By Shailendra Boora, SJ
The life and leadership of Pope Francis, the first Jesuit Pope, were shaped by Ignatian spirituality and steeped in the missionary ethos of the Society of Jesus. He did not merely bring a Jesuit résumé to the papacy – he brought a Jesuit soul.
His very name reflected that. In the conclave, when a fellow cardinal urged him to “remember the poor,” he responded with spiritual freedom – a hallmark of the Ignatian Exercises – and chose “Francis,” not as a departure from his Jesuit identity, but as its most radical expression. The values of St Francis of Assisi – poverty, humility, peace, and care for creation – echoed Ignatius’s call to indifference, mission to the margins, and finding God in all things.
Francis’s papacy bore all the hallmarks of his formation: discernment over certainty, mercy over judgment, humility over prestige. In an age of spectacle and cynicism, he bore witness to a leadership grounded not in controlling and issuing decrees – but in listening and dialoguing.
The Grace of Downward Mobility
From the moment he declined the golden mozzetta and stepped onto the balcony and bowed asking for prayers, it was clear that Pope Francis would exercise a different kind of authority. He chose to live at the Domus Sanctae Marthae rather than the Apostolic Palace, wore plain cassocks, travelled in a modest car, and eschewed papal pageantry. These were not mere gestures, but expressions of inward detachment that allows one to choose what better serves the mission.
His simplicity was the result of sticking to what really matters: availability to the Spirit, attentiveness to the poor, and integrity in public life. It shaped his approach to Vatican reform. He demanded transparency, accountability, and justice within the Church. In a world that equates power with pomp, Francis modelled a counter-witness: leadership rooted in presence, not prestige. His Jesuit formation gave him the grace of indifference – not apathy, but freedom from the illusions of status and success.
His simplicity was the result of sticking to what really matters: availability to the Spirit, attentiveness to the poor, and integrity in public life.
He did not just speak of humility – he chose it daily. And in doing so, he reminded the Church that spiritual authority does not originate in the position someone holds but his genuineness – not in palaces but in proximity to the margins. His life was the response to the question at the heart of Jesuit formation: what does it mean to lead from below, for the greater glory of God?
A Voice for Our Common Home
In 2015, Pope Francis released Laudato Si’, an encyclical that startled the world with its moral clarity. It was not simply a document on ecology, but the heartfelt cry of a prophet. With the voice of a pastor and the urgency of a discerner, Francis insisted that the environmental crisis had to do with how we understand ourselves, one another, and creation. “The cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor,” he wrote, are not two different crises, but one.
This vision echoes the heart of Ignatian spirituality – finding God in all things and responding adequately after discernment. Laudato Si’ revealed how ecological destruction is inseparable from economic injustice, spiritual fragmentation, and cultural arrogance. Francis called for ecological conversion – a turning toward integral ecology, where justice, sustainability, and contemplation are woven together.
His invitation to live more simply, to stand with the vulnerable, and to challenge systems that place profit above people was deeply Ignatian. For many, Catholics or not, the encyclical became a spiritual map – a guide for rethinking how we consume, relate, and believe. Through Laudato Si’, Pope Francis gave voice to a central question of the Spiritual Exercises: What more can we do – for God, his creation and his people?
Walking with the Excluded
Pope Francis warned consistently against the ‘globalization of indifference’ – a world numbed to the suffering of the marginalized. His stand was a conscious expression of the Jesuit mission: to go to the margins, accompany the wounded, and confront systems that discard human lives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies and even governments prioritised markets over people, Francis proposed a universal basic income.
The World Meeting of Popular Movements, launched in 2014, embodied this vision. “Land, Housing, Labour” became a spiritual rallying cry. Francis affirmed the dignity of casual workers, migrants, and farmers by demanding these as rights – not as acts of charity. This was finding God in all places, especially where the world refuses to look.
His care extended to those long excluded from the Church: LGBTQ+ persons, prisoners, the addicts, the homeless. His gestures – washing the feet of refugees, blessing the disfigured, embracing the condemned – were not symbolic. They were acts of a contemplative in action, one who has attained love through contemplation.
Listening to Indigenous Wisdom
Whenever Pope Francis interacted with indigenous communities, he readily apologized, because he had discerned. This was a deeply Ignatian posture – one shaped by the Examen, by humility, and by a belief that God could speak through the voices that history has silenced.
He summoned us to rediscover God in those places we had once refused to even look at.
In 2015 in Bolivia he acknowledged the sin of colonization. “Many grave sins were committed in the name of God”, he said and sought forgiveness. At the Amazon Synod in 2019, he placed indigenous voices at the centre of the Church’s discernment, naming climate collapse, extractive violence, and cultural erasure as spiritual wounds. He summoned us to rediscover God in those places we had once refused to even look at.
Welcoming the Stranger
As the refugee crisis intensified in 2015, Pope Francis stood virtually alone among world leaders in calling not to build walls, but to welcome the migrants and refugees. “May every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe take in one refugee family” was his fervent plea.
This hospitality flowed from his Jesuit identity, a tradition that calls for universal availability, readiness to go anywhere, serve the least, and find God in the stranger. When Francis visited the island of Lesbos in 2016, he didn’t just offer sympathy – he brought to Rome twelve Syrian Muslim refugees aboard the papal plane. He reminded the world that we need to welcome all those who seek refuge. To turn away from the displaced, he insisted, is to turn away from Christ.
Dialogue as a Spiritual Mission
Pope Francis approached interfaith dialogue not as diplomacy, but as a spiritual mission. For him, dialogue was a sacred act – a way of listening to God’s voice in unfamiliar places. With interior freedom, he entered places sacred to other faiths and secular spaces not to defend or promote the Church, but to build trust, fraternity, and peace.
In 2019, he signed the Document on Human Fraternity with Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb in Abu Dhabi, declaring, “God does not want religions to fight each other.” It was a bold act of bridge-building, rooted in the Jesuit conviction that truth and grace are not the monopoly of one tradition. His 2021 meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq, and the Istiqlal Joint Declaration with Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar in Jakarta (2024), reflected his belief that the only way to peace was dialogue.
He found common ground even with non-believers,. Early in his papacy, he wrote to La Repubblica, affirming conscience – not dogma – as the first guide to truth. In a fractured world, Francis’s actions demonstrated that faith does not fear differences, and that God is already present everywhere, waiting to be recognized.
Cry against War and Weapons
For Pope Francis peace was not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice, mercy, and human dignity. Early in his papacy, he denounced the global arms industry, calling its profiteers “merchants of death.” His moral clarity sharpened during moments of global crisis. He called the war in Ukraine “cruel and senseless,” and in response to the violence in Gaza and Israel, pleaded for humanitarian corridors, ceasefires, and diplomacy grounded in dignity. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he went beyond his predecessors, declaring that even the possession of nuclear weapons is morally indefensible.
These were acts of faith that does justice. These proclaimed that silence in the face of suffering of fellow humans is complicity – that neutrality is not an option when human life is at stake. To follow Christ, as Ignatius did, is to take a side – the side of life, of mercy, and of the sacred dignity of every person, even when the cost is high.
For Indians and Indian Jesuits
Though Pope Francis never visited India, he and his lifestyle had a great impact on Indians of all religions. His simplicity made us Indians recall Mahatma Gandhi and the way he dressed and travelled. His defence of the dignity of the marginalized resonated with Ambedkar’s cry for justice. His embrace of interfaith dialogue reminded us of Swami Vivekananda’s vision of religious fraternity.
For today’s Jesuits, Pope Francis’s life is a call for an honest examen and renewed communitarian discernment. His legacy is not meant to be admired from a distance, but to be lived with clarity and conviction. To honour him truly we need to live and speak as he did – for the greater glory of God.
Shailendra Boora, SJ (AND) is pursuing his Ph.D. in Communications. He can be contacted at bjshailu@gmail.com.