Pope Francis passing and legacy

Pope Francis has died. Via the BBC:

Tributes have been pouring in for Pope Francis from around the world.

The pontiff had been ill for several weeks, but appeared in public yesterday to give an Easter Sunday blessing in St Peter’s Square.

Yesterday, he also briefly met US Vice-President JD Vance, who shared his condolences this morning.

And what might be his legacy? I tend to agree with this take from The Spectator, or at least this portion of it:

Modern popes, for better or for worse, tend to be defined in soundbites.

John Paul II’s clarion call of “Be not afraid” became emblematic of his invitation to young Catholics to embrace their faith and his rallying of the West against the specter of international Communism. Benedict XVI’s great theological career, and his term as a pope in the model of priest and professor, remains summed up in his simple declaration that Deus caritas est. For Francis, the world will likely remember, in the immediate weeks after his death anyway, his often quoted, though often misrepresented, motto of “who am I to judge?”

Uttered during one of his habitual in-flight press conferences in response to a question about gay clergy who sought to live their ministry and their lives faithful to the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, it became a shorthand for a pope committed more than anything to a radical posture of welcome – a “Vatican Council II pope,” he was dubbed in the media, dedicated to throwing open wide the Church’s doors to Catholics, and indeed to everyone, without censure or reservation about their complicated lives.