In the days since his death, Pope Francis has been called a reformer, outsider, influencer and modernizer. He was all of these things. But he was also the steward of the oldest institution in the Western world. He protected the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine — even if he did so in his own style.
That is evident in one of Francis’ last writings, which was provided to The New York Times and has not previously been published. It’s a short foreword to a book, written for young Catholics, about the church’s teachings on love and marriage. The book is from the YOUCAT Foundation (short for youth catechism, or doctrine), an organization approved by the Vatican to publish the church’s teachings in a way that young people can understand. The foundation distributes books in 70 languages around the world.
In the foreword, Francis articulates the church’s position on marriage: that it is a priority, one of sacred importance, and is only between a man and a woman. He breaks no new doctrinal ground. Still, the letter illustrates who Francis was as a pope: a pragmatic and compassionate communicator who skillfully repackaged, without necessarily changing, the church’s doctrine for a modern era. (Read the full text here.)
“It’s a confirmation of a legacy,” Raúl Zegarra, a professor of Catholicism at Harvard, said. “It’s really a classic text by the pope.”
His rhetorical style
In his opening lines, Francis captures much of his approach to the papacy.
“In my homeland of Argentina, there is a dance I love very much, one that I often participated in when I was young: the tango,” Francis, the first Latin American pope, writes. He then compares the tango, in all of its “discipline and dignity,” to marriage.
“I am always touched to see young people who love each other and have the courage to transform their love into something great: ‘I want to love you until death do us part.’ What an extraordinary promise!”
In this, Francis stresses a fundamental Catholic teaching — that marriage is a holy, paramount commitment. But he does so with charm, not austerity. “It’s characteristic of the way he teaches,” Brett C. Hoover, a Catholic theologian and professor at Loyola Marymount University, said.
Francis was an expert at using symbols to convey spiritual lessons (following in the tradition of Jesus’ biblical parables). It’s a skill Francis may have developed in his 20s when he taught literature to high school boys. As pope, he wove metaphors, symbols and even jokes into narratives. Francis once said a good priest should “smell of the sheep.” He compared the church to a “field hospital” that cared for the sickest in society.
This approach helped Francis connect with a wide audience, in contrast to his predecessor, the shy and scholastic Pope Benedict XVI.
“He made his commentary accessible,” Margaret Susan Thompson, a professor of history at Syracuse University, said. “It’s visual as well as tactile.”
His connection to reality
Francis has been memorialized in recent days as “the people’s pope.” He turned toward the harsh realities of life — poverty, sickness, suffering — and refused to look away. He washed the feet of prisoners. He called people sheltering in a church in Gaza nightly. “He always sought to shed light on the problems of our time,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said in the homily at Francis’ funeral.
This is apparent in the foreword. Francis is quick to ground the aspiration of marriage in reality — the statistical likelihood of divorce. “I am not blind, and neither are you,” he wrote. “How many marriages today fail after three, five, seven years?” He even personalized the message: “Maybe your parents, too, began the sacrament of marriage with that same courage, but were unable to take their love to completion.”
Throughout his papacy, Francis demonstrated that he understood the church’s edicts — on divorce, celibacy before marriage and same-sex marriages — could feel unattainable.
“Francis was a parish priest and then an urban bishop,” Mr. Zegarra said. From the front lines of faith, Francis saw how people struggled to live church teachings. While he didn’t change doctrine, Francis tried to see “if the theology of marriage we have would stretch enough to incorporate people that aren’t traditionally incorporated by it,” Mr. Hoover said.
Soon after his election, he ignored tradition and married 20 couples, including some who had already lived together and one who had a grown child. In 2016, he opened the door for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion by giving more latitude to local priests and bishops. In 2023, he decided to allow priests to bless same-sex couples.
“This experience is really something that shapes this preface, and that really shapes his whole papacy,” Mr. Zegarra said.
His legacy
Now that Francis has passed, his letter will no longer be printed in the book for youth on love — that will be a job for the incoming pope, according to the YOUCAT Foundation.
Still, it highlights not only the pope’s style, but also some of his signature policies. In it, Francis references multiple times his 2016 apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia,” a 256-page document on the family that called on the church to be more inclusive. He also references his recommendation that churches establish a “marriage catechumenate,” a program that would prepare people for marriage.
For some, the letter will affirm Francis’ legacy of love — practicing it, prioritizing it. For others, it will serve as a last reminder that he didn’t go as far as they had hoped in evolving church doctrine.
It’s also a document that could be considered, among all of his writings, by the committee who will decide if Francis will be canonized. The committee attempts to be exhaustive in analyzing everything the pope has written, Ms. Thompson said.
To all who read it, Francis makes one final appeal.
“Believe in love, believe in God, and believe that you are capable of taking on the adventure of a love that lasts a lifetime. Love wants to be permanent; ‘until further notice’ isn’t love,” he writes.
“We humans have the desire to be accepted without reservations, and those who do not have this experience often — unknowingly — carry a wound for the rest of their lives. Instead, those who enter into a union lose nothing, but gain everything: life at its fullest.”
