Pope Francis inspires hope across the globe for a reason

Just days before Pope Francis was hospitalized with pneumonia in the middle of this month, he criticized the Trump administration's mass deportation of immigrants in blunt terms.

- RAHUL JACOB

In a letter to Catholic bishops in the US, the Pope said that it violated "the dignity of many men and women" and that such policies "begin badly and will end badly."

The contrast between the Pope's candour and the mostly muted response from European leaders to US Vice-President J.D. Vance's provocative 14 February speech in Munich could not have been clearer. Vance said, somewhat incredibly, that he worried more about the state of European democracies than he did about possible threats to Europe from China and Russia. In his letter on immigration, Pope Francis took apart the suggestion by the US vice-president, who is Catholic, that medieval Christian precepts prioritized looking after one's family and immediate community. "The true ordo amoris (the order of love) that must be pro-moted," Francis wrote, is "love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception."

As a new autobiography of Pope Francis published in January demonstrates, he has long been a leader who instinctively sides with those who are less well off or persecuted by the state. In what seems increasingly a world of illiberal democracies, the Pope's message needs to be amplified. I have been bored by religion since my teens and remain distrustful of organized religions and their many prohibitions. Yet, paradoxically, few leaders make more sense to me than Francis. In another lesson of leadership, part of his charm is authenticity, a virtue increasingly impossible in an age of social media posts and public relations teams managing political communiques. In management speak, he walks the talk.