Key quotes from Pope Francis’s papacy:
Humility
“Pray for me” – pronounced at the end of every speech, because he once explained, “I am a sinner too.” His first tweet and Instagram post were versions of the mantra.
The Poor
“How I would like a poor church for the poor” – setting the tone for his pontificate, three days after his election in March 2013.
Tolerance
“If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” – groundbreaking signal of a more tolerant church, July 2013.
Inequality
“The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose” – opposition to economic inequality spelt out in the 2013 Apostolic Exhortation.
Environment
“The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth” – from his June 2015 encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si.
Clerical sex abuse
Speaking in February 2019 of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors, he said: “I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings frequently children in pagan rites.”
And on his failings, after initially defending a bishop accused of covering up abuse in a row that rocked the Church in Chile, he said in April 2018: “I have incurred grave mistakes of judgement and perception of the situation, especially due to the lack of truthful and balanced information.”
Developing world
“The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is structurally perverse,” – advocating the cause of the southern hemisphere in Laudato Si.
Migrants
“In this world of globalisation we have fallen into a globalisation of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn’t concern us, it’s none of our business” – railing against the world closing its eyes to the plight of migrants, on the Italian island of Lampedusa in July 2013.
Old Europe
“We encounter a general impression of weariness and ageing, of a Europe which is now a ‘grandmother’, no longer fertile and vibrant” – addressing the European Parliament in November 2014.
Shooting from the hip
“Some people think, and excuse the term, that to be good Catholics, they must be like rabbits” – typically pithy, improvised comment to reporters on the papal plane, January 2015.
Church reform
“A Curia that is not self-critical, that does not stay up-to-date, that does not seek to better itself, is an ailing body… It is the sickness of the rich fool who thinks he will live for all eternity” – from his December 2014 attack on the Vatican establishment, which he accused in the same speech of suffering from “spiritual Alzheimer’s.”
Donald Trump
“Anyone, whoever he is, who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian,” the pontiff said in February 2016, on the return from Mexico, when asked about the then-US presidential hopeful’s anti-immigration stance.
When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, Francis condemned the president’s migrant deportation plans as a “calamity” and a “major crisis”.
Mercy
“There is no sin that God’s mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father,” – extending permanently his decree allowing priests to grant absolution to women who have had abortions, at the end of his Jubilee Year of Mercy in November 2016.
Common touch
“When I pray, sometimes I fall asleep,” he said in an episode of a Catholic TV2000 television programme in October 2017.
And every Sunday after leading the Angelus prayer, he wished the crowd: “Buon pranzo” — have a good lunch.
Vaccines
Pope Francis urged people to get the coronavirus vaccine in the middle of the global pandemic in early 2021, saying those who opposed it were in “suicidal denial”.
