The legacy of Pope Francis in Latin America 

Lima Newsroom, Apr 25, 2025 / 14:47 pm (CNA).

The death of Pope Francis marks the end of an era for the Catholic Church in Latin America. As the first Latin American pontiff, his legacy in the region is complex, according to analysts consulted by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.

His 12-year pontificate coincided with multiple challenges in the region, including dictatorial regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, mass migration, and sexual abuse scandals within the Church.

He created 149 cardinals, 32 of whom are Latin American, and 23 of them will be electors in the upcoming conclave.

The 2013 election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope generated a wave of hope and enthusiasm in Latin America. However, over the years, the positive perception of the pontiff among Latin American Catholics fell from its early stratospheric heights. 

According to a Pew Research Center survey published in September 2024, Pope Francis’ popularity in the region slipped considerably over the decade, with Argentina being the most notable case: There his approval rating fell from 98% in 2013 to 74% in 2024.

Other countries surveyed that registered declines were Colombia (from 93% to 88%), Brazil (from 92% to 84%), Mexico (from 86% to 80%), Peru (from 83% to 78%), and Chile (from 79% to 64%).

A Church of the Americas for the world

As pope, Bergoglio brought his Latin American pastoral experience to Rome, transforming the Church on the continent from being “‘a Church reflective of European characteristics’ to beginning the process of becoming a ‘source Church,’” emphasized Rodrigo Guerra, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

In an interview with ACI Prensa, he explained that “this can easily be seen by looking closely” at Francis’ first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, or the Synod on Synodality, which “have the air of a Latin American ecclesial family.”

Guerra also highlighted Francis’ legacy in his social teaching, which “recovers and matures many of the most cherished insights of the Latin American Catholic Church’s experience,” such as “the preferential option for the poor, understood as a Christological rather than a partisan option,” his “strong criticism of all ‘ideological colonization,’” and “‘popular spirituality’ as the true theological action of God in the faithful.”

Jorge Trasloheros, who holds a doctorate in Latin American studies, explained that the pastoral guidance Bergoglio would apply to the world can be seen in the Aparecida document — in which the then-Argentine archbishop played a significant role — and whose “main theme is that every Catholic must be a missionary disciple of Christ.”

This is a document in which “there is no political slogan per se, as in fact there may have been in previous meetings of bishops,” but rather it encourages Catholics to go in “search of the peripheries” of humanity.

Furthermore, another Latin American characteristic of Pope Francis was his challenge to people and “the issue of synodality.” Aparecida calls “for learning to walk in community, and synodality is this walking in community,” he said.

Trasloheros clarified that the pontificate was not about “making the universal Church a Latin America but rather that the contributions of the experience of the Latin American episcopate served to inspire many initiatives within a totally depleted European Church.”

His trips to the region

During his 12-year pontificate, Francis visited 61 countries on 47 trips. In Latin America, he visited Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Panama. But paradoxically, he never officially visited his native Argentina. 

Regarding this, Guerra recalled that “many times” the Holy Father declared “his interest in visiting his beloved Argentina,” a country whose people this past week have flocked to churches to pray for his eternal rest.

However, he explained that the decision regarding which countries to visit “is always a prudential one and involves weighing many factors.”

“The social and political reality of the people, of course, is one of those factors. However, it’s not the only one, and often, it is not the main one.” 

Pope Francis was constantly “attentive to the life and ups and downs of the Latin American region.” Guerra noted that “the only region in the world that has a pontifical commission within the structure of the Roman Curia is Latin America,” home to 48% of the world’s Catholics.

Pope Francis’ first trip was to Brazil for World Youth Day in Rio in 2013.   

Subsequently, in Ecuador, Francis dedicated himself to promoting the protection of the family, rejecting the throwaway culture, and reminding everyone that evangelizing “is our revolution.”

During his visit to Bolivia in July 2015, he said that some powers are determined to erase Catholicism from the Latin American peoples “perhaps because our faith is revolutionary, because our faith challenges the tyranny of the idol of money.”

The then-Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi stated that when the pope spoke of “processes of change, of revolutionary faith,” he was referring to “a revolution founded on love.”

“There is no vocabulary of struggle or violence, it is a vocabulary of love and compassion,” he explained.

That same year, he traveled to Paraguay. In a meeting with civil society, he said that it is useless to take an “ideological view” of the poor because they end up being exploited “for other political or personal interests” to the detriment of their human dignity.

In September 2015, he became the third pope to visit Cuba, where he had an informal meeting with Fidel Castro. He also called for freedom and for room to operate so that the Church could fulfill its mission.

The following year, he traveled to Mexico and visited Our Lady of Guadalupe Basilica, where he prayed for a moment before the Marian image. He also celebrated Mass with Indigenous people in Chiapas and another in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from the United States.

At this Mass, he denounced forced migration as “a human tragedy” that has reached global levels. “This crisis, which can be measured in numbers, we want to measure in names, in stories, in families. These are brothers and sisters who are being forced out by poverty and violence, by drug trafficking and organized crime,” he said.

Pope Francis visited Colombia in 2017, the year after the peace agreement was signed between the government and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, by its Spanish acronym). During that trip, the pope encouraged Colombians to continue working for reconciliation, in addition to calling for a solution to the crisis in Venezuela.

He also beatified two Colombian martyrs: Jesús Jaramillo, the bishop of Arauca, and Father Pedro Ramírez, the priest of Armero.

His trip to Chile in January 2018 marked a turning point in the fight against sexual abuse. After defending the appointment of Bishop Juan Barros as bishop of Osorno, he subsequently took into account the accusations against the prelate for allegedly covering up sexual abuse and decided to order an investigation into how the Church responded to the abuse allegations.

That same month, he visited Peru, where he met with the Amazonian peoples, whom he urged to fight against illegal mining, deforestation, prostitution, and human trafficking.

Panama was the last Latin American country visited by Pope Francis, on the occasion of World Youth Day 2019. During the Mass of Commissioning, he encouraged young people to follow the example of Mary, who, with her “fiat,” said yes to the mission God had entrusted to her.

In addition, he gave the continent 11 saints: the three child martyrs of Tlaxcala, José Sánchez del Río, Mother Laura Montoya, Mother María Guadalupe García Zavala, Mama Antula, Artímedes Zatti, José del Rosario Brochero, Nazaria Ignacia, and Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero. 

He also prepared the canonizations of the first two Venezuelan saints: Dr. José Gregorio Hernández and Carmen Elena Rendíles Martínez, founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus. 

Liberation theology or theology of the people?

As a priest and later archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio addressed Latin American social reality, marked by poverty and migration, as he experienced it in the shantytowns of the Argentine capital.

As Trasloheros sees it, the same radicalism that Francis displayed in defending life “from the first moment until natural death” he displayed in protecting the dignity of migrants. 

“But when he starts talking about defending migrants, ‘Oh, of course, he’s on the left!’” For Trasloheros, these are attempts by groups to confuse “faith with politics” to manipulate it toward “their interests, rejecting or presenting a pope who doesn’t exist.”

For his part, Guerra said that “the political geometry of those on the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ fails to appreciate the irreducibility of the [the life and mission of Jesus Christ]” and that “every time the popes fail to please the powers of the world, they try to label them with reductive categories.”

“The pope,” the Vatican official affirmed, “is the guarantor of the correct interpretation of the deposit of faith, and his teaching on the social dimension of the Gospel is also part of his magisterium. Losing sight of this quickly engenders mentalities that explicitly or tacitly break with proper ecclesial communion.”

One of Francis’ actions that was questioned at the time was the canonization of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 in El Salvador, allegedly a supporter of liberation theology. 

However, this connection was rejected by Monsignor Jesús Delgado, who served as secretary to the Central American saint. He asserted that “[Archbishop Romero] knew nothing about liberation theology, and he didn’t want to learn about it. He was a faithful adherent of the Catholic Church and, above all, of the doctrine of the popes.”

But there were other gestures that also fostered this perception, such as the letter the pope sent to Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, considered the father of liberation theology, on his 90th birthday. “I thank you for all you have contributed to the Church and to humanity,” the pope wrote, “through your service to theology and your preferential love for the poor and the outcasts of society.”

In addition, he lifted the suspensions “a divinis” that Pope John Paul II had imposed on Miguel D’Escoto, Fernando Cardenal, and Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaraguan priests of that movement, for their political participation in the Sandinista government.

The Vatican reported that Francis granted D’Escoto’s request to “return to celebrating the Holy Eucharist before his death” and Ernesto Cardenal’s request to “be readmitted to the exercise of the priestly ministry.”

In January 2017, Pope Francis told the Spanish newspaper El País that “liberation theology was a positive thing in Latin America. The part that opted for a Marxist analysis of reality was condemned by the Vatican.”

“Cardinal [Joseph] Ratzinger issued two instructions when he was prefect of the [then-Congregation for the] Doctrine of the Faith. One was very clear about the Marxist analysis of reality. And the second took up positive aspects. Liberation theology had positive aspects and also had deviations, especially in its Marxist analysis of reality,” he noted.

Jesuit Father Juan Carlos Scannone, one of Bergoglio’s formators, affirmed that the pontiff never shared the tenets of Father Gustavo Gutiérrez but rather was guided by the Argentine current of liberation theology, which “does not use Marxist social analysis but rather prefers a historical-cultural analysis, without discarding the socio-structural, but not based on class struggle as the determining principle for interpreting society and history.”

“The Argentine line of liberation theology, which some call ‘theology of the people,’ helps us understand Bergoglio’s pastoral work as a bishop as well as many of his statements and teachings,” Scannone explained.

The secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Rodrigo Guerra, explained that Scannone created “a typology to classify the various ‘theologies of liberation,’” which includes the “Río de la Plata school” and is also known as “theology of the people,” “a non-Marxist way of creatively developing a non-conformist, critical, and liberating theology with a strong cultural focus,” he noted.

“Pope Francis subscribes in part to this tradition, but he goes beyond it in more than one respect. Pope Francis, in some ways, represents the creative maturation of the ‘theology of the people,’ of the Latin American episcopal magisterium, and of the truly lived pastoral experience of many communities in the region,” he added.

Trasloheros also emphasized this point, because while Marxist liberation theology “is ideologized, identifies with political parties, and rejects popular religiosity because it is considered alienating,” the line followed by Francis supports popular religiosity and understands the culture that is unique to the people.

“That’s why he was a ‘shantytown pope,’ as they called him, and was so supportive of the priests [ministering in] the slums, the forgotten inner city, the marginalized areas,” he noted.

For David Lantigua, adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame, “today, liberation theology has multiplied into several other themes, such as Indigenous and ecofeminist theology.”

However, “Pope Francis doesn’t speak of liberation theology but of the theology of poverty, a theology of the people from the ‘sensus fidei,’ which includes the wisdom of human beings, grassroots movements, and the environment,” Lantigua told ACI Prensa.

“The Gospel of Christ, who ‘though he was rich, became poor’ (2 Cor 8:9), proclaims the word of God to the poor, and from the poor it has a social and liberating dimension. The exhortation Evangelii Gaudium is like a document from Aparecida, which was led by Bergoglio, for the universal Church,” he added.

In 2015, on the flight from Cuba to Washington, D.C., the pope was told that some considered him a communist pope. To this, Francis noted that he had never said “one more thing that wasn’t in the Church’s social doctrine.”

“Things can be explained. Perhaps one explanation has given the impression of being a little more leftist, but that would be a mistake. No, my doctrine on all this, on Laudato Si’, on economic imperialism, all of this, is that of the Church’s social doctrine,” he affirmed.

For Trasloheros, the theology of the people “is neither left nor right. Through pastoral experience, he tries to proclaim Christ and live Christ; therefore, he has no political spectrum and cannot be ideologized.”

The Mexican expert said that taking this position caused Bergoglio to be marginalized by a “radical group” of Jesuits inclined toward Marxist theology, who sent him “to a very remote place, where his main mission was to hear confessions. He was not allowed to teach young people or have contact with them.”

This was until the then archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, was able to get him appointed as auxiliary bishop.

Deficit of democracy in Latin America

During the years of Francis’ pontificate, Latin America continued to be a continent facing great challenges, including the lack of democracy in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Francis visited Cuba in 2015. A year earlier, the pope played a crucial role in achieving a thaw in the relationship between the communist regime and the United States during the Obama administration, although this was reversed by the first Trump administration. 

But through his diplomatic representatives, he also advocated for the release of political prisoners, especially those imprisoned during the peaceful protests of July 2021. Furthermore, although the Cuban government has not yet completed the release of 553 prisoners promised in January, it has noted that this promise was made through the mediation of Pope Francis.

In the case of Venezuela, in his early years, the pope provided mediation between the socialist regime and the opposition through the Vatican secretary for relations with states, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher.

Although the process was cut short by the government’s lack of will, Francis remained committed to efforts to bring about democratization in Venezuela, whether through private letters or through his representatives, such as Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

But the most difficult and dramatic case has been Nicaragua, where the Catholic Church continues to be openly persecuted by the regime of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and “co-president,” Rosario Murillo, with the expulsion of bishops, priests, and religious orders, and the expropriation of Catholic properties.

Since the current crisis began in 2018, the pope supported the Church’s mediation through the apostolic nunciature. However, the Ortega regime expelled the nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, in March 2022.

Despite this, the pontiff closely followed the life of the Church in Nicaragua. His criticism of the Sandinista dictatorship prompted Ortega to respond by requesting the closure of the Vatican embassy in Managua.

Unlike Nicaragua, the Vatican still maintains diplomatic missions in Cuba and Venezuela.

For Guerra, “complex political scenarios, such as those in Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua, require the practical wisdom of the pastor, that is, what St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, called ‘prudence.’”

“Prudence,” he clarified, “is not a clever calculation of means and ends. Much less is it timidity. Prudence is the ‘charioteer of virtues,’ that is, it’s the operative habit that guides stable dispositions for morally good decisions,” he said.

For the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, the pope promoted “the ‘possible good’ in every scenario.”

“Unlike heads of state, the pope is primarily a pastor who seeks the good of the people and the necessary freedom of the Church so that it can exercise its evangelizing mission.”

Synod for the Amazon

The Synod for the Amazon took place Oct. 6–27, 2019, at the Vatican. Pope Francis convened the event to reflect on pastoral care in this vast region of South America.

However, the event was not without its controversial aspects, such as the alleged cult of Pachamama (Mother Earth) and by some sectors pushing for women priests and married priests, proposals that were rejected.

Trasloheros affirmed that the convening of this synod was a pastoral initiative by Francis toward his home continent, bringing together not only bishops but also “many pastoral experiences that are being carried out by Indigenous communities” and by missionaries.

Guerra asserted that at the ceremony held in the Vatican Gardens on Oct. 4, 2019, “there was no act of worship of ‘Pachamama’” but rather “gifts brought from the Amazon were displayed, although it was difficult to interpret for the observer accustomed to a Eurocentric perspective.”

Regarding the figure of the pregnant woman, which was associated with the Pachamama, Guerra said that it was not “an effigy of the Andean ‘Pachamama’ but a simple sign of fertility, and that many of us appreciate because it invites us to ‘save both lives,’ that is, to respect the inalienable dignity of the unborn and the woman who carries [the baby] in her womb.”

“The Amazon Synod is now beginning to bear visible fruit, for example, through CEAMA, the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon. This unprecedented experience is undoubtedly promising. Affection and patience will help it mature. The men and women who participate in it are well aware of the importance of their evangelizing mission, strongly embedded in the context of and guided by the Church’s teaching on integral ecology,” he stated.

Migration

During Francis’ pontificate, mass migration continued to rise from Latin America, particularly from Venezuela, with millions leaving that country. Hundreds of thousands of people crossed the dangerous Darien jungle in migrant caravans that traveled through Central America to reach the United States.

Panama reported that nearly 300,000 people crossed that jungle in 2024. However, following measures taken by President Donald Trump, the flow has been reduced by 98%.

The Argentine pope repeatedly opposed anti-immigrant policies and advocated for “welcoming migrants.”

In the case of the United States, he rejected the mass deportations carried out by the Trump administration. The pope’s stance caused a clash with Vice President JD Vance, a convert to Catholicism and one of the last people to meet with Francis before his death.

Abortion

Despite the pope’s vociferous opposition to abortion, during his pontificate the practice gained ground in the region. It was decriminalized in Chile in 2017, legalized in Argentina in 2020, liberalized in Colombia in 2022, and is currently permitted in most states of Mexico.

Abuse cases

During his pontificate, Francis strengthened the zero-tolerance policy against sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy.

Among the most high-profile cases was the episode in Chile, following accusations against the bishop of Osorno, Juan Barros, for alleged cover-up.

Following his apostolic visit to the country in January 2018, the pope sent a special mission whose report led the Chilean bishops to offer their resignations which the pope then used to begin the renewal of the country’s episcopate.

He also laicized Fernando Karadima, the Chilean priest who was convicted by the Vatican in 2011 of sexual abuse.

During his pontificate, he continued working to reform the Legionaries of Christ, following the abuse scandals committed by its founder and several members.

Likewise, an investigation was conducted into the Sodality of Christian Life for sexual abuse and the abuse of power, which culminated in the dissolution of that apostolic society founded in Peru.

Finally, in January, he approved the appointment of two papal delegates to the Institute of the Incarnate Word — which was founded in Argentina — to help it “bring about effective change,” given that its founder, who died in 2023, continued to be presented as an exemplary priest, despite being found guilty “of the crimes of which he was accused.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/263651/the-legacy-of-pope-francis-in-latin-america