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In the wake of Pope Francis, who will champion humanity against the rising tide of greed and corruption?

Marianne Thamm
By Marianne Thamm
29 Apr 2025
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The death of the leader of the Catholic Church, who was a champion of the marginalised, has left a profound void and a challenge: to raise the voices of the just above the clamour of the babblers.

The death of Pope Francis, one of the most humane and beloved of Catholic pontiffs, leaves the world’s vulnerable and oppressed with one less voice against the cacophony of tongues of fire from evangelicals such as Paula White.

White was Donald Trump’s “spiritual and campaign adviser” during his 2016 bid for the US presidency. Paula White Ministries now has an online store selling trinkets and blessings, and takes “offerings” in return.

Trump himself is selling a personalised “God Bless the USA Bible”, which will set you back about $60. Like a Vatican trinket shop selling blessed rosaries and bracelets of saints, Trump has set himself up as the Orange Pope of prosperity religion — his own prosperity.

Moral compass


Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the first Latin American pontiff, and the world that shaped him also guided his moral compass and his understanding of the poor, the oppressed, the marginalised and the powerful role of the church.

As former archbishop of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, he chose Francis as his papal name, after St Francis of Assisi – the saint of prayer and peace.

In a world where the richest man, Elon Musk, has claimed that “empathy” is “suicidal” for Western society and that technology, instead, will save humankind, a strong, moral countervoice is desperately needed. Who will it be?

Scandals in the church


The Catholic community numbers about 1.4 billion and is regarded as the largest church globally. Its head has enormous influence over the lives of these believers.

Pope Francis’ most pressing challenge was — and remained — the scandals of child sex abuse and predatory priests around the globe. The Church of England has also had to deal with this phenomenon, as have other religious institutions.

It was Francis who made the reporting of abuse by clergy mandatory, the turning point occurring on a 2018 trip to Chile, where a paedophilia scandal had caused outrage.

In February 2019, former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick was defrocked by Francis in a historic first after his sexual abuse of a teenager in the 1970s.

In the same month, 114 heads of bishops conferences from around the world met with the head of the eastern Catholic Churches for a four-day summit on the protection of minors convened by the pontiff.

In 2023, Pope Francis also waived the statute of limitations with regard to a Slovenian priest, Marko Rupnik, who abused a community of religious women in the 1990s. It was a start.

Small men, big mouths


That the vituperative US Vice-President JD Vance should be one of the last visitors to Pope Francis before he died is serendipitous.

A portent, perhaps.

Vance is a recent convert to Catholicism and met the pontiff on the morning of Sunday, 21 April 2025, to exchange “Easter greetings”.

Tensions between the US and the Vatican were heightened when the pope rebutted Vance’s earlier claim that US actions with regard to immigrants were justified by ordo amoris, medieval Catholic theology of “rightly ordered love”, which Vance had invoked.

Vance said there was “a clear hierarchy of care, and that compassion should be focused on one’s community and fellow citizens before it is extended to the rest of the world”.

Christian love, the pope schooled him, is one which builds fraternity and is open to all without exception.

A final plea


Before his death, Pope Francis decried the hate towards “others”  such as migrants and refugees in his Easter Sunday address.

“How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalised, and migrants!” the pope said.

“On this day, I would like all of us to hope anew and to revive our trust in others, including those who are different than ourselves, or who come from distant lands, bringing unfamiliar customs, ways of life and ideas.”

He leaves the world — the Catholic world and the world at large — with a huge vacuum and task: to elevate the voices of the just over the noise of the babblers.

While on a trip to Mexico, Francis criticised Trump’s 2016 plan to build a wall along the border, noting that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the gospel.”

Pope Francis cast his gaze far and wide in the modern world, criticising right-wing populism and calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Before his death, he called for peace in Gaza, noting that he was thinking of “the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation”. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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