Francis: The People's Pope (2025) Movie Script
1
-[pensive music playing]
-[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Easter Sunday,
Pope Francis at the Vatican...
Buona Pasqua.
...after months of illness,
those final images
of the People's Pope
-in his final hours.
-[crowd cheering, clamoring]
[narrator] Tonight,
a world in mourning...
-[bells tolling]
-...but also in memory...
[crowd member shouting]
[crowd cheering]
...of the legacy he left behind.
[Terry] Pope Francis seemed
to be changing the Church,
bringing it
into the modern world
in a way
that no pope had before.
This is a pope who wanted
to build bridges,
not to build walls.
He not only preached in word,
he preached in deed.
[Mark] He's doing
what Jesus asked him to do.
He's feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked,
sheltering the homeless.
The humility, the modesty,
the accessibility
of this man named Pope Francis.
Muchas gracias, Santo Padre.
[narrator] And reaching out...
I was bullied... [sobs]
...because of how I looked like.
...one by one.
And then I heard a voice,
"This is Pope Francis."
[Elise] He liked to push
the line on some things,
and not every Catholic
was comfortable with that.
His most famous line
when he was asked
about gay priests,
"As long as they have
a good heart
and are searching for God,
who am I to judge?"
The papacy of Pope Francis
in one word,
and that word is "mercy."
Mercy, mercy, mercy.
[narrator]
Francis: The People's Pope.
[music concludes]
[Terry] The story
of Pope Francis
is the story of a man
who heard the call
of service to God.
[pensive music playing]
[Terry] He is the pontiff,
the bridge
between God and humanity
in the belief of Catholics.
There is no other office
in the world
like the papacy.
[reporter 1] You can feel now
a palpable tension here
as they realize any vote now
could bring a pope.
[crowd cheering, applauding]
Breaking news, we are looking
at the smoke billowing
out of the cast iron chimney
above the Sistine Chapel.
[bells ringing]
[reporter 2] And there
are the bells that confirm.
[reporter 3] There is a pope,
a new pope.
-[crowd cheering]
-[intriguing music playing]
[Terry] It's a sacred moment
in the history of the Church
for a billion Catholics
around the world
-and for the world at large.
-[crowd cheering, applauding]
[in Latin]
[crowd cheering]
[in English] They introduce
in Latin
the name of the pope.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
[crowd cheering]
[Terry] It was a total surprise
when they said Bergoglio,
and I remember every... "Who?"
[reporter 3]
From Argentina, Bergoglio.
[reporter 4]
The first Jesuit pope.
[reporter 5] First pope
from Latin America.
[reporter 6] This is something
I'm not sure any of us expected.
I was screaming at the TV set.
I said, "It's Mario!
It's Jorge! He's my teacher!"
I mean,
I was just jumping with joy.
It was exhilarating.
It was amazing.
[crowd cheering, applauding]
-[camera shutters clicking]
-[pensive music playing]
[Sen] You knew
in the first 30 seconds
that the pontificate
would be different
from the moment he walked out
onto that balcony.
[Thomas] He was not wrapped
in furs.
He did not have red velvet on.
He did not have red shoes on.
And he steps to the microphone,
and he finally said,
[in Italian]
-[crowd cheering]
-[Gibson] "Buona sera."
-[in English] Good evening.
-It was like he met somebody
on the streets in Rome,
an old friend. "Buona sera."
The people in
St. Peter's Square went crazy.
He's the first pope
who didn't come from Europe
in a thousand years.
He's the first pope
from the Western Hemisphere.
[in Italian]
[Sen, in English] And then,
of course, that massive thing
of turning the tables
and inviting the people
to bless him.
[in Italian]
[gentle music playing]
[Thomas, in English] The people
prayed over their pope.
-This was unheard of.
-[crowd cheering]
[reporter 3] Archbishop Gregory,
as we watch this scene,
I hope it's all right
to tell everyone at home
of the tears standing
in your eyes.
[chuckles] It is.
What touched me
was his humility,
the humble request for prayers.
I thought,
"He gets it." [chuckles]
[pensive music playing]
I knew immediately
what kind of pope he would be.
He chose the name of Francis,
one of the greatest
of the saints
of the Catholic Church, right?
Saint Francis of Assisi.
[Paul] Francis was the saint
of the poor, and this was, uh,
like flinging down a gauntlet.
[in Italian]
-[crowd cheering]
-[joyful music playing]
[Thomas, in English] What became
obvious immediately
after Pope Francis was elected
was that he was gonna change
the style of being pope.
[Paul] Instead of going
in the papal limousine,
he got back on the bus
with all the other cardinals.
[Thomas] And then the next day,
he goes to the place
where he was staying
and pays his bill.
[pensive music playing]
[Sen] In the early days,
one of the most shocking things
was his decision
not to live in the papal palace.
[Terry] He decided to live
in the Casa Santa Marta,
in the Vatican guesthouse,
that kind of Motel 6
on the Vatican grounds,
rather than
in the Apostolic Palace.
There were people
who criticized that.
They saw that
as demeaning of the papacy.
"What, you're gonna live
in a guesthouse?"
"What are
we communicating here?"
[Mark] I'd kind of gone,
you know, struggled a little
with my Catholicism.
So, I was more excited
as each day passed by
to learn more about his life
and about what
he had gone through.
-[car horns blaring]
-[upbeat guitar music playing]
[Mark] When I went
to Buenos Aires,
I took these pictures.
So, this picture
is his childhood home.
It's pretty nondescript.
Pope Francis grew up
in Buenos Aires.
His grandparents
were immigrants from Italy.
[Paul] Francis would go
to his grandma every day.
She taught him to pray.
She taught him the rosary.
And his faith
is very much rooted
in that kind
of peasant folk religion
that Grandma Rosa
brought with her.
[Terry] As a young man,
he danced the tango, he dated,
he loved the life
of a normal kid in Argentina.
[Paul] He got a job
in a chemistry laboratory.
And he was on his way
to see his girlfriend,
and he went to church
just to say confession.
[Paul] The conversation
in the confessional
made something chime
in his head.
-He felt seen, touched by grace.
-[gentle music playing]
And that changed his life.
He knew from that moment
that he would give his life
to God.
[Mark] God works
in mysterious ways,
including
in a little confessional
in the middle of Buenos Aires.
It's beautiful.
When he first became a priest,
Pope Francis was a teacher.
-He taught high school.
-He was an amazing teacher.
What immediately
attracted me to him
was that simplicity,
that making fun of himself.
We used to call him "carucha."
Carucha means "funny face,"
because he had
this funny face. [chuckles]
[Terry] He was promoted
very quickly
up through the ranks,
and he became the leader
of the Jesuits
in all of Argentina
at a very young age.
He wasn't experienced.
He hadn't matured.
And so he approached
the job
with a very
authoritarian perspective
-and attitude.
-[gunshot echoing]
[Terry] And that was the time
when Argentina was in crisis.
[somber music playing]
[Paul] There was
a military coup,
and they set about
dealing with anybody
who disagreed with them.
[Yayo] Some of my teachers
did disappear.
Some of my friends,
lots of them disappeared.
[pensive music playing]
It was felt by some members
of the Jesuit order
that he had not protected
two Jesuits sufficiently,
who were picked up
by the military and tortured.
What he always said was,
"I did everything I could
to orchestrate their release."
[Gibson] While he was the head
of the Jesuit order
in Argentina,
and for years afterward,
he was viewed
by some people there
as authoritarian, even divisive.
He became a target of anger
and resentment
by leaders
in his own Society of Jesus,
in the Jesuits,
and his own church.
[Mark] He essentially gets
banished to Crdoba,
and he hears confessions there
for a couple years.
He doesn't really have a job.
That exile became
a kind of metamorphosis,
a time for him
to go inside himself
and rethink everything
and find a certain humility.
This is his bedroom in Crdoba
where he was exiled.
There was a place to kneel
and a bureau
and a picture of his mom
in the room.
[Paul] Those two years
in Crdoba
changed him completely.
The archbishop in...
Buenos Aires had heard
that he was...
he was not in circulation
and thought,
"This is a waste. He'd make
a great junior bishop for me."
[pensive guitar music playing]
[Paul] When he arrived
in Buenos Aires,
he listened,
he consulted people,
he'd stopped being severe
and dogmatic and authoritarian.
He'd had a complete theological
personality transplant
in those two years.
[Terry] So, he was known
as "The Bishop of the Barrios."
He preferred to go
to the poor neighborhoods
and preach there.
[Pope Francis, in Spanish]
[Terry, in English]
He lived simply,
cooked his own food.
He wanted to live
like the people.
[Mark] He's sending a message
that he's not rich and powerful.
That's not what
the Catholic Church is about.
[Terry] He'd come to realize
the job wasn't being powerful
and influential.
The job was being useful
and true
to the poor and the people
who need you most.
And when he eventually
went to Rome
and was elected pope,
one of the women
in the slum that I visited said,
"He's gone to Rome,
but he's taken the mud
of the slums on his shoes."
-[crowd cheering]
-[dramatic music playing]
[Jeannine] I questioned whether
we would've had
a Francis pontificate
if Benedict hadn't resigned.
[reporter] Glorious day
here in Rome
where history is being made.
We are seeing the final hours
of a living pope.
[Terry] You could feel
the Church
shake a little
on its foundations.
[music concludes]
-[crowd cheering, applauding]
-[suspenseful music playing]
[reporter] They came today
by the thousands to say goodbye.
Pope Benedict, the first pope
since the Middle Ages
to step down, smiling today.
"Wait, he's resigning?"
It was a shock.
Nobody thought popes
could do that.
No pope had resigned
for over 600 years.
It was the most radical step
that Benedict could have taken.
He didn't feel well enough
to do the job.
-[dramatic music playing]
-[reporter 1] A glorious day
here in Rome,
where history is being made.
We are seeing the final hours
of a living pope.
[Terry] You could feel
the Church
shake a little
on its foundations.
[reporter 2] Vatican cameras
will follow Benedict's departure
minute by minute.
[Terry] They didn't have
any tradition around,
"What do you do
when a pope leaves office?"
[reporter 3]
And we see the helicopter
over our shoulders right now,
as the pope is taking off.
[reporter 4] At the hour
of eight o'clock, local time,
he will officially cease
being the pontiff.
[Paul] Of course, this created
a particular situation
-for Pope Francis.
-[dramatic music continues]
[Paul]
There were two popes alive,
the radical pope
and the conservative pope.
And the potential for division
in the Church was there.
And Francis knew about that.
[Gibson] Pope Benedict
was really
an old-fashioned
German Catholic.
[reporter] Benedict was known
as John Paul II's enforcer
of religious doctrine.
[Gibson] He saw the Church
as a bulwark
against the modern world.
It was a fortress.
[dramatic music builds]
[Gibson] Francis has
a completely different view.
"No, we must
break down the walls."
"We must let people in."
[Terry] The Two Popes,
that movie
is not historically accurate,
but there's something
emotionally true about it.
You talk about walls
as if they're bad things.
A house is built of walls.
Strong walls.
Did Jesus build walls?
His face is a face of mercy.
The bigger the sinner,
the warmer the welcome.
It sums up in a metaphor,
the divide in the Church.
[joyful music playing]
[Terry] Pope Francis
represented the next step,
the step outward into the world,
-because he was an outsider.
-[crowd cheering]
[Terry] He didn't come
from the Vatican itself.
He came from Argentina,
where people were in despair.
He felt that the Church
had to change to connect
with a changing world.
[Wilton] He never lost
the common touch
and made himself available
to people.
[Nicole] Francis would invite
the kids onto the Popemobile
to do the rounds
around the square.
That informality,
the breaking with the protocol,
made him popular.
This letter was so welcome.
Oh, my goodness.
Pope Francis
would just write to you
like you're writing to a friend.
He says,
"Thank you, Sister Jeannine,
for your closeness,
your compassion,
and your tenderness."
-[in Spanish]
-[crowd laughing]
[in English] He had a great
sense of humor. He was funny.
[in Spanish]
[crowd laughing, applauding]
[music concludes]
[pensive music playing]
[in English] He brought to Rome
that sense that the place
of the powerful is with
the least powerful and the poor.
And he tried to live that out.
For example,
Francis went to prisons.
He goes to the peripheries.
He washes the feet of inmates
to show that the way
to be a pope
is not to be on high,
it's to be down low.
But it's really gestures
that showed us who this pope was
and showed us what this pope
wanted us to learn.
-[crowd cheering]
-[indistinct chatter]
[Gibson] I remember,
Francis had just become pope,
and he was reading
these horrible headlines
of these migrant boats
from North Africa
capsizing in the Mediterranean.
He's just horrified by it.
He wants to do something.
He says, "I wanna go down
to Lampedusa,"
this island
off the coast of Sicily.
[Thomas] He went there
to remind Europe
and the whole world
that these people
are our brothers and sisters.
[Pope Francis, in Italian]
[Thomas, in English] And that
we cannot allow them
just to drown.
-[crowd cheering]
-[cheerful music playing]
[Terry] Everybody outside
the Church
thought he was
the greatest thing.
He was cool in a way
that no pope was.
Pope Francis
was kind of a rock star.
He was on the cover
of Vanity Fair,
Rolling Stone, everywhere.
You even had Rihanna,
who dressed as the pope.
It was a kind of tribute
to Pope Francis.
[Elise] He liked to push
the line on some things.
Not every Catholic
was comfortable with it.
[in Spanish]
-[group member] S. [laughs]
-[group laughing]
[Terry, in English]
Young people around the world
challenged him
on controversial issues.
-[somber music playing]
-[in Spanish]
[Pope Francis]
[in English] Things like that,
conservative Catholics
weren't comfortable with.
They didn't know
where he was gonna stop.
[Gibson] They thought
he was losing
the traditional doctrines
and teachings of the Church.
[reporter]
In a controversial move,
he allowed transgender people
to be baptized,
serve as godparents,
and be witnesses
at church weddings.
The opposition within the Church
to Francis was fierce.
And when the Argentines
would hand him up a cup of mat
and he would sip from it,
it drove the Vatican
security guards crazy.
The pope turned to them,
he said, "Don't worry."
"They're Argentines. They're not
my fellow cardinals." [chuckles]
[crowd cheering]
[Terry] He governed this church
of a billion and more people.
But his real job was one person
at a time.
And that's one of the reasons
he was "The Cold-Call Pope."
[mellow music playing]
[Terry] Andrea Rubera
is a gay man in Italy.
He and his partner
had three beautiful kids.
And he wrote a letter
to Pope Francis saying,
"I don't know if I'll be able
to send these children
to Catholic school.
We want to raise them Catholic."
[Andrea]
I was really in anguish.
I don't know if my parish
could be welcoming kids
from a rainbow family.
But I was also scared
that they could feel
some sense of exclusion.
[church bells ringing]
[Terry] And a couple of days
after he sent it,
the phone rang.
[Andrea] I took the call,
and then I heard a voice,
"Mr. Rubera, is it you?
This is Pope Francis."
He told me, "Please, you have to
bring your kids to the parish."
"It will be
a welcoming house for them."
So, I went to the parish,
and I told them about
the phone call with the pope.
And the priest told me,
"I can assure you
that the kids will be protected,
will be welcomed,
they will be loved."
From that moment on,
we felt that we could live
as a family
among other families.
[crowd cheering]
[Sen] Pope Francis understood
the mercy that says,
"I see you, I understand you,
I accept you,
and I love you for who you are,
what you are, where you are."
[Thomas] He recognized
that people live in the gray.
None of us are perfect.
This was a priority for him
to present the Church
as a field hospital
for the injured.
[uplifting music playing]
[Terry] He said,
"Go to where people need us."
[Thomas]
"We don't turn people away."
He turned the pontificate
into a universal parish.
-[crowd cheering]
-[camera shutters clicking]
-[hopeful music playing]
-[crowd cheering, applauding]
[in Italian]
[laughs]
[crowd laughing, applauding]
[Gibson, in English] When he
told those schoolchildren,
"Look, I didn't want
to become pope,"
that was the truth.
He never planned on that,
and it's not something
he wanted.
But he also said there was
a great sense
-of spiritual liberation.
-[crowd cheering]
He turned the pontificate
into a universal parish,
and he was the pastor
of the whole parish.
-[instrumental music playing]
-[crowd cheering]
[Terry] He said,
"Go to where people need us."
"Go be in the world."
"We are a field hospital
on the battlefield."
"There are wounded people
everywhere."
"They need us."
-[crowd applauding]
-[indistinct chatter]
[Terry] "Get up, go out, help."
[crowd cheering]
[Paul] He looked for places
where he felt
he was particularly needed.
And in part, that was places
where popes had not been before.
-[gunshots echoing]
-[indistinct chatter]
[pensive music playing]
He was the first pope
to go to an active war zone
in the Central African Republic.
They said, "Holy Father,
you can't land the plane here."
He said, "We're gonna land here.
Otherwise,
I'm gonna grab a parachute
and I'm gonna jump out."
[indistinct chatter, singing]
[Thomas]
He is an international leader.
If he doesn't do it, who will?
[choir singing indistinctly]
[Nicole] In Congo,
the meeting with the women
holding up their arms
that had been hacked off
by a machete,
it was really powerful.
[crowd cheering]
[Thomas] Who can bring
the reporters to a country
like that and wake up people
who just don't care
about what's happening
outside their own neighborhood?
[Sen] Popes like symbols.
The Catholic Church
likes symbols.
Pope Francis understood
the power of symbols.
[soft instrumental music
playing]
[Gibson] And he embraces
the father
of that poor Syrian boy
who was washed up on the shore.
And it's the most graphic,
awful image.
And Francis makes sure
to not just greet him.
It's not just a photo op.
He spends more
than an hour with this man,
talking to him, listening.
[Terry] The governments
weren't doing enough.
That was a scandal.
And he wanted to be there
and push them.
When the pope went to Lesbos,
this is a place where...
-[cries]
-...scores of Syrians
have died
trying to get into Europe.
[cries, speaks indistinctly]
[in Italian]
[Thomas, in English] And so
while he was there, he decided,
"Well,
I'm telling everybody in Europe
to welcome these people.
Well, maybe I should, too."
And so he brought refugees
on the plane with him
back to Rome.
One of those families
was Nour Essa's.
[Nour]
He passed crossing our section.
Pope Francis has offered us
an opportunity
-to begin a new life.
-[indistinct chatter]
Thank you. We appreciate
all the things that you did.
-He said that we are humans.
-[indistinct chatter]
And he saved us
because we are humans.
[Oliver] When I lived in Libya,
it was quite impossible to think
that I would go in a country
that would accept me,
that would make me feel safe.
Pope Francis expressed
his closeness
towards the refugees.
He told us
that we had a new chance
of living a life
and we should make
the best of it.
[Paul] For Francis,
it was really important
to try to embody
the message in himself
and showing in his own person
what needed to be done.
[intriguing music playing]
[Terry] He wasn't an actor,
but he had a sense of presence,
of what you could do
to change people's minds
and hearts.
[indistinct chatter]
[Terry] He went
to the Israel-Palestine border.
I was with him in Israel,
where he walked up
to the wall
that the Israelis had built
to keep the Palestinians
on one side
and them on the other side.
[Thomas] He didn't say a word.
He did not say a word.
He just stood there and prayed.
At the Western Wall,
he didn't pray on his own,
but he prayed
with his Jewish friend
and his Muslim friend
and that they embraced.
[Abraham] We form
a very iconic image
that is capable to give
an important message
in the building
of a better world.
[hopeful music playing]
[Paul] The three faiths united
at a place where faiths
are normally divided.
[hopeful upbeat music playing]
[Terry] On the eve of his trip
to the United States,
ABC News got
this incredible opportunity.
What we were about
to do was make history.
[Terry] A town hall meeting
with Pope Francis.
[music concludes]
[soft instrumental music
playing]
[Terry] On the eve of his trip
to the United States,
ABC News got
this incredible opportunity.
A town hall meeting
with Pope Francis.
It was an extraordinary journey
to the Vatican
and something
that we never thought
would even be possible.
What we were about to do
was make history.
[Terry] There's groups
of people in communities
around the United States
interacting directly
with Pope Francis.
[attendee] Good morning, Father.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
It's been my childhood dream
to meet you one day.
At the age of 16,
I had to become
the breadwinner of the family.
Having to...
support a family of six
really made it hard on me.
One of the reasons
I think the pope agreed
to do this town hall
is because he knew
that there would be stories
across America that would not
only move the pope,
but that would move the country.
When I started going to school,
I was picked on.
I was bullied... [sobs]
...because of how I looked like.
[somber music playing]
Music has always been something
I was able to use to escape
all the bullying and everything.
[Muir] And as she was explaining
to the pope that
that this was what
it took for her
to overcome the bullying,
the pope then asks her,
"Can you sing for me?"
May I ask of you
to sing a song for me?
[chuckles]
-Be courageous.
-[crowd applauding]
[singing in Spanish]
[Muir]
That moment in and of itself
summed up the kind of connection
this pope had almost immediately
-when he became pope.
-[crowd cheering, applauding]
[hopeful music playing]
[narrator] The pope's first trip
to America,
people were excited to see him.
[crowd member]
We love you, Pope Francis!
[crowd cheering]
I'll never forget the crowds
that had gathered
all throughout Washington, D.C.
[crowd cheering]
It's a big deal when the vicar
of Christ comes
to your country.
[Muir] Everything
about that visit reminded us
of the humility, the modesty,
the accessibility
of this man named Pope Francis.
There was a little girl
who ran out into the street.
And you could see
the officers stop her
and begin to take her back
over to the side.
[pensive music playing]
And you saw the pope signal,
"No, no, no, let her come over."
So they brought Sofa Cruz
over to the pope.
And you see that she's carrying
with her a poster.
And she brought that poster
to say, "My heart is sad
because of discrimination
in this country."
It was a plea for help
from the pope.
How do we bring people together?
[indistinct chatter, cheering]
[Gibson] He was coming
to a country
that was on the verge
of electing Donald Trump,
that was on the verge
of a division
that we could only imagine
at the time.
And he saw it coming.
Mr. Speaker!
The Pope of the Holy See.
[Gibson]
And he was the first pope
to address a joint session
of Congress.
That tableau was so striking
when you saw Pope Francis
with two Catholic
former altar boys behind him,
then Vice President Joe Biden,
and then Speaker
of the House John Boehner.
One of the things about Francis
was that he didn't shy away
from saying what he thought
ought to be said.
[crowd applauding]
[Gibson] It was so powerful.
And the words he spoke to them
were to be good politicians,
to bring people together,
to work for the common good.
[Elise] He always says unity
and diversity,
like we can be different
and we can still be unified.
-[somber music playing]
-[Gibson] His most famous line
when he was asked
about gay priests.
"As long as they have
a good heart
and are searching for God,
who am I to judge?"
And it wasn't
a special dispensation
he was giving
to gays and lesbians.
-It was for anybody.
-That's revolutionary.
Because in the past,
I think the attitude was...
"I am here to judge."
He changed the approach.
He changed the tone.
-He changed the conversation.
-Pope Francis didn't turn
these people away.
He counseled them.
He listened to them.
It was one
of the most important parts
of his papacy.
[soft music playing]
[Yayo] One day, my phone rang,
and I didn't recognize
the number.
He said, you know,
"I do want to give you a hug
when I'm in Washington."
-[indistinct chatter]
-[Terry] While he was in
the United States,
the pope met with Yayo Grassi.
And this was significant.
He is an old friend of the pope.
In fact, he was his student
in Buenos Aires
many decades ago.
And he's a gay man.
And he brought his partner
with him.
[indistinct chatter]
[Terry] And the pope
greeted them both
and spent time with them.
[Yayo] He came to meet me,
and I said to him,
"You're crazy.
You haven't had time to rest."
And he says, "That is okay.
It's nice to see you."
This was at a time
when the Supreme Court
had just approved gay marriage.
So kind of the culture wars
were alive and well
at the time of this visit.
So it was his way of saying,
"This is the encounter
that mattered."
[indistinct chatter]
[Mark] His only
one-on-one meeting in America
is with his former student,
who's gay, and his partner.
He's sending a message.
He's not judging.
He's welcoming all,
and he's looking
for God in all people.
-Gracias.
-[crowd] Gracias.
[crowd member]
Muchas felicidades.
[narrator] Pope Francis
would go on to permit priests
to bless same-sex couples
in a new papal rule,
a seismic change
in Vatican policy.
The most impressive
and lasting images
were from the prison
and he loves going to prison.
These are the real outcasts
of society.
[in Spanish]
[uplifting music playing]
[Terry, in English] He says,
"I want you to know,
I'm a sinner too.
That's who I am, I know that."
"And I'm here
because of the grace of God,
and it's there for you too."
[Gibson] He's holding the hands
of these tattooed prisoners
who are in there
for all kinds of violent crimes.
And he says, "You are not lost.
The pope is with you."
[Muir] I think Pope Francis knew
of his power to connect.
And I think that that
perhaps was the most powerful
thing he had in his papacy,
where he would reach out
and often with few words,
able to signal to someone
that he understood their pain,
that they were not
walking alone.
[music concludes]
[soft music playing]
People love Pope Francis,
but they didn't love
what they were hearing
in many of their parishes.
[reporter] The sex abuse scandal
in the Roman Catholic Church
is widening.
[music concludes]
-[gentle music playing]
-[birds chirping]
[church bells ringing]
[Terry] Pope Francis seemed
to be changing the Church,
bringing it into
the modern world
in a way
that no pope had before.
[Gibson] Divorced
and remarried Catholics
never could take
communion before.
He made the death penalty
totally verboten.
He did increase the number
of women and laymen
in positions of authority
in the Vatican.
[wind whooshes]
[Thomas] Pope Francis
was the first pope in history
to have a scientific training
before he entered
the seminary.
And he listened
to what scientists said
about global warming,
and it terrified him.
It's not that you just recycle
because it's the green thing
to do.
It's because it's the way
we protect our common home.
Those who are gonna
be hurt most
by climate change
are the poorest.
That's what he sees
is really at risk here.
[Anne] Pope Francis said
beautiful and powerful things
about climate change,
about immigration,
about income inequality.
But the problem
is he had limited
to no power to correct
those injustices.
Where he had supreme power
was in the Catholic Church.
[pensive music playing]
[Gibson] It still took Francis
a while
to learn how bad
the sex abuse scandal was,
how pervasive it was,
and how global it was.
And he made mistakes.
He admitted he made mistakes.
[music concludes]
[Juan] I keep this picture
to remind me of this kid,
so innocent and so fun,
and then so many, many years
of darkness.
[intriguing music playing]
[Juan] I was 14, 15 years old.
My dad died,
and I was extremely sad.
So someone said,
"Hey, why don't you go to see
Father Fernando Karadima?"
I went with, you know,
my little uniform from school,
you know, and the first thing
he said to me is,
"Juan Carlos, I will be
your spiritual director,
but you owe me obedience."
[Gibson] It was a horrific case
of abuse
by this almost cult-like figure
of Father Karadima.
[narrator] Father Karadima
had been sanctioned
for the abuse by Pope Benedict,
but controversy
about the longstanding
cover-up continued
when Pope Francis appointed
one of Karadima's
alleged protectors,
Juan Barros, to bishop.
[Terry] In 2018,
Pope Francis went to Chile
and this visit became
a real inflection point
-in his papacy.
-[camera shutters clicking]
[somber music playing]
[Nicole] We came in
from the airport
in the motorcade
and there were no crowds
and if there were crowds,
they were holding up
protest banners.
[Anne] He is asked by a reporter
about the allegations
against Bishop Barros,
and he snaps.
[in Spanish]
-[camera shutter clicking]
-[indistinct chatter]
[Thomas, in English]
Pope Francis
couldn't get it through his mind
that bishops
might be lying to him.
"Bishops, they don't lie
to the pope."
[Elise] He sent
his investigators
to check out the situation
and to do this huge
in-depth investigation.
And then he did
a very dramatic about-face.
-[pensive music playing]
-[birds chirping]
[church bells ringing]
[Anne] He invited Juan Carlos
and the others
to Rome to apologize
to them in person.
[Juan] To be respected
and to be acknowledged
that way when nobody
had done that for me
or for any survivor,
it just meant the world.
[Anne] Pope Francis summoned
the Chilean bishops to Rome.
He forced them all
to resign en masse.
In the end,
he accepted only nine,
but it was quite impressive.
[in Spanish]
[in English]
I think the pope realized
that he had made
a terrible mistake
and went on to develop
a lovely relationship
with Juan Carlos.
[narrator] He also appointed
Juan Carlos
to the Vatican's
Advisory Commission
on Clergy Sexual Abuse.
I've always said, "I want to try
and help from within."
[intriguing music playing]
[Anne] The sexual abuse
and the cover-up
have damaged the Church
more than anything else
in centuries.
It has caused
countless numbers of Catholics
to leave the Church.
There's the old adage
that the Vatican thinks
in terms of centuries.
Change is not
in the Vatican's DNA.
But that was the position
that he was placed in.
He did his best
on the issue of sex abuse.
He held this historic summit.
He issued new Vatican laws
for mandatory reporting
for targeting bishops
who cover up.
[Sen] But whatever he did
was never enough,
partly because the issues
that he had to deal with
were just so enormous,
no one person
could deal with them
in any one papacy.
[uplifting music playing]
So who is next?
I think the next conclave's
gonna be unlike anything
that we have ever seen,
because it
will be truly international.
And that is
an unpredictable process.
[music concludes]
[soft uplifting music playing]
Pope Francis is going to be
remembered as a pastor,
as a warm-hearted
parish priest
-who happened to be pope.
-[crowd cheering]
[Elise] He shaped
the Church's own vision.
He made it more global,
he made it more international.
[Terry] Pope Francis made it
a mission of his
to appoint cardinals
from the periphery,
from places which
had never had cardinals,
from all over the world,
especially Asia.
That'll change the dynamics.
Whatever happens next,
whether the next pope
is a Francis pope
or the pendulum swings
back to
a more conservative pope,
Francis' way of being pope
will stand there.
And people will always
be able to say, "Yes,
but Francis said this."
[crowd cheering]
[Terry] He opened the Church
to the way people live today
in their economic life,
in their moral life,
in their romantic life.
I felt heard
in the presence of Pope Francis
because being a refugee,
what you just want
is people to understand
that you too are suffering.
I was able
to, like, touch his hand
and I felt peace internally,
honestly.
[crowd cheering]
[Jeannine] I don't have
the adequate words
to express how
he has impacted my ministry.
Pope Francis took me out
from under the cloud
and put me
in the bright sunshine again.
[crowd cheering]
I feel that he changed
my life forever
and that he's always going
to be by my side.
The papacy of Pope Francis
in one word,
and that word is "mercy."
I think all of us long for,
yearn,
to be seen,
to be accepted,
to be understood.
And that's the kind of mercy
-that Pope Francis promoted.
-[crowd cheering]
It gave me hope again.
[children clamoring]
[Thomas] That things
can get better.
The world can get better,
the Church can get better.
[music concludes]
-[pensive music playing]
-[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Easter Sunday,
Pope Francis at the Vatican...
Buona Pasqua.
...after months of illness,
those final images
of the People's Pope
-in his final hours.
-[crowd cheering, clamoring]
[narrator] Tonight,
a world in mourning...
-[bells tolling]
-...but also in memory...
[crowd member shouting]
[crowd cheering]
...of the legacy he left behind.
[Terry] Pope Francis seemed
to be changing the Church,
bringing it
into the modern world
in a way
that no pope had before.
This is a pope who wanted
to build bridges,
not to build walls.
He not only preached in word,
he preached in deed.
[Mark] He's doing
what Jesus asked him to do.
He's feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked,
sheltering the homeless.
The humility, the modesty,
the accessibility
of this man named Pope Francis.
Muchas gracias, Santo Padre.
[narrator] And reaching out...
I was bullied... [sobs]
...because of how I looked like.
...one by one.
And then I heard a voice,
"This is Pope Francis."
[Elise] He liked to push
the line on some things,
and not every Catholic
was comfortable with that.
His most famous line
when he was asked
about gay priests,
"As long as they have
a good heart
and are searching for God,
who am I to judge?"
The papacy of Pope Francis
in one word,
and that word is "mercy."
Mercy, mercy, mercy.
[narrator]
Francis: The People's Pope.
[music concludes]
[Terry] The story
of Pope Francis
is the story of a man
who heard the call
of service to God.
[pensive music playing]
[Terry] He is the pontiff,
the bridge
between God and humanity
in the belief of Catholics.
There is no other office
in the world
like the papacy.
[reporter 1] You can feel now
a palpable tension here
as they realize any vote now
could bring a pope.
[crowd cheering, applauding]
Breaking news, we are looking
at the smoke billowing
out of the cast iron chimney
above the Sistine Chapel.
[bells ringing]
[reporter 2] And there
are the bells that confirm.
[reporter 3] There is a pope,
a new pope.
-[crowd cheering]
-[intriguing music playing]
[Terry] It's a sacred moment
in the history of the Church
for a billion Catholics
around the world
-and for the world at large.
-[crowd cheering, applauding]
[in Latin]
[crowd cheering]
[in English] They introduce
in Latin
the name of the pope.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
[crowd cheering]
[Terry] It was a total surprise
when they said Bergoglio,
and I remember every... "Who?"
[reporter 3]
From Argentina, Bergoglio.
[reporter 4]
The first Jesuit pope.
[reporter 5] First pope
from Latin America.
[reporter 6] This is something
I'm not sure any of us expected.
I was screaming at the TV set.
I said, "It's Mario!
It's Jorge! He's my teacher!"
I mean,
I was just jumping with joy.
It was exhilarating.
It was amazing.
[crowd cheering, applauding]
-[camera shutters clicking]
-[pensive music playing]
[Sen] You knew
in the first 30 seconds
that the pontificate
would be different
from the moment he walked out
onto that balcony.
[Thomas] He was not wrapped
in furs.
He did not have red velvet on.
He did not have red shoes on.
And he steps to the microphone,
and he finally said,
[in Italian]
-[crowd cheering]
-[Gibson] "Buona sera."
-[in English] Good evening.
-It was like he met somebody
on the streets in Rome,
an old friend. "Buona sera."
The people in
St. Peter's Square went crazy.
He's the first pope
who didn't come from Europe
in a thousand years.
He's the first pope
from the Western Hemisphere.
[in Italian]
[Sen, in English] And then,
of course, that massive thing
of turning the tables
and inviting the people
to bless him.
[in Italian]
[gentle music playing]
[Thomas, in English] The people
prayed over their pope.
-This was unheard of.
-[crowd cheering]
[reporter 3] Archbishop Gregory,
as we watch this scene,
I hope it's all right
to tell everyone at home
of the tears standing
in your eyes.
[chuckles] It is.
What touched me
was his humility,
the humble request for prayers.
I thought,
"He gets it." [chuckles]
[pensive music playing]
I knew immediately
what kind of pope he would be.
He chose the name of Francis,
one of the greatest
of the saints
of the Catholic Church, right?
Saint Francis of Assisi.
[Paul] Francis was the saint
of the poor, and this was, uh,
like flinging down a gauntlet.
[in Italian]
-[crowd cheering]
-[joyful music playing]
[Thomas, in English] What became
obvious immediately
after Pope Francis was elected
was that he was gonna change
the style of being pope.
[Paul] Instead of going
in the papal limousine,
he got back on the bus
with all the other cardinals.
[Thomas] And then the next day,
he goes to the place
where he was staying
and pays his bill.
[pensive music playing]
[Sen] In the early days,
one of the most shocking things
was his decision
not to live in the papal palace.
[Terry] He decided to live
in the Casa Santa Marta,
in the Vatican guesthouse,
that kind of Motel 6
on the Vatican grounds,
rather than
in the Apostolic Palace.
There were people
who criticized that.
They saw that
as demeaning of the papacy.
"What, you're gonna live
in a guesthouse?"
"What are
we communicating here?"
[Mark] I'd kind of gone,
you know, struggled a little
with my Catholicism.
So, I was more excited
as each day passed by
to learn more about his life
and about what
he had gone through.
-[car horns blaring]
-[upbeat guitar music playing]
[Mark] When I went
to Buenos Aires,
I took these pictures.
So, this picture
is his childhood home.
It's pretty nondescript.
Pope Francis grew up
in Buenos Aires.
His grandparents
were immigrants from Italy.
[Paul] Francis would go
to his grandma every day.
She taught him to pray.
She taught him the rosary.
And his faith
is very much rooted
in that kind
of peasant folk religion
that Grandma Rosa
brought with her.
[Terry] As a young man,
he danced the tango, he dated,
he loved the life
of a normal kid in Argentina.
[Paul] He got a job
in a chemistry laboratory.
And he was on his way
to see his girlfriend,
and he went to church
just to say confession.
[Paul] The conversation
in the confessional
made something chime
in his head.
-He felt seen, touched by grace.
-[gentle music playing]
And that changed his life.
He knew from that moment
that he would give his life
to God.
[Mark] God works
in mysterious ways,
including
in a little confessional
in the middle of Buenos Aires.
It's beautiful.
When he first became a priest,
Pope Francis was a teacher.
-He taught high school.
-He was an amazing teacher.
What immediately
attracted me to him
was that simplicity,
that making fun of himself.
We used to call him "carucha."
Carucha means "funny face,"
because he had
this funny face. [chuckles]
[Terry] He was promoted
very quickly
up through the ranks,
and he became the leader
of the Jesuits
in all of Argentina
at a very young age.
He wasn't experienced.
He hadn't matured.
And so he approached
the job
with a very
authoritarian perspective
-and attitude.
-[gunshot echoing]
[Terry] And that was the time
when Argentina was in crisis.
[somber music playing]
[Paul] There was
a military coup,
and they set about
dealing with anybody
who disagreed with them.
[Yayo] Some of my teachers
did disappear.
Some of my friends,
lots of them disappeared.
[pensive music playing]
It was felt by some members
of the Jesuit order
that he had not protected
two Jesuits sufficiently,
who were picked up
by the military and tortured.
What he always said was,
"I did everything I could
to orchestrate their release."
[Gibson] While he was the head
of the Jesuit order
in Argentina,
and for years afterward,
he was viewed
by some people there
as authoritarian, even divisive.
He became a target of anger
and resentment
by leaders
in his own Society of Jesus,
in the Jesuits,
and his own church.
[Mark] He essentially gets
banished to Crdoba,
and he hears confessions there
for a couple years.
He doesn't really have a job.
That exile became
a kind of metamorphosis,
a time for him
to go inside himself
and rethink everything
and find a certain humility.
This is his bedroom in Crdoba
where he was exiled.
There was a place to kneel
and a bureau
and a picture of his mom
in the room.
[Paul] Those two years
in Crdoba
changed him completely.
The archbishop in...
Buenos Aires had heard
that he was...
he was not in circulation
and thought,
"This is a waste. He'd make
a great junior bishop for me."
[pensive guitar music playing]
[Paul] When he arrived
in Buenos Aires,
he listened,
he consulted people,
he'd stopped being severe
and dogmatic and authoritarian.
He'd had a complete theological
personality transplant
in those two years.
[Terry] So, he was known
as "The Bishop of the Barrios."
He preferred to go
to the poor neighborhoods
and preach there.
[Pope Francis, in Spanish]
[Terry, in English]
He lived simply,
cooked his own food.
He wanted to live
like the people.
[Mark] He's sending a message
that he's not rich and powerful.
That's not what
the Catholic Church is about.
[Terry] He'd come to realize
the job wasn't being powerful
and influential.
The job was being useful
and true
to the poor and the people
who need you most.
And when he eventually
went to Rome
and was elected pope,
one of the women
in the slum that I visited said,
"He's gone to Rome,
but he's taken the mud
of the slums on his shoes."
-[crowd cheering]
-[dramatic music playing]
[Jeannine] I questioned whether
we would've had
a Francis pontificate
if Benedict hadn't resigned.
[reporter] Glorious day
here in Rome
where history is being made.
We are seeing the final hours
of a living pope.
[Terry] You could feel
the Church
shake a little
on its foundations.
[music concludes]
-[crowd cheering, applauding]
-[suspenseful music playing]
[reporter] They came today
by the thousands to say goodbye.
Pope Benedict, the first pope
since the Middle Ages
to step down, smiling today.
"Wait, he's resigning?"
It was a shock.
Nobody thought popes
could do that.
No pope had resigned
for over 600 years.
It was the most radical step
that Benedict could have taken.
He didn't feel well enough
to do the job.
-[dramatic music playing]
-[reporter 1] A glorious day
here in Rome,
where history is being made.
We are seeing the final hours
of a living pope.
[Terry] You could feel
the Church
shake a little
on its foundations.
[reporter 2] Vatican cameras
will follow Benedict's departure
minute by minute.
[Terry] They didn't have
any tradition around,
"What do you do
when a pope leaves office?"
[reporter 3]
And we see the helicopter
over our shoulders right now,
as the pope is taking off.
[reporter 4] At the hour
of eight o'clock, local time,
he will officially cease
being the pontiff.
[Paul] Of course, this created
a particular situation
-for Pope Francis.
-[dramatic music continues]
[Paul]
There were two popes alive,
the radical pope
and the conservative pope.
And the potential for division
in the Church was there.
And Francis knew about that.
[Gibson] Pope Benedict
was really
an old-fashioned
German Catholic.
[reporter] Benedict was known
as John Paul II's enforcer
of religious doctrine.
[Gibson] He saw the Church
as a bulwark
against the modern world.
It was a fortress.
[dramatic music builds]
[Gibson] Francis has
a completely different view.
"No, we must
break down the walls."
"We must let people in."
[Terry] The Two Popes,
that movie
is not historically accurate,
but there's something
emotionally true about it.
You talk about walls
as if they're bad things.
A house is built of walls.
Strong walls.
Did Jesus build walls?
His face is a face of mercy.
The bigger the sinner,
the warmer the welcome.
It sums up in a metaphor,
the divide in the Church.
[joyful music playing]
[Terry] Pope Francis
represented the next step,
the step outward into the world,
-because he was an outsider.
-[crowd cheering]
[Terry] He didn't come
from the Vatican itself.
He came from Argentina,
where people were in despair.
He felt that the Church
had to change to connect
with a changing world.
[Wilton] He never lost
the common touch
and made himself available
to people.
[Nicole] Francis would invite
the kids onto the Popemobile
to do the rounds
around the square.
That informality,
the breaking with the protocol,
made him popular.
This letter was so welcome.
Oh, my goodness.
Pope Francis
would just write to you
like you're writing to a friend.
He says,
"Thank you, Sister Jeannine,
for your closeness,
your compassion,
and your tenderness."
-[in Spanish]
-[crowd laughing]
[in English] He had a great
sense of humor. He was funny.
[in Spanish]
[crowd laughing, applauding]
[music concludes]
[pensive music playing]
[in English] He brought to Rome
that sense that the place
of the powerful is with
the least powerful and the poor.
And he tried to live that out.
For example,
Francis went to prisons.
He goes to the peripheries.
He washes the feet of inmates
to show that the way
to be a pope
is not to be on high,
it's to be down low.
But it's really gestures
that showed us who this pope was
and showed us what this pope
wanted us to learn.
-[crowd cheering]
-[indistinct chatter]
[Gibson] I remember,
Francis had just become pope,
and he was reading
these horrible headlines
of these migrant boats
from North Africa
capsizing in the Mediterranean.
He's just horrified by it.
He wants to do something.
He says, "I wanna go down
to Lampedusa,"
this island
off the coast of Sicily.
[Thomas] He went there
to remind Europe
and the whole world
that these people
are our brothers and sisters.
[Pope Francis, in Italian]
[Thomas, in English] And that
we cannot allow them
just to drown.
-[crowd cheering]
-[cheerful music playing]
[Terry] Everybody outside
the Church
thought he was
the greatest thing.
He was cool in a way
that no pope was.
Pope Francis
was kind of a rock star.
He was on the cover
of Vanity Fair,
Rolling Stone, everywhere.
You even had Rihanna,
who dressed as the pope.
It was a kind of tribute
to Pope Francis.
[Elise] He liked to push
the line on some things.
Not every Catholic
was comfortable with it.
[in Spanish]
-[group member] S. [laughs]
-[group laughing]
[Terry, in English]
Young people around the world
challenged him
on controversial issues.
-[somber music playing]
-[in Spanish]
[Pope Francis]
[in English] Things like that,
conservative Catholics
weren't comfortable with.
They didn't know
where he was gonna stop.
[Gibson] They thought
he was losing
the traditional doctrines
and teachings of the Church.
[reporter]
In a controversial move,
he allowed transgender people
to be baptized,
serve as godparents,
and be witnesses
at church weddings.
The opposition within the Church
to Francis was fierce.
And when the Argentines
would hand him up a cup of mat
and he would sip from it,
it drove the Vatican
security guards crazy.
The pope turned to them,
he said, "Don't worry."
"They're Argentines. They're not
my fellow cardinals." [chuckles]
[crowd cheering]
[Terry] He governed this church
of a billion and more people.
But his real job was one person
at a time.
And that's one of the reasons
he was "The Cold-Call Pope."
[mellow music playing]
[Terry] Andrea Rubera
is a gay man in Italy.
He and his partner
had three beautiful kids.
And he wrote a letter
to Pope Francis saying,
"I don't know if I'll be able
to send these children
to Catholic school.
We want to raise them Catholic."
[Andrea]
I was really in anguish.
I don't know if my parish
could be welcoming kids
from a rainbow family.
But I was also scared
that they could feel
some sense of exclusion.
[church bells ringing]
[Terry] And a couple of days
after he sent it,
the phone rang.
[Andrea] I took the call,
and then I heard a voice,
"Mr. Rubera, is it you?
This is Pope Francis."
He told me, "Please, you have to
bring your kids to the parish."
"It will be
a welcoming house for them."
So, I went to the parish,
and I told them about
the phone call with the pope.
And the priest told me,
"I can assure you
that the kids will be protected,
will be welcomed,
they will be loved."
From that moment on,
we felt that we could live
as a family
among other families.
[crowd cheering]
[Sen] Pope Francis understood
the mercy that says,
"I see you, I understand you,
I accept you,
and I love you for who you are,
what you are, where you are."
[Thomas] He recognized
that people live in the gray.
None of us are perfect.
This was a priority for him
to present the Church
as a field hospital
for the injured.
[uplifting music playing]
[Terry] He said,
"Go to where people need us."
[Thomas]
"We don't turn people away."
He turned the pontificate
into a universal parish.
-[crowd cheering]
-[camera shutters clicking]
-[hopeful music playing]
-[crowd cheering, applauding]
[in Italian]
[laughs]
[crowd laughing, applauding]
[Gibson, in English] When he
told those schoolchildren,
"Look, I didn't want
to become pope,"
that was the truth.
He never planned on that,
and it's not something
he wanted.
But he also said there was
a great sense
-of spiritual liberation.
-[crowd cheering]
He turned the pontificate
into a universal parish,
and he was the pastor
of the whole parish.
-[instrumental music playing]
-[crowd cheering]
[Terry] He said,
"Go to where people need us."
"Go be in the world."
"We are a field hospital
on the battlefield."
"There are wounded people
everywhere."
"They need us."
-[crowd applauding]
-[indistinct chatter]
[Terry] "Get up, go out, help."
[crowd cheering]
[Paul] He looked for places
where he felt
he was particularly needed.
And in part, that was places
where popes had not been before.
-[gunshots echoing]
-[indistinct chatter]
[pensive music playing]
He was the first pope
to go to an active war zone
in the Central African Republic.
They said, "Holy Father,
you can't land the plane here."
He said, "We're gonna land here.
Otherwise,
I'm gonna grab a parachute
and I'm gonna jump out."
[indistinct chatter, singing]
[Thomas]
He is an international leader.
If he doesn't do it, who will?
[choir singing indistinctly]
[Nicole] In Congo,
the meeting with the women
holding up their arms
that had been hacked off
by a machete,
it was really powerful.
[crowd cheering]
[Thomas] Who can bring
the reporters to a country
like that and wake up people
who just don't care
about what's happening
outside their own neighborhood?
[Sen] Popes like symbols.
The Catholic Church
likes symbols.
Pope Francis understood
the power of symbols.
[soft instrumental music
playing]
[Gibson] And he embraces
the father
of that poor Syrian boy
who was washed up on the shore.
And it's the most graphic,
awful image.
And Francis makes sure
to not just greet him.
It's not just a photo op.
He spends more
than an hour with this man,
talking to him, listening.
[Terry] The governments
weren't doing enough.
That was a scandal.
And he wanted to be there
and push them.
When the pope went to Lesbos,
this is a place where...
-[cries]
-...scores of Syrians
have died
trying to get into Europe.
[cries, speaks indistinctly]
[in Italian]
[Thomas, in English] And so
while he was there, he decided,
"Well,
I'm telling everybody in Europe
to welcome these people.
Well, maybe I should, too."
And so he brought refugees
on the plane with him
back to Rome.
One of those families
was Nour Essa's.
[Nour]
He passed crossing our section.
Pope Francis has offered us
an opportunity
-to begin a new life.
-[indistinct chatter]
Thank you. We appreciate
all the things that you did.
-He said that we are humans.
-[indistinct chatter]
And he saved us
because we are humans.
[Oliver] When I lived in Libya,
it was quite impossible to think
that I would go in a country
that would accept me,
that would make me feel safe.
Pope Francis expressed
his closeness
towards the refugees.
He told us
that we had a new chance
of living a life
and we should make
the best of it.
[Paul] For Francis,
it was really important
to try to embody
the message in himself
and showing in his own person
what needed to be done.
[intriguing music playing]
[Terry] He wasn't an actor,
but he had a sense of presence,
of what you could do
to change people's minds
and hearts.
[indistinct chatter]
[Terry] He went
to the Israel-Palestine border.
I was with him in Israel,
where he walked up
to the wall
that the Israelis had built
to keep the Palestinians
on one side
and them on the other side.
[Thomas] He didn't say a word.
He did not say a word.
He just stood there and prayed.
At the Western Wall,
he didn't pray on his own,
but he prayed
with his Jewish friend
and his Muslim friend
and that they embraced.
[Abraham] We form
a very iconic image
that is capable to give
an important message
in the building
of a better world.
[hopeful music playing]
[Paul] The three faiths united
at a place where faiths
are normally divided.
[hopeful upbeat music playing]
[Terry] On the eve of his trip
to the United States,
ABC News got
this incredible opportunity.
What we were about
to do was make history.
[Terry] A town hall meeting
with Pope Francis.
[music concludes]
[soft instrumental music
playing]
[Terry] On the eve of his trip
to the United States,
ABC News got
this incredible opportunity.
A town hall meeting
with Pope Francis.
It was an extraordinary journey
to the Vatican
and something
that we never thought
would even be possible.
What we were about to do
was make history.
[Terry] There's groups
of people in communities
around the United States
interacting directly
with Pope Francis.
[attendee] Good morning, Father.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
It's been my childhood dream
to meet you one day.
At the age of 16,
I had to become
the breadwinner of the family.
Having to...
support a family of six
really made it hard on me.
One of the reasons
I think the pope agreed
to do this town hall
is because he knew
that there would be stories
across America that would not
only move the pope,
but that would move the country.
When I started going to school,
I was picked on.
I was bullied... [sobs]
...because of how I looked like.
[somber music playing]
Music has always been something
I was able to use to escape
all the bullying and everything.
[Muir] And as she was explaining
to the pope that
that this was what
it took for her
to overcome the bullying,
the pope then asks her,
"Can you sing for me?"
May I ask of you
to sing a song for me?
[chuckles]
-Be courageous.
-[crowd applauding]
[singing in Spanish]
[Muir]
That moment in and of itself
summed up the kind of connection
this pope had almost immediately
-when he became pope.
-[crowd cheering, applauding]
[hopeful music playing]
[narrator] The pope's first trip
to America,
people were excited to see him.
[crowd member]
We love you, Pope Francis!
[crowd cheering]
I'll never forget the crowds
that had gathered
all throughout Washington, D.C.
[crowd cheering]
It's a big deal when the vicar
of Christ comes
to your country.
[Muir] Everything
about that visit reminded us
of the humility, the modesty,
the accessibility
of this man named Pope Francis.
There was a little girl
who ran out into the street.
And you could see
the officers stop her
and begin to take her back
over to the side.
[pensive music playing]
And you saw the pope signal,
"No, no, no, let her come over."
So they brought Sofa Cruz
over to the pope.
And you see that she's carrying
with her a poster.
And she brought that poster
to say, "My heart is sad
because of discrimination
in this country."
It was a plea for help
from the pope.
How do we bring people together?
[indistinct chatter, cheering]
[Gibson] He was coming
to a country
that was on the verge
of electing Donald Trump,
that was on the verge
of a division
that we could only imagine
at the time.
And he saw it coming.
Mr. Speaker!
The Pope of the Holy See.
[Gibson]
And he was the first pope
to address a joint session
of Congress.
That tableau was so striking
when you saw Pope Francis
with two Catholic
former altar boys behind him,
then Vice President Joe Biden,
and then Speaker
of the House John Boehner.
One of the things about Francis
was that he didn't shy away
from saying what he thought
ought to be said.
[crowd applauding]
[Gibson] It was so powerful.
And the words he spoke to them
were to be good politicians,
to bring people together,
to work for the common good.
[Elise] He always says unity
and diversity,
like we can be different
and we can still be unified.
-[somber music playing]
-[Gibson] His most famous line
when he was asked
about gay priests.
"As long as they have
a good heart
and are searching for God,
who am I to judge?"
And it wasn't
a special dispensation
he was giving
to gays and lesbians.
-It was for anybody.
-That's revolutionary.
Because in the past,
I think the attitude was...
"I am here to judge."
He changed the approach.
He changed the tone.
-He changed the conversation.
-Pope Francis didn't turn
these people away.
He counseled them.
He listened to them.
It was one
of the most important parts
of his papacy.
[soft music playing]
[Yayo] One day, my phone rang,
and I didn't recognize
the number.
He said, you know,
"I do want to give you a hug
when I'm in Washington."
-[indistinct chatter]
-[Terry] While he was in
the United States,
the pope met with Yayo Grassi.
And this was significant.
He is an old friend of the pope.
In fact, he was his student
in Buenos Aires
many decades ago.
And he's a gay man.
And he brought his partner
with him.
[indistinct chatter]
[Terry] And the pope
greeted them both
and spent time with them.
[Yayo] He came to meet me,
and I said to him,
"You're crazy.
You haven't had time to rest."
And he says, "That is okay.
It's nice to see you."
This was at a time
when the Supreme Court
had just approved gay marriage.
So kind of the culture wars
were alive and well
at the time of this visit.
So it was his way of saying,
"This is the encounter
that mattered."
[indistinct chatter]
[Mark] His only
one-on-one meeting in America
is with his former student,
who's gay, and his partner.
He's sending a message.
He's not judging.
He's welcoming all,
and he's looking
for God in all people.
-Gracias.
-[crowd] Gracias.
[crowd member]
Muchas felicidades.
[narrator] Pope Francis
would go on to permit priests
to bless same-sex couples
in a new papal rule,
a seismic change
in Vatican policy.
The most impressive
and lasting images
were from the prison
and he loves going to prison.
These are the real outcasts
of society.
[in Spanish]
[uplifting music playing]
[Terry, in English] He says,
"I want you to know,
I'm a sinner too.
That's who I am, I know that."
"And I'm here
because of the grace of God,
and it's there for you too."
[Gibson] He's holding the hands
of these tattooed prisoners
who are in there
for all kinds of violent crimes.
And he says, "You are not lost.
The pope is with you."
[Muir] I think Pope Francis knew
of his power to connect.
And I think that that
perhaps was the most powerful
thing he had in his papacy,
where he would reach out
and often with few words,
able to signal to someone
that he understood their pain,
that they were not
walking alone.
[music concludes]
[soft music playing]
People love Pope Francis,
but they didn't love
what they were hearing
in many of their parishes.
[reporter] The sex abuse scandal
in the Roman Catholic Church
is widening.
[music concludes]
-[gentle music playing]
-[birds chirping]
[church bells ringing]
[Terry] Pope Francis seemed
to be changing the Church,
bringing it into
the modern world
in a way
that no pope had before.
[Gibson] Divorced
and remarried Catholics
never could take
communion before.
He made the death penalty
totally verboten.
He did increase the number
of women and laymen
in positions of authority
in the Vatican.
[wind whooshes]
[Thomas] Pope Francis
was the first pope in history
to have a scientific training
before he entered
the seminary.
And he listened
to what scientists said
about global warming,
and it terrified him.
It's not that you just recycle
because it's the green thing
to do.
It's because it's the way
we protect our common home.
Those who are gonna
be hurt most
by climate change
are the poorest.
That's what he sees
is really at risk here.
[Anne] Pope Francis said
beautiful and powerful things
about climate change,
about immigration,
about income inequality.
But the problem
is he had limited
to no power to correct
those injustices.
Where he had supreme power
was in the Catholic Church.
[pensive music playing]
[Gibson] It still took Francis
a while
to learn how bad
the sex abuse scandal was,
how pervasive it was,
and how global it was.
And he made mistakes.
He admitted he made mistakes.
[music concludes]
[Juan] I keep this picture
to remind me of this kid,
so innocent and so fun,
and then so many, many years
of darkness.
[intriguing music playing]
[Juan] I was 14, 15 years old.
My dad died,
and I was extremely sad.
So someone said,
"Hey, why don't you go to see
Father Fernando Karadima?"
I went with, you know,
my little uniform from school,
you know, and the first thing
he said to me is,
"Juan Carlos, I will be
your spiritual director,
but you owe me obedience."
[Gibson] It was a horrific case
of abuse
by this almost cult-like figure
of Father Karadima.
[narrator] Father Karadima
had been sanctioned
for the abuse by Pope Benedict,
but controversy
about the longstanding
cover-up continued
when Pope Francis appointed
one of Karadima's
alleged protectors,
Juan Barros, to bishop.
[Terry] In 2018,
Pope Francis went to Chile
and this visit became
a real inflection point
-in his papacy.
-[camera shutters clicking]
[somber music playing]
[Nicole] We came in
from the airport
in the motorcade
and there were no crowds
and if there were crowds,
they were holding up
protest banners.
[Anne] He is asked by a reporter
about the allegations
against Bishop Barros,
and he snaps.
[in Spanish]
-[camera shutter clicking]
-[indistinct chatter]
[Thomas, in English]
Pope Francis
couldn't get it through his mind
that bishops
might be lying to him.
"Bishops, they don't lie
to the pope."
[Elise] He sent
his investigators
to check out the situation
and to do this huge
in-depth investigation.
And then he did
a very dramatic about-face.
-[pensive music playing]
-[birds chirping]
[church bells ringing]
[Anne] He invited Juan Carlos
and the others
to Rome to apologize
to them in person.
[Juan] To be respected
and to be acknowledged
that way when nobody
had done that for me
or for any survivor,
it just meant the world.
[Anne] Pope Francis summoned
the Chilean bishops to Rome.
He forced them all
to resign en masse.
In the end,
he accepted only nine,
but it was quite impressive.
[in Spanish]
[in English]
I think the pope realized
that he had made
a terrible mistake
and went on to develop
a lovely relationship
with Juan Carlos.
[narrator] He also appointed
Juan Carlos
to the Vatican's
Advisory Commission
on Clergy Sexual Abuse.
I've always said, "I want to try
and help from within."
[intriguing music playing]
[Anne] The sexual abuse
and the cover-up
have damaged the Church
more than anything else
in centuries.
It has caused
countless numbers of Catholics
to leave the Church.
There's the old adage
that the Vatican thinks
in terms of centuries.
Change is not
in the Vatican's DNA.
But that was the position
that he was placed in.
He did his best
on the issue of sex abuse.
He held this historic summit.
He issued new Vatican laws
for mandatory reporting
for targeting bishops
who cover up.
[Sen] But whatever he did
was never enough,
partly because the issues
that he had to deal with
were just so enormous,
no one person
could deal with them
in any one papacy.
[uplifting music playing]
So who is next?
I think the next conclave's
gonna be unlike anything
that we have ever seen,
because it
will be truly international.
And that is
an unpredictable process.
[music concludes]
[soft uplifting music playing]
Pope Francis is going to be
remembered as a pastor,
as a warm-hearted
parish priest
-who happened to be pope.
-[crowd cheering]
[Elise] He shaped
the Church's own vision.
He made it more global,
he made it more international.
[Terry] Pope Francis made it
a mission of his
to appoint cardinals
from the periphery,
from places which
had never had cardinals,
from all over the world,
especially Asia.
That'll change the dynamics.
Whatever happens next,
whether the next pope
is a Francis pope
or the pendulum swings
back to
a more conservative pope,
Francis' way of being pope
will stand there.
And people will always
be able to say, "Yes,
but Francis said this."
[crowd cheering]
[Terry] He opened the Church
to the way people live today
in their economic life,
in their moral life,
in their romantic life.
I felt heard
in the presence of Pope Francis
because being a refugee,
what you just want
is people to understand
that you too are suffering.
I was able
to, like, touch his hand
and I felt peace internally,
honestly.
[crowd cheering]
[Jeannine] I don't have
the adequate words
to express how
he has impacted my ministry.
Pope Francis took me out
from under the cloud
and put me
in the bright sunshine again.
[crowd cheering]
I feel that he changed
my life forever
and that he's always going
to be by my side.
The papacy of Pope Francis
in one word,
and that word is "mercy."
I think all of us long for,
yearn,
to be seen,
to be accepted,
to be understood.
And that's the kind of mercy
-that Pope Francis promoted.
-[crowd cheering]
It gave me hope again.
[children clamoring]
[Thomas] That things
can get better.
The world can get better,
the Church can get better.
[music concludes]