Many of the 40 international trips Pope Francis has made over the past 10 years have been to countries where Christians are a minority or where he can draw close to people on the fringes of the world’s attention.
The pope always “chooses the peripheries,” said Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, who has accompanied Pope Francis on nearly all his international trips.
Pope Francis goes “to the most problematic places where he thinks his presence can give way to positive developments, or where he can ‘turn on a light’ so that the world can see the reality of these places,” Tornielli told Catholic News Service.
Pope Francis has visited some of the poorest countries in the world, such as Mozambique and Madagascar in 2019 and Congo and South Sudan early this year.
In countries experiencing war, he has pleaded for peace as he did during a visit to the Central African Republic in 2015. In nations recovering from conflict, he has promoted reconciliation as he did in Iraq in 2021.
He has returned to his native Latin America six times — but has never gone back to his native Argentina — and has traveled to every continent except for Oceania, which he was scheduled to visit in September 2020 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pope Francis has averaged four international trips each year of his 10-year pontificate, even though he was unable to travel in 2020 due to the pandemic. He has visited 60 countries.
Yet just as notable as the countries Pope Francis has visited are those he has not: Spain, Germany and England, all visited by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Even Pope Francis’ brief visits to France and Switzerland lasted mere hours so that he could address assemblies of the European Union and the World Council of Churches, respectively.
In December 2022, he told the Spanish newspaper ABC that he had not organized an extended visit to any large European nation because he preferred visiting “smaller countries.”
Several of Pope Francis’ trips have reflected his commitment to interreligious dialogue. He became the first pope to visit several Muslim-majority countries: the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Bahrain, to advance dialogue with Muslim communities and condemn all forms of religious extremism with Muslim leaders.
In Abu Dhabi in 2019 he signed the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together with Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque and university, and widely considered to be the leading figure in Sunni Islam thought. In 2022, the pope and the sheikh participated in the 7th Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Kazakhstan alongside 80 other religious leaders and hundreds of delegates.
The pope has also used travel to extend a hand to other Christian communities.
His trip in 2014 to Jordan, Israel and Palestine ended with a meeting with Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians.
In 2016, Pope Francis signed a joint declaration with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in Havana, Cuba, marking the first meeting between heads of the Catholic Church and the Moscow Patriarchate. Later that year, he went to Sweden to participate in a ceremony commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation with other Christian leaders.
The pope even described his most recent trip to South Sudan Feb. 3-5 as an “ecumenical pilgrimage,” which he made alongside the leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Even in countries where it is typical for popes to visit, Pope Francis’ choice of activities can be surprising and show his desire to stay close to marginalized people.
During his apostolic visit to the United States in 2015, the pope met with President Barack Obama at the White House and became the first pope to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress. Yet immediately following the historic moment, he ate lunch with homeless people at a local parish. In Philadelphia, he visited a maximum-security prison before celebrating Mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Other trips have seen the pope visit refugee camps, homes for the elderly and hospitals.
“He always tries to visit places where people are suffering,” Tornielli told CNS. “Places where he can feel people’s lived experience.”
As for where he will travel next, Pope Francis has indicated a possible trip to Mongolia is on the horizon. Tornielli noted that a papal trip to India, which was previously in the works, could be revived.
He added that it is Pope Francis’ dream to travel to one place where his predecessor, St. John Paul II, had also wanted to go but never managed: China.
Papal impact
Experts say Pope Francis brought new life to Muslim-Catholic, Jewish-Catholic relations. Over his decade-long papacy, Pope Francis has reinvigorated Catholic-Muslim and Catholic-Jewish relations through authentic friendships and a focus on shared concerns such as basic human rights, immigration and environmental care, two interfaith experts told OSV News. Mehnaz M. Afridi, professor of religious studies and director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Center at Manhattan College in New York, told OSV News the pope has shown “a certain humility, grace and acceptance” in approaching the Muslim community, while inspiring Christians to live out their faith. “When Pope Francis reflects on any Jewish matter, along with his knowledge, undoubtedly the affections forged with his Jewish friends appear in his mind and heart,” Rabbi Abraham Skorka told OSV News. Scholars such as Adam Gregerman, co-director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, said the pope’s apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), which affirmed God’s ongoing relationship with the Jewish people, has marked “a genuine advance theologically,” and “a change from the beginning of the 20th century when popes saw Jews as having no ongoing religious validity.”
Praise, protest for Pope Francis’ outreach to LGBTQ persons. Pope Francis has evoked praise and protest for his outreach to LGBTQ persons during his decade-long papacy, as he has offered warmth and welcome while upholding the Catholic Church’s teaching on human sexuality. The pope seeks “to receive the person and accompany them mercifully, and having heard and received their story, to orient them in the teaching of the Church,” said Father Philip Bochanski, executive director of the Courage International apostolate, which supports same-sex attracted men and women in living according to Catholic teaching. The pope sees not ideologies but “individual people, and he wants to make some kind of path for them to come closer to God,” Eve Tushnet, author of “Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith,” told OSV News. In so doing, she added, Pope Francis provides a “desperately needed vision for some kind of good future” for LGBTQ persons in the Church.
Pastoral and practical: Francis seeks healing, hard line against abuse. Pope Francis has held up two recurring images the past decade: the good shepherd who looks for the lost sheep, and who lays down his life to defend and save them; and the good Samaritan, who did not ignore, pity or judge the wounded traveler, but helped him without asking for anything in return. “God thinks like the Samaritan” and “God thinks like the shepherd,” the pope said in his first general audience talk March 27, 2013, calling on everyone to enter “more deeply into the logic of God” in their daily lives. It is this same “logic” of God’s love and protection that Pope Francis has used to address the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. In his homily at Mass celebrated in his residence with a group of clergy sex abuse victims in 2014, the pope said that the Lord tells Peter, “‘Go back and feed my sheep’ — and I would add — ‘let no wolf enter the sheepfold.'” The pope also asked for “the grace to weep, the grace for the Church to weep and make reparation for her sons and daughters who betrayed their mission, who abused innocent persons.” In 2019, Pope Francis promulgated “Vos Estis Lux Mundi” (“You Are the Light of the World”), which revised and clarified norms and procedures for holding bishops and religious superiors accountable.
Pope’s anniversary sees Curia reform complete, financial reform ongoing. Beginning his pontificate, Pope Francis set out to reform the structure and attitudes of the Roman Curia and knew he also had to reform the Vatican’s financial system and stewardship of resources. One month after his election, he announced he was forming an international Council of Cardinals to advise him on governance and, in September 2013, the council began studying ways to reorganize the Curia. Nine years passed before Pope Francis promulgated “Praedicate Evangelium” (“Preach the Gospel”), his apostolic constitution finalizing the Curia reorganization and highlighting its role as a body existing to help the pope and local bishops share the Gospel and care for the poor. Pope Francis has expanded the efforts begun by Pope Benedict XVI to monitor transactions, standardize budgeting procedures and ensure the Vatican bank and other financial offices are not being used for illegal activity.
