most Muslims in the world, Indonesia. While there, he sent a message against religious fundamentalism.
If the pontiff has stood out for anything it is for his kind gestures towards others, especially towards the poor, with the sick, and with the marginalized.
One of the most endearing took place in a simple Roman parish when a child asked him if his father, who had recently died and was an atheist, was in heaven.