'The Pope of Mercy'

A HISTORYMAKER, HE LED THE WORLD'S 1.4 BILLION CATHOLICS WITH HUMILITY AND HEART, EVEN AMID CONTROVERSY

- By JOHNNY DODD

Just four months into his new job, reporters asked Pope Francis for his thoughts on gay priests during a flight back to Rome. His off-the-cuff remarks challenged decades of orthodoxy and were seen as a harbinger of what was to come. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill,” said Francis, “who am I to judge?”

On April 21 the 88-year-old Francis died of a stroke at his residence in the Vatican. In 12 years as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Argentinean-born Francis—the first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years—gained a reputation for his Progressive ideas, his love of ordinary people, his concern for the environment and his candor. The Vatican hailed him as “the pope of mercy,” a quality that Francis called “the air we breathe.”