Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of American studies and history, focuses her research on Catholicism in the United States, as well as the history of women and American religion. Her latest book is “A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American.”
Cummings noted that in March 2013, while addressing his brother Cardinals in the days before the papal conclave, Jorge Bergoglio reimagined the passage from the Book of Revelation that references Jesus saying, “I stand at the door and knock.”
“‘What if,’ Bergoglio posited, ‘Jesus is asking not to be let in, but is instead knocking from inside the Church, urging that he be let out?’ Many, including Bergoglio himself, believe it was this speech that led to his elevation to the papacy a few days later,” Cummings said.
“Certainly this evocative metaphor offers one way to understand how Pope Francis led the Church over the last dozen years. Through his insistence on mercy, his global vision and his renewed commitment to evangelization, the first pontiff from the Americas undoubtedly created a more outward-oriented Catholic Church.
“This endeared him to many and alienated some, but above all, changed the modern Catholic landscape in ways that will endure long after his death.”