The media’s selective understanding of a complexed pope

Gavin Ashenden• April 25, 2025

The death of Pope Francis leaves us with some very different narratives and perspectives of who he was and how we might assess his life and pontificate.  We are faced with trying to reconcile some of the many contradictions his pontificate presented to both the Church and the world. One element with a significant degree of confusion is the way the Press understood him.

We are left with the paradoxical impression that he might have been more popular with the secular Press than he was with the Church. He was almost universally celebrated by the media. The response within the Church was a matter of greater complexity.

It was press coverage and the way it chose to celebrate some issues, while closing its eyes to others that appeared inconsistent, that has been critical to the forging of the reputation of Pope Francis when alive and posthumously.

We might well ask why the media, so long suspicious and resentful of Catholicism, has given Pope Francis such a welcome.

The Press depicted Benedict XVI as the hardline “God’s Rottweiler” because his intellectual gifts and personal reserve played poorly with populist sentiment. Had he been judged by some of his work on redistributive economics, the Left might have discovered him as, in terms of social redistribution, one of their own.

It might indicate that the press is driven by feelings and superficial judgements. And as it happened, Pope Francis was masterful in the way that he gave the Press comments that were high octane in the currency of “feeling”, and didn’t trouble them to much over any complexity of content. 

It would be too simplistic to assume that it was just that he was making the faith more congenial to their world view by diluting, since looking back, (with the exception of the death penalty) he changed little.

And yet, he did have the capacity for “reading the room” and finding way to touch a populist nerve in a way that gained public confidence and sympathy.

Some of his sound bites were astonishingly effective, even though when they are more closely examined, they don’t stand the weight of scrutiny.

He had in particular, a gift for presenting an image of non-judgemental compassion, with just a hint of a progressive tint that the secular world responded to with an instinctive welcome and crucially without asking too many questions.

His apparent off the cuff remark “who am I to judge?” made during an on-flight informal press conference, might on its own be seen to have come to define his public persona. 

Why does secular culture react so powerfully to embrace non-judgementalism when it finds it?  In part because its supposed hatred of judgmentalism is a symptom of its rejection of traditional ethics. Ethical restraint interferes with hedonism, and is therefore taboo. And Catholics do restraint.

In the ears of the media, “Who am I to judge” sounds like a signal that Catholic ethics have been abandoned and replaced by the sanction of “all that matters is sincerity”, which along with “intending no harm”, is one of the few ethical standards modernity is willing to tolerate.

In fact, “who am I to judge” was a carefully parsed remark which when read in context carries a very different message from the universal spin placed on it by the media. But the emotional feel of it entirely overwhelmed the contextual limitations and it became a celebratory meme in its own right. It did nothing to change the teaching of the Church, but it gave the impression that the teaching was changed or changing. And the Press delighted in it, ran with it endlessly.

A number of the Pope’s well-tuned remarks became almost catch phrases. In 2013, he movingly declared: “How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor!” This immediately was seized as an antidote to the public perception that the Church was inexcusably rich and irresponsibly powerful.

Alongside his much-publicised willingness to take public transport as an Argentinian bishop and embrace the marginalised wherever he found them, this was viewed very favourably, and became an indication of his humility and integrity. When he made it known that he would live in Casa Santa Marta instead of the papal apartments, the public celebration of his down to earth values was ecstatic. “People can come only in dribs and drabs (in the official apartments), and I cannot live without people,” he explained. “I need to live my life with others.” 

But observers of life in Casa Santa Marta suggested a different narrative was at least partially at work. They pointed out that one of his most prominent personality traits was the need to micromanage. And for this he needed to be kept in touch with people and what people were saying. The scale between gathering information and enjoying gossip is a subtle one, but the need to been informed and remain in control may well have played a significant part, alongside his humility, in his wanting to avoid seclusion and exclusion in the papal apartments.

That humility on closer inspection was a little patchy. But of course, the Press did not offer closer inspection.

There is an unhappy video of a line of well-wishers coming to him to pay their respects and kiss his papal ring. It clearly meant a great deal to those queueing, even if he found it offended his sense of humility. The body language optics were awful. The Pope impatiently was seen whipping his hand away just as each person reached out for it. It looked more like petulance than humility. But then, who are we to judge? Certainly, the Press decided to ignore it.

It is of course true that Pope Francis was assiduous in taking well-judged actions in helping the marginalised when he could. His provision of showers and facilities for the homeless in Rome was once again rightly welcomed, recognised and publicised by the Press. They liked that very much. It accorded with their picture of him. And so, practising a pronounced cognitive dissonance they blanked his remarks on other shibboleths, including and especially abortion. Yet these were as emotionally charged as they were uncompromising and were completely ignored.

Abortion, “It’s like hiring a hitman …”

“… I have had occasion to return to the subject of abortion recently. You know that I am very clear about this: it is a homicide and it is not licit to become an accomplice.”

“… We are victims of the throwaway culture…there is the throwing away of children that we do not want to welcome. Today this has become a normal thing, a habit that is very bad; it is truly murder. In order to truly grasp this, perhaps asking ourselves two questions may help: is it right to eliminate, to end a human life to solve a problem? Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem?”

On other controversial issues, he could be and was also crystal clear:

“Gender ideology? It is the greatest danger; it resembles the method with which the Hitler Youth was trained.”

Will there be women priests or deacons? “No.”

Will ecclesiastical celibacy be abolished? “I won’t do it.”

Can gay couples be blessed? “People are blessed, not the union, marriage and family are born from a man and a woman.”

Euthanasia and assisted suicide? “They are practices to be rejected, daughters of the throwaway culture.”

And the rented womb? “It’s modern slavery.”

The many of the obituaries of Pope Francis demonstrate the tension that arose from the mixture of progressive soundbites accompanied by what appeared to a desire to shake the institution while remaining wholly orthodox on certain hot button ethical issues. 

There was something to please and infuriate everyone. German progressives were delighted at the ambiguities introduced over gay blessings, and furious that feminist assaults on the diaconate were resisted. Traditionalists were devastated by the unexplained blitzkrieg on the Latin Mass, but reassured by the clarity on abortion. “Who am I to judge” captured the hearts of those who wanted a move towards LGBTQ+ sympathies, but became more problematic when applied to Fr Marko Rupnik’s alleged rape of nuns, and the conniving at the hiding of other clerical sex abusers.

All this too did not fit into the narrative the media built about Francis so it was left largely unreported.

The Press had constructed the public persona of the Pope in their own image, and they were and are reluctant to allow other facts or pieces of information to disturb what they had found so comfortable and comforting. As always, reputation as well as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

(Archbishop of Barcelona Cardinal Juan Jose Omella speaks to members of the media at the Barcelona cathedral during an impromptu press conference in Barcelona, on April 21, 2025. Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP)