This morning’s news is the death of Pope Francis and now, as we thank God for his life and ministry we also pray for the election of a new pope.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio took the unprecedented papal name of Francis, and true to his namesake, he took the side of the poor, the oppressed, the prisoners, immigrants and the unborn. His solidarity with  those on the margins was admirable and presented a positive witness to the world. This is what non-believers expect of a spiritual leader, and Francis fulfilled those expectations. He stood up for traditional marriage, resisted calls for women’s ordination, tried to reign in the aggressively progressive German bishops  and despite the uproar over “Pachamama” celebrated the liturgy with simple reverence and dignity.

His love of the poor and his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was laudable and exhibited by his frequent recourse to The Basilica of Mary Major in Rome where he went to pray and where he will be buried.

However, Pope Francis’ legacy will be mixed. He was hailed as a “Great Reformer” but failed to clean up the Vatican’s financial skullduggery, overlooked and sometimes promoted his friends who were involved in sexual abuse, and failed to make any significant changes in the church’s disciplines and traditions. One area, for instance, where he could have reformed the disciplines with little controversy and trouble would have been the authorization of the ordination of older married men.  This minor “reform” would have empowered local bishops to provide much needed priestly ministry–drawing from the ranks of experienced, well trained, mature men already in the permanent diaconate. That he was unable or unwilling to make even this relatively small and uncontroversial “reform” undermines his reputation as a Great Reformer–a reputation mostly manufactured by his loyal biographer Austin Ivereigh.

My take on Pope Francis is that he had many admirable qualities, and was a good man, but not a great pope. We pray now for the man who will succeed him, and for the cardinals who will elect him. Our church and world, it seems to me, stand at a crossroads. There are signs in Europe and America that we are on the threshold of a major religious revival, and that the Catholic Church is at the head of the class. Young people are turning to the Catholic faith, but they are turning toward traditional Catholicism not the weary and dated liberation theology of the 70s and 80s.

The world is spinning with ever-challenging new technologies, new ways of communicating and new understandings. There is a thirst, therefore, for roots, for stability, for tradition. The new pope will need to balance the good of the Second Vatican Council reforms with the weight of tradition and the deep roots of Catholicism’s venerable history. There is a desperate need for the cardinals to “read the room” and choose a man who understands the challenges of our present global age and not simply bring to the papacy the struggles of his own life and culture or to attempt to answer the challenges of the twenty first century with an unthinking return to an earlier age.

A shift is happening toward conservative values and viewpoints, but the danger is that we lapse into an easy authoritarianism and in a search for stability will settle for a strongman.  I hope and pray that Pope Francis’ papacy will be a stepping stone for a new papacy of balance, wisdom and  clarity with charity.