Margherita Stancati
speaker
43 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 27 Jan
Margherita Stancati’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Can you tell us a bit about who he was as a person? So Pope Francis was born in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, in 1936. He was the first of five children. The family was of Italian origin. And he spent his youth in Argentina. That's where he became a priest and where he also first became a bishop.
He was the first pope from the Jesuit order and the first pope to take the name Francis. And he took that name after St. Francis of Assisi, who was a medieval saint who famously renounced his wealth and embraced a life of poverty. And that is a message that Pope Francis wanted to give at the outset of his papacy and that he stayed true throughout his reign.
After he became Pope, he decided to drive around in a simple car and afford focus. He refused to live in the luxurious apostolic palace, instead choosing a modest apartment in the Vatican's guest house. And he always made a point of spending time with the poor, with the homeless, and even with prison inmates.
Pope Francis washing the feet of 12 women prisoners.
He was much more informal and he adopted much more lenient positions on issues that ranged from homosexuality to contraception to divorce.
He did show greater openness towards the LGBTQ community. And that was something that really displeased more conservative Catholics. Just today, a group that advocates for LGBTQ Catholics said that Pope Francis had been a gift to the church and to the LGBTQ plus community. But he was still the head of the Catholic Church, which was still conservative.
He was quite critical, for example, of what he called gender ideology. So he was progressive within the framework of the Catholic Church, but he was still the pope.
He was also very outspoken. He criticized global capitalism. He spoke against wars. In his most recent address yesterday, he called for an end to conflicts in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in Sudan. He criticized governments for taking a hard line on immigration and has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration over this. He was especially critical of these kind of large scale deportations.
And is that unusual for a pope to speak out in this way? I think popes have weighed in on current affairs for a long time. Pope Francis was definitely not shy about it. He spoke out his mind and he very often weighed in on political affairs. And for example, he also called on political leaders to reduce carbon emissions and to combat climate change.
He wasn't scared to weigh in on some of the most sensitive social and political issues of his day.
So no controversy during his reign rivaled the impact of the scandals over the sexual abuse of children by priests. The Pope had a no-tolerance policy over the abuse of children, but critics say he could have done more.
Just today, Bishop Accountability, which is a watchdog group that documents clergy sexual abuse, said that the Pope should have done more to remove and punish abusers as well as their enablers from the church. And they said that this will tarnish his legacy. For example, he did not adopt the practice of permanently barring abusers from serving as priests.
So Pope Francis was much beloved. He was a very popular pope, but his approach did cause tensions within the Catholic Church. So conservative Catholics, including cardinals and bishops, many of them in the United States, complained that the pope was blurring the lines on doctrine, on issues such as blessings for same-sex couples.
They also worried that he was being a bit too liberal on issues such as celibacy, although ultimately he did not loosen that requirement. So he did cause some tensions within the church. What would you say is Francis's legacy? Francis's legacy ultimately is promoting social and economic justice. So focusing on these quite concrete objectives more than, you know, on traditional moral teachings.
He showed flexibility on the church's traditional moral teachings, but really pushed hard when it came to addressing injustices and speaking out against conflicts.
One of the pope's most concrete legacies is the fact that he picked two-thirds of the cardinals who will then be selecting the new pope. So there is a good chance that his legacy will outlive him.
So the Pope's passing will lead to a period of mourning. So for a few days, that is what the church and the faithful will focus on. After that, there will be a funeral. And after that, there will be a conclave, which is a gathering of cardinals that will meet in the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel and start choosing a new Pope.
The conclave requires two-thirds of the cardinals to agree on who the new pope will be. All cardinals under the age of 80 will get to participate in the election. It's significant that Pope Francis himself has appointed about two-thirds of the cardinals who will be participating in the conclave. And how long does this usually take? It's hard to say. It can take days. It can take longer than that.
But usually it's a process that takes a few days and that is marked by kind of white smoke coming from the roof of the Sistine Chapel.
It's extremely hard to tell. You know, when Pope Francis became pontiff 12 years ago, no one expected he would be the chosen one. So we'll have to wait and see.
Showing 21–40 of 43 · page 2 of 3
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