Paradoxical and incomplete: The pontificate of Pope Francis can be summed up in these two words.

Only time will tell whether his leadership has given a permanent new direction to the Church; whether its mentality changed fundamentally under his leadership, or whether Francis was the only revolutionary; whether people were meaningfully implementing the changes he wrought, or simply waiting for everything to pass around him.

When Pope Francis appeared for the first time from the loggia 12 years ago, he spoke the people’s language with a simple “Buonasera.” Indeed, he had the people bless him — one of the many South American twists to which he would accustom us over time.

But was the pontificate of Pope Francis really a pontificate for the people? It was instead a pontificate for the pueblo, an almost-mystical category typical of Latin American populism. The Pope was thinking of the pueblo when he joined the cry for land, shelter and work with popular movements; when he emphasized the presence of a God who welcomes todos, todos, todos; when he complained about the elites and highlighted that from the periphery one could see the center better.

Yet, as pope, Francis did not go to the periphery. He created a new center.

Here lies the first great paradox. His fight against the papal court, against what he considered the Vatican’s deep state, led him to create a different system, parallel and equally deep, with the difference that the system around Pope Francis, freed from the rules of formality and institutionality, was less transparent than the previous one.

Pope Francis decided to move the center of influence away from the Curia. He demonstrated it with the choices of new cardinals (in 10 consistories, at a rate of almost one per year). He rewarded men of the Curia only when they were his men — with some exceptions in the earliest phase of his pontificate — and he tended to favor secondary residential sees, unless there were men he trusted in the important ones.

He demonstrated it when, after years of discussion on the reform of the Curia, he implemented all the changes outside the meetings of the “council of cardinals” he had established to help him craft the curial reform.

He demonstrated it with the significant Vatican trials: visible and almost humiliating in the cases involving people who no longer had his trust, such as the one on the management of Vatican funds involving Cardinal Angelo Becciu, or the one involving Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, archbishop emeritus of Lima, Peru; invisible and not at all transparent in those involving people who had his trust, or at least his esteem, as in the most recent and sensational cases involving former Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik and Argentinian Archbishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta, both protected and pardoned even when everything demonstrated their wrongdoing.

In the pontificate of Pope Francis, everything was asymmetrical because everything was somehow decided on the spot. But was it a true revolution?

The answer to this question brings with it the second great paradox: Pope Francis wanted to change the mentality starting from the peripheries, but in doing so, he created a new center that instead adopted the point of view of the elites he opposed.

He entered Western thought through the most mainstream themes, such as the ecological question and human trafficking, on the secular side; and the question of divorced-and-remarried people, the role of women and the acceptance of homosexuals, on the doctrinal side.

These are all themes that come from the First World. The people on the peripheries desire to live the faith. People in Europe and the West want to save the planet. People in the developing world are concerned with survival, but the Christian faith helps them survive. This divergence dramatically exploded into view when the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released the declaration Fiducia Supplicans on the blessing of irregular couples, almost entirely rejected by the very Christian regions to which Pope Francis seemed to address himself most often.

In these situations, the third paradox of the pontificate also arises: making universal the themes of the (very) particular Church of Latin America.

Fiducia Supplicans was published after Argentinian Cardinal Víctor Fernández, the Pope’s ghostwriter, had come to the helm of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Pope waited 10 years to call Cardinal Fernández to Rome in September 2023, but since his appointment, he has defined a change of narrative.

Cardinal Fernández has brought to the fore typically Latin American themes, with the continuous publication of responsa a dubium documents that previously remained confined to the relationship between the dicastery and the local bishop. There was even discussion of the faithful who do not approach Communion because they feel ashamed of how they are judged by the pastors, a theme subsequently transformed into the request for forgiveness for the “doctrine used as a stone” at the beginning of the last Synod of Bishops.

Part of this perspective is also found in the final decision to dissolve the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a Peruvian-based lay society whose founder was guilty of abuse. This decision is outside the tradition of the Church, which always seeks to recover the good from the realities of faith. Still, it aligns with the internal Church “war” between progressives and conservatives experienced in Latin America after the Second Vatican Council.

The fourth paradox is in the overall style of government.

Francis was a pope who wanted to walk as a “bishop with the people,” but in the end, he made all the key decisions alone. During his pontificate, five synods occurred (with the most recent Synod on Synodality divided into three parts), and the Church was placed in a state of permanent synod.

In the end, however, this synodality is more shown than practiced. Throughout his pontificate, Francis did not make a single significant decision in anything like a recognizable synodal manner. The Pope indeed welcomed the Synod on Synodality’s final document, approving its publication as if it were a magisterial document. Yet, at its concluding session, he appointed 10 study groups that continue to meet afterward on the most controversial issues — meaning he took those matters away from the synod.

The fifth paradox concerns transparency.

Never has a pope spoken so much about himself, including in four autobiographical books in the last two years and dozens of interviews, always looking outside the Catholic fold. And yet, we know very little about many aspects of this Pope’s life and thought. We do not see the period of the “desert” when the Jesuits sent him to Córdoba and isolated him. We do not know in depth how he behaved during the earlier Argentinian dictatorship of the 1970s — a period when he served as the leader of the local Jesuits. We do not even know the depth of his real theological studies, even if various studies have tried to attribute to him the influence of various authors.

Finally, there is the great paradox of the pontificate itself: It was loved and hated in equal measure.

It was appreciated initially, when the Pope’s communicative strokes of genius left catchphrases destined for history. It was a muted and almost invisible pontificate at the end, when Pope Francis continued to repeat the same concepts without flashes of novelty.

So, in light of these numerous paradoxes, what is Pope Francis’ legacy? It is complex and ultimately unfinished.

Unfinished because Pope Francis’ last great revolution was appointing a woman, Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist Raffaella Petrini, to lead the Vatican governorate. But Sister Raffaella’s mandate has just begun, and a subsequent pope could make a different appointment since all Curia positions lapse upon a pope’s death.

Unfinished because the last great decision, to dissolve the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, has only been “initiated” to the congregation, and a subsequent pope could decide not to proceed with the dissolution.

Unfinished because the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith was working on documents dealing with slavery, monogamy and Mariological issues.

If those documents are ever published, it will likely be in a fashion very different from the one Pope Francis’ men had begun to give them.

Everything is now in his successor’s hands, but the transition will be more complex than ever.