Rev. Thomas Massaro, S.J., is Professor of Moral Theology at Fordham University in New York City.

Editors’ Note: This post was written and published prior to Pope Francis’s death.

Humankind has yet to invent a reliable crystal ball that would allow us to peer into the future with certainty. But historians do occasionally display a considerable level of confidence when they prognosticate. Specifically, these historians seem to relish the exercise of projecting the eventual legacies of contemporary leaders. Of course, one need not be a historian to engage in the parlor game of predicting how a public figure of our time will be remembered in the decades or centuries ahead.

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Greg Marcar is a senior researcher at the Nathaniel Bioethics Centre for Bioethics, Te Kupenga, and a research affiliate at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI), University of Otago (New Zealand). He is a coeditor of Søren Kierkegaard: Theologian of the Gospel (Wipf & Stock 2021) and Security, Religion, and the Rule of Law: International Perspectives (Routledge 2023). This post is based on Marcar’s contribution to The Nathaniel Report 74 (2024).

Almost 20 years ago, Pope Benedict XVI published his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (“God Is Love”) (DC 2005). In this encyclical, Benedict XVI referred to a Christian faith as one that “sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross” and “gives rise to love” (DC, para. 39). In his latest encyclical, Dilexit Nos (“He Loved Us”) (DN) published on 24 October 2024, Pope Francis continues his predecessor’s focus on divine and human love, as revealed most clearly in the heart of Jesus.

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