Antonio Autiero is emeritus professor of moral theology at the University of Münster (Germany).

The date of this post, 13 March 2025, takes us back 12 years ago, to that evening of 13 March 2013, when the new pontiff introduced himself to the world with the name Francesco.

An Indispensable Voice

Apprehensions about his poor health in recent weeks bring Pope Francis particularly close to the consciousness of humanity, and not only portion professing to be Catholic. The way of exercising his function as pope has made Francis an indispensable voice in narrating the history we live. It has given his message and style value, recognized by all as moral leadership for understanding and facing what he (borrowing the term from French sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin) calls polycrisis.

In the 12 years of his papacy, Francis has educated us to look with a disenchanted eye at the dramatic interweaving in which issues of global significance converge, such as wars, climate change, the depletion of energy resources, epidemics, migration, and the emergence of technological innovations. Without falling into the rhetoric of catastrophe, Francis has presented the world with an open message of hope—of confidence in man’s ability to escape the pull of evil and embrace the path of good. But to do this, he teaches us, human beings must strengthen our resources of empathy, taking our cue from the image of a God who allows himself to be involved, a vulnerable God who cares for the fate of the world and offers spaces for redemption and salvation.

Pope Francis’s encyclicals (Laudato sì, Fratelli tutti, Laudate Deum) have expanded the dimensions of teaching and doctrine; they have made it clear that religion and human destiny are not disjointed realities. For Francis, the expectation of salvation does not diminish the responsibility to engage here and now in the building of a more just, more welcoming, more inclusive humanity. Cultivating a global gaze that starts from religious faith and reaches political and civic engagement is the distinctive and decisive element of being in the world as women and men who love life, respect it, and care for it.

Yet this 12th anniversary of Francis’s election as pontiff rings with particular tones that appear to sound like an end to the papacy. From many quarters, evocative summaries of his pontificate are being drawn, recounting his intense and complex journey. Specific factors of his pontificate are explored and discussed in efforts to identify what has been and what will remain of the pontificate of the Argentine Pope, who came to the Vatican from far away.

Synodal Church

A book on Francis’s pontificate by Italian journalist Marco Politi appeared these days in Germany. The evocative title—Der Unvollendete (The Unfinished)—speaks a great truth about Francis’s legacy and, as Politi insinuates, about the struggle for his succession.

Numerous times in the past 12 years Francis has surprised the world and the church (particularly the Catholic Church) with images that, in a way, we were not used to seeing. His way of thinking of the church as a “field hospital” has served as a frame for defining the church’s mission in a new way: it is not a conquest for new followers, but companionship with aching humanity; it is not a home of the well-to-do of the soul, but a welcoming place to care for the wounds of life. Against this backdrop, Pope Francis has woven a program of church renewal and reform. Intuitively, he has gazed down the length of history and has made severe judgments on the sclerotized institutions of the bureaucratic-curial apparatus, demanding it to return to express more lucidly God’s benevolence and the Gospel’s call to fraternity and love.

Moving from the vision of the Second Vatican Council, Francis has opened important avenues in ecclesiology, enhancing the image of the synodal church. This theological vision will certainly be regarded as a significant part of Francis’s pontificate. Indeed, it touches on the fundamental dimensions of being “church” and translates into concrete experience that shifts from a pyramidal, strictly hierarchical ecclesiology to an ecclesiology of participation and communion. In a special way, the recent Synod on Synodality entered the living tissue of the church and showed the need for reform that has only just begun.

Within the horizon of the synodal church, other expressions of reform to which Francis intended to give life find their specific form. Particularly worthy of mention is a series of measures by which he has expanded the space for women’s participation in the life and leadership of the church. Some very relevant examples already exist, of women holding apex positions in curia dicasteries and in administrative functions of the ecclesial apparatus. More broadly, we cannot fail to recognize that, precisely in this climate, women’s participation in theological culture has expanded in and outside of academic institutions, in the leadership of communities, and in the organization of ecclesial life, even on a local scale. The road to “de-masking the church,” the proclamation and program indicated by Pope Francis, has been taken and will have to remain a road of no return.

The Unfinished

Yet, the figure of Der Unvollende or The Unfinished, in the title of Politi’s book, cannot be hastily swept away. It contains a key to interpretation and a point of balance and compensation. Incompleteness is a complex rhetorical figure. It not only represents deficit, with respect to what is not there, but also appeals to enhance what has been initiated and is already there, while acknowledging that it is not yet complete. Incompleteness can be a synonym for incoherence or inconsistency, but it can also reflect ongoing laborious and patient elaboration of a process that has been initiated and that one does not want to give up.

In defining Francis as an unfinished pope, this second meaning of the term—the constructive and processual meaning—must be particularly emphasized. This does not constitute a trivially benevolent judgment; rather it is the means of responsibly allowing for the journey that remains to be made, recognizing the truth of the undertaking that has been started. It also facilitates understanding that the unrealized part of the process of renewal and reform ultimately points back to an overall theological and ecclesiological vision which that is still tied to pre-conciliar remnants, where the juridical-hierarchical nature of the church had its predominance. Even on the theological-doctrinal side, Francis’s vision remains anchored in nexuses and presuppositions that prevent or slow down the elaboration of a sincerely renewed doctrine. This becomes most evident in a certain disjunction between theory and praxis, between doctrinal framework not challenged and pastoral praxis made softer and more welcoming. Through the channel of this disjunction­—or rather through the overcoming of it—passes the true energy of reform and renewal of the church.

Yes, Der Unvollendete—The Unfinished—has long envisioned certain processes of change and has been the “forerunner” of them, even at the cost of eliciting misunderstandings and contrasting positions inside and outside of the church. But in the end, every pontificate is “unfinished” because every individual pope is a point on the line of church history that does not begin and end with him.

This fact makes it plausible and honest to initiate discussion about the legacy of a pontificate and especially about its succession—not to determine who is to be next but to recognize that, whoever he is, he must know that he is also an unvollendet, or unfinished pope, and thus cannot ignore the path begun by those who preceded him. If anything, he is required to analyze why that path has remained unfinished and work to remove obstacles and facilitate conditions for further progress.