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Front Burner Transcript for April 22, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hey everyone, it's Jayme.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Pope Francis brought a lot of firsts to the Catholic Church. He was the first Latin American Pope, the first Jesuit. He took a progressive stance on some issues, including welcoming LGBTQ people into the church. He made repeated calls to end the war in Gaza. And here in Canada, he made a historic apology for the church's role in residential schools. Pope Francis died on Monday morning of a stroke after months of health problems and hospital stays. He was 88. His death comes at a complicated time for the church, particularly with the changing geopolitical tides in the United States and its approach to immigration. I'm here today with Massimo Faggioli. He's a professor of historical theology at Villanova University, which is just outside Philadelphia. And he's going to take us through the legacy that Pope Francis leaves behind and what could be next for the Catholic Church.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Hi Massimo, thank you so much for coming onto Front Burner.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Thank you.

JP: I mentioned some of the firsts that Pope Francis was known for there. What would you say made him unique as a pope? What did he bring to the role?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: He was the first pope of a church which is no longer bound to its European, Italian culture, not even North American culture. He was a man of the South and he read everything through the lens of the Global South, which historically means colonialism and decolonization. This is something that was really the first time we saw from a pope.

JP: I know after his election that he talked about wanting a poor church for the poor. And just could you tell me more about his legacy as a frugal street priest at heart?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: He was a frugal street priest, not because of an ideological choice, but because it was really who he is, who he was as a person, even before becoming Pope.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: Jorge Bergoglio was born in Argentina, the son of Italian immigrants. He studied to be a chemist, but felt drawn to the Catholic Church and the Jesuit Order. During Argentina's military dictatorship, critics say the church and Bergoglio did not stand up to a brutal government. But as he rose from the priesthood to archbishop, Bergoglio always related to the destitute, leading a simple life that anticipated his future papacy.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: His favourite places in Rome were not in the Vatican, but were the prisons, the shanty towns, those places for the marginalized.

SOUNDCLIP

[Catholic Church choir singing]

REPORTER 2: In his early gestures, like washing the feet of the elderly and prisoners, he showed desire for his priests to be closer to the disadvantaged.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: That was really who he was, where his heart was. And it was not a choice to spare money, not to waste money. It was not a rationalization of resources. It was much more than that.

JP: I know he was known for taking a fairly progressive stance on a number of issues. He said that homosexual people are children of God.

SOUNDCLIP

[Pope Francis speaking Italian]

TRANSLATOR: If someone is gay, he said, who am I to judge?

[Pope Francis speaking Italian]

JP: He allowed transgender people to be baptized. He also appointed a number of women to high-ranking positions. But at the same time, he also took a pretty hard-line stance against abortion, and he spoke out about what he called gender ideology. And so how do we square what I think a lot of people thought were inconsistencies there?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Well, they look like inconsistencies from a European, North American point of view, but they are pretty typical of a Catholic of the Global South. On the good side, from our point of view, on LGBT rights, and on the less positive side on women, where his language was really outdated, uh, not really up to the current language of theologians and of Catholics in the Catholic Church. So there are inconsistencies. But um, if we adopt blindly the liberal versus conservative framework, which works to a certain extent in the Catholic Church, [JP: Mm-hmm.] it works less and less now that we have a global Catholic Church, a global College of Cardinals and the most global conclave ever in the next few weeks.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER 3: Cardinal Peter Turkson from Ghana has long been considered eligible. And he still is, despite unexpectedly resigning as head of the Vatican's Peace and Justice Office in 2021, amid an internal investigation into his management. Also in the running is Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle from the Philippines. The Catholic media sometimes calls him the "Asian Francis" because of the esteem he was shown by the Pope.

[music]

JP: Do you think his reputation as a more liberal pope is a fair one?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: I think so. Because he was a Jesuit and Jesuits are risk-takers. They are the explorers of the new frontiers within Catholicism. His liberalism could be summed up in this choice of not being afraid of talking about issues. Uh, until his election, were taboo or considered not appropriate for public discussions in the Catholic Church. In that sense, he was a 19th-century liberal, maybe.

JP: Well, let's talk about some of those issues that he was pretty outspoken on. One I guess would be climate change. Like I know that he framed climate change as a spiritual issue. He emphasized the connections between global warming, poverty.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER 4: In a video launching a papal encyclical, he said climate change amounted to rich countries inflicting damage on poor ones.

GRETA THUNBERG: Hi, my name is Greta Thunberg. I'm a climate activist, and I just met with Pope Francis and he was very kind. And he, he told us that we should continue like we do now, and he supports the school strike...

JP: What do you think his legacy is on that?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: It's the legacy of the first pope who devoted two encyclicals to climate change and creation. But again, not only as a spiritual issue, but also as a social issue, because he said very clearly that these changes affect poor people and poor countries first. So for him it was not a romantic choice to... living more-- in a more beautiful planet, but a choice of solidarity with those who are already affected by change in, in our environment. So that's his integral part of his interpretation of the catasocial doctrine, which he updated in the context of the globalized finance, um, of artificial intelligence, of social media, and of the crisis of democracy, we have to say, also.

JP: I know here in Canada, he's remembered, you know, fondly. One of the most significant things that he did was visit here in 2022 to apologize for the Catholic Church's role in the residential school system. He said what happened in those schools amounted to genocide. And how significant a moment was that trip and his apology?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: It was very significant because it was a key moment in the new phase in the history of the Catholic Church dealing with abuse.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER 5: He apologized for the scandal of sexual abuse of children by priests. His words here spoken by a translator.

[Pope Francis speaking Spanish]

TRANSLATOR: God weeps...

[Pope Francis continues in Spanish]

TRANSLATOR: ...for the sexual abuse of children.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Which is no longer just pedophilia committed by clergy, but it's a much wider range of abuses: cultural, social, psychological.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER 6: It was Pope Francis who finally invited Indigenous representatives to the Vatican, and with the world watching admitted his shame and sorrow.

[Pope Francis speaking Italian]

TRANSLATOR: [unclear]. I ask for God's forgiveness, and I want to say to you with all my heart, I am very sorry.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: And for him, it was remarkable that a man from Latin America could acknowledge something that was really part of the, of the legacy of colonialism and Christianity in the Northern Hemisphere.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER 6: Francis then came to Canada.

POPE FRANCIS: Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: It was a difficult visit. One of the most difficult. Much more difficult than in Mongolia or in Indonesia, for that matter. And the Canadian visit was also very important because he came after clear pressure from the federal government [JP: Mm-hmm.] of Canada. And so that was a very important moment in the history of his pontificate.

SOUNDCLIP

[Pope Francis speaking Spanish]

TRANSLATOR: Sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples.

JP: He was also known more recently for his nightly phone calls to the Catholic parish in Gaza.

SOUNDCLIP

[Unknown speaker greets Pope Francis over the phone in non-English language]

REPORTER 7: The brief calls were a small but powerful gesture, the Vatican said, offering connection and hope amidst isolation.

[Pope Francis speaking Italian]

TRANSLATOR: Yesterday I called, as I do every day, the parish in Gaza. They told me, "Today we ate lentils with chicken." It's important because these days they weren't used to it and only made some vegetables. They were happy. But let us pray for Gaza, for peace.

JP: He repeatedly called for a ceasefire there and for the release of hostages.

SOUNDCLIP

[Pope Francis speaking Italian]

TRANSLATOR: This morning I received two delegations: one of Israelis who have relatives held hostage in the Gaza Strip, and another of Palestinians who have relatives imprisoned in Israel. They suffer so much, and I heard how both sides suffer. Wars do this, but we have gone beyond wars. This is not war, this is terrorism.

JP: He noted that several experts believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide, and he called for an investigation into whether it was. And just, can you tell me a little bit more about just how outspoken he was on that particular issue?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: He was very outspoken. And he did a very risky thing, because in these last 70 years, more or less, Catholicism has realized how much it owed to Jews and to Israel for the Holocaust. Now, Pope Francis was faced with this request, which was coming from his own Global South, of making justice also to demarginalize from that narrative that the Holocaust was the centre of Western history. That is a very difficult thing to do. That exposed him to misunderstandings and unfair accusations. But what he did there was to try and keep together the clear choice of the Catholic Church against antisemitism and anti-Judaism, together with the choice to speak on behalf of those who have no voice, meaning also those who have no state.

JP: When you talk about it exposed him to misunderstandings, I just wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about what you mean there.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Well, because his style of talking and of communicating was not going through the institutional filters of the Vatican or the Vatican diplomacy often, and that sometimes was unfortunate because he used words that didn't help get his message across. So his pontificate was met instantly, a few days after he was elected, from stronger position, especially from the United States, from Catholics who literally accused him of not being Catholic. It's something I've never seen in my life. Um. [JP: Mm-hmm.] But that was his integral part of his, his pontificate: the challenge against his Catholicity coming from militant Catholics on some issues particularly. But this isn't -- it was bigger than a clash of personalities. Was, was really a moment in the globalization of Catholicism, which is made of tensions.

[music]

JP: One of the last people to meet with Pope Francis before his death was U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance.

SOUNDCLIP

JD VANCE: Hello.

[Sound of camera clicks]

JD VANCE: So good to see you. Pray for you every day. God bless you.

[A translator translates Vance's words to Italian for Pope Francis]

JD VANCE: Happy Easter.

JP: Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019. But Francis had actually been publicly feuding with Vance over the last couple of months because of the way that Vance had framed his administration's hardline stance on immigration within Catholic tradition. Vance had invoked this bit of Catholic doctrine that talks about taking care of your immediate community first before focusing on the world more broadly. But the Pope called him out directly on that and said that the mass deportations happening in the U.S. were a major crisis.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER 8: In his Easter message, he of course called for peace in the world, but he also warned against contempt towards migrants -- a message that must have been in the air in that room, where earlier in the day Pope Francis met privately with J.D. Vance.

JP: What did you make of how that played out?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Well, that was a remarkable moment because it really signals a clash between two generations of Catholics: the Vatican II generation of Pope Francis, and the anti-Catholic or non-Vatican II Catholic generation of J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance is not just an isolated example, but he's just... he's also the representative of, of a new militant Catholicism. And so the letter that Pope Francis sent on the 10th of February to U.S. bishops in response to J.D. Vance is a one-in-a-century document. This says something on how distant now the Vatican and the White House of Donald Trump are. It's something we haven't seen in a century, I would say.

JP: Do we have any sense of what the Pope and J.D. Vance talked about when they met... I think was it Sunday?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: It was Sunday morning. It was a very brief meeting. I don't think they talked much about anything.

SOUNDCLIP

JD VANCE: Wonderful.

[sound of camera clicks]

JD VANCE: I know you've not been feeling great, but it's good to see you in better health.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: The important meeting was the one of the day before, [JP: Mm-hmm.] when J.D. Vance had to meet with the prime minister of the Vatican, the Cardinal Parolin. That was a substantial meeting, because right now there is a serious crisis in the relations between the Vatican and the West. Besides all the smiles, there is a real distance on a number of issues. And so that is really part of not just what Paul Francis did, but also of what American Catholicism has become.

JP: I know the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, seems to be particularly close to Trump, but I just wonder if you could talk to me a little bit more about how he fits into this all.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Cardinal Dolan is the archbishop of the city that made the fortune, both financial and political, of Donald Trump. He has been very quiet about what Donald Trump has done to the church and against the church in these last three months. It's really part of one of the different souls of U.S. Catholicism, which is now trying literally to understand what to do and what to say. [JP: Mm-hmm.] And about Donald Trump. And this is really a clash that will have effects beyond the borders of the United States, because what happens in the West rarely stays in the United States.

[music]

JP: So given all that, I know obviously now the cardinals all meet to determine a successor to Pope Francis. And my understanding is that there is no clear front runner at the moment. Without getting too into all the front runners here, I wonder if you could just tell me how the names that are floating around right now might signal the direction that the church could move in, might give us signals to how they would deal with what we were just talking about.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: We usually talk about the conclave beginning with the candidates, but usually we should talk about the agenda first. So, what is the situation of the church and of the world that the cardinals will have to face and will talk about. The agenda that they agree on or disagree on, then that will formulate a list of possible candidates. That's -- it's the other way around.

JP: Yeah, and so do we have any sense at this moment, like what it is that they think the big agenda items are?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: It's still early. We will see in the, in the next couple of weeks, because the conclave is being organized now. And we will see how the narrative in the church and in the global media conversation will shape.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER 9: Cardinal Pietro Parolin is considered by many the most likely to be elected. He's considered a moderate figure within the church. Born in Schiavon, Italy, he's become an expert on Middle East affairs and is vocal about the need for action against climate change. Cardinal Péter Erdő represents the more orthodox side of the church.

[Péter Erdő speaking non-English language]

REPORTER 9: The 72-year-old born in Hungary has strong conservative views on issues like remarriage and divorce. He's been critical of gay marriage and European nations for taking in refugees, likening it to human trafficking.

JP: Is there a lot of unity among the cardinals at the moment, or are there big divisions that could make this process more difficult?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: It's difficult to say because it's the largest College of Cardinal ever, the most diverse ever, and so it's incredibly complicated right now to speculate. Trumpism might create some unity among them, who knows? But it's a very large college, very diverse. Cardinals from all continents, much more than before. So it's going to be an even more inscrutable conclave this time.

JP: I'm always interested to ask people like you who are so steeped in these issues and have studied these figures in such detail. The world lost such an important historical figure today. You know, what else are you thinking about?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: I've given many interviews [emotional] today, and they helped me, uh, catch my breath, and I will have some time to, uh, do some quiet cry later.

JP: Were you very, um... Was he a very important pope to you? I know that you've spent time, you know, studying this for so long. But it sounds like he was a very important figure to you.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Yes, he changed the life of many people, myself included, in ways that it's hard to measure now.

JP: Do you mind if I ask you how you think he changed your life?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Well, he forced me to wake up every day at 4 a.m., because I needed to catch up with what he was doing in the first few weeks of his pontificate. And it's a habit that I have kept, and so I owe him this. [laughter]

JP: That's nice. Okay, I want to thank you very much for this.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right, that is all for today. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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The legacy of Pope Francis - Transcript

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