Pope Francis was hailed as a bold reformer – an unexpected aid holds the key for decoding and assessing his complex personality and impact
“Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets (pseudoprophetae).” Jesus (Luke 6:26 KJV)
When the light of Pope Francis’ earthly journey was extinguished, the overwhelming majority of mainstream commentators lavished unreserved praise on the first Vicar of Christ from Latin America. Much of this acclaim focused on what was heralded – whether deserved or not – as his effort to bring the Church into closer alignment with modern secular trends and contemporary global concerns.
Within this tapestry of supposed triumphs lay the advancement of equitable political governance (notably including democratic reforms instituted within the sacred halls of the Church itself), the pursuit of socio-economic justice (particularly in addressing the protracted migration crisis), a strong commitment to ecological responsibility (with a marked emphasis on environmental stewardship), and charitable pastoral concern and sensitivity towards groups often seen as marginalized and disadvantaged in society (such as women and individuals with non-traditional erotic orientations).
However, in light of Jesus’ solemn admonition against the allure of universal worldly fame, a dispassionate and learned observer ought to feel compelled to scrutinize such ostensibly unanimous approbation. In truth, the prevailing positive “vibe” surrounding his persona – to borrow contemporary parlance – warrants careful examination, in search of delicate yet profound distinctions that carry crucial implications for the destiny of the Church and the entirety of humankind.
Upon closer, nuanced and balanced analysis – guided by an innovative artistic touchstone – it becomes evident that, while endeavoring to shine light on an uplifting redemptive theme at the heart of Christianity, the reformist Head of the Catholic Church inadvertently sowed widespread and profound confusion and division both within his flock and across the broader global community.
In this regard, it is incumbent upon his successor, Leo XIV – with prayerful wisdom and strategic discernment – to identify precisely and carefully weigh both the fruits and failings of the preceding pontificate, distinguishing, as it were, gold from dross. Only through such measured reflection can the new pope hope to usher forth true, meaningful and enduring good on a global scale, and in a manner that is not merely superficially reformative but profoundly transformative.
Curiously, it is not in Rome but in Russia, within the opulent chambers of the storied Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, that one finds an unexpected yet invaluable facilitative aid – a silent interlocutor amidst hallowed treasures of brushstrokes and bronze – to grasping the full scope of his precursor’s legacy.
And so, as we turn first to the genuine merits of the departed Vicar of Christ, let it be declared – once and for all, and with due reverence – that henceforward no longer shall it be (though, as any Shakespearean scholar would attest, it never truly was): “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”!
As regards his positive and constructive legacy, Pope Francis, in his characteristically – though not invariably – gentle yet resolute way, made a concerted effort to reorient and refocus both the Church and the wider world on the core and beating heart of God’s Euangelion – His Good News – which proclaims the Creator’s inexhaustible, unconditional and compassionate love, tender mercy and boundless forgiveness.
In doing so, the pontifical vicar faithfully walked in the footsteps of his master, Jesus Christ, who introduced an innovative approach to bring about transformative spiritual renewal from the inside-out. The beauty and depth of this radical and radiant vision and foundational principle of what I call “inner-to-outer restoration” will become evident in the following “Christianity 101” crash course.
The Nazarene often took the initiative in reaching out to those around Him. He proactively embraced even the outcasts – notorious public sinners whom society shunned – as beloved children of God, in need of healing and redemption.
Among such figures were the much-maligned publicans (in Latin publicanus), who – bartering loyalty for coin – were widely condemned in both contemporary and later sources as complicit and exploitative intermediaries. Situated at the nexus of the Roman imperial administration and local economic ecosystem, these unscrupulous, avaricious and ruthless collaborators levied onerous taxes in service to the occupiers from the Palatine, while routinely leveraging their position to accrue substantial personal wealth at the expense of the kin people they extorted.
By extending an advance offering of unconditional, wholehearted and boundless goodwill towards many a publicanus and other notorious sinners, and building amicable relations with them, the quintessential Good Sheperd was often able to open their hearts to genuine and transformative moral rehabilitation.
An innovative scoresheet from the Hermitage: The Gospel in paint
In what follows, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s transcendent masterpiece The Return of the Prodigal Son – a visual parable that ranks among one of the most sublime works of art ever created (see Figure 1) – will serve as a theologically grounded visual scoresheet and hermeneutic key for the entire journey of interpretive assessment to be embarked on.
It turns out that the splendid chef d’oeuvre, which eruditely reveals the spiritual, psychological and social undercurrents of the human condition, can function as a sharp lens and luminous clue, conspicuously and unequivocally exposing Pope Francis’s multifaceted personality and influence.
Figure 1
Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son” as visual scoresheet and hermeneutic key to assess Pope Francis’ legacy
© Copyright 2025. Prof. Dr. Kai-Alexander Schlevogt. All rights reserved.
This artwork, an incandescent triumph of the Dutch Golden Age proudly and prominently exhibited in the Petersburg Hermitage, is a salient distillation of the Gospels in paint, telescoping and compressing key elements of the foundational, profoundly significant and perennially seminal parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) into a single, magical and evocative moment full of light and darkness.
For the purpose of this analysis, the three central figures in the composition – the father and his two sons – will serve as vital reference points and key interpretive clues. Being visual anchors that resonate symbolically, their significance will be illuminated through the prism of pointed exegetical ekphrasis.
Central figure № 1: The compassionate and merciful father
As regards the aforementioned proactive offer of infinite love, the compassionate and merciful father’s embrace of his younger son in the visual narrative serves as a masterful, vivid and compelling pictorial rendering of such kind of openness and eagerness for reconciliation.
In the parable from the Lukan Gospel, the father greets his wayward son not with the sharpness of cold reproach, but with the warmth of his robe, the finest he owns. And that single gesture shifts the narrative axis from judgment to reconciliation, from ruin to return and redemption.
What might have transpired had Jesus – or, in parabolical terms, the father who typifies divine mercy in the gospel pericope – yielded to the harsh dictates of prevailing normative punitive practices of post-exilic Second Temple Judaism (ca. 516 BC-70 AD), centering on public censure and retributive justice? While such severity would have aligned with the sensibilities, doctrinal and moral expectations, and judicial standards upheld by contemporary religious authorities, it would nonetheless almost inevitably have precluded the very possibility of positive transformation.
In particular, merciless judgment, rejection and exclusion, fixated on exposing faults and dispensing sharp condemnation, would have calcified the sinners’ resistance to grace. In such a climate, their hearts, already wounded by guilt, would likely have grown virtually impervious to the light of liberating and empowering truth and flood of boundless grace, ultimately foreclosing authentic and redemptive inner renewal.
A similar dynamic often plays out with children. Confronted by a father’s stern lecture—moralistic, chastising, and rigid—a disobedient and mischievous child is likely to retreat into boredom or rise in outright defiance. But if that same father first shares with his son the simple joy of a ride through the laughter and wonder of an amusement park, something shifts. In the warmth of that shared joy, a trust-based relation grows.
And in the gentle, calm and congenial atmosphere that follows, the father may find his son’s heart open – receptive to truth, responsive to guidance. It is precisely during these magical moments, in the quiet and serene aftermath of joy, that wisdom quietly takes root and transformation begins to unfold. With ease and grace, the father then can impart essential and uplifting lessons to his son, planting seeds of life-changing virtues deep within the boy’s attentive heart, nurturing growth that will continue through the years.
Central figure № 2: The proud and resentful elder brother
Concurrently, Jesus wrestled with the five deeply entrenched and corrosive manifestations of supremacy in creed and cause – pathologies that perennially plague religious and ideological systems and actors – including: (1) triumphalist sanctimony – the ostentatious and performative elevation of one’s moral status above others; (2) self-righteous hypocrisy – the divergence between professed values and actual conduct; (3) judgmental exclusionism – bigoted and callous intolerance directed towards those who deviate from perceived orthodoxy; (4) deontological legalism – the inflexible and casuistic application of prescriptive norms absent ethical, empathetic and contextual discernment; and (5) interest-laden duplicity – the partial and inconsistent enforcement of principles in ways that fortify existing hierarchies or simply promote self-interest.
Religious suprematism is rooted in sacralized pride and engenders the formation of a self-designated in-group that asserts privileged spiritual or moral status. Its adherents haughtily perceive themselves both as divinely sanctioned and inherently superior, defining themselves in juxtaposition to an inferior out-group, deemed spiritually and morally deficient. This binary structure and dynamic process breeds corruption in the form of internal and institutional elitism and hypocrisy.
The recursive process of sectarian fragmentation and sociopolitical alienation perpetuates external antagonism, fueling an escalating cycle of hostility and deepening divisions between the hostile groups. What has begun as an exclusive claim to divine favor often ends in hubris, spiritual blindness, moral decay, perpetual conflict and the betrayal and loss of the very values the elite professes to uphold.
Once more, Rembrandt’s masterful tableau offers a pivotal and vital hermeneutic key to deciphering the deeper contours of this phenomenon and grasping its essence.
Particularly striking is the haunting figure of the elder son, positioned on the right side of the canvas. His solemn yet stern demeanor, marked by an austere countenance and rigid posture, betrays not reverence, but resistance – a quiet disapproval and a latent protest against the father’s affectionate gesture – as he observes the tender embrace not with awe yet with ache.
In the parable, as told in the Gospel of Luke, the elder son is not merely resentful. Unable to accept his father’s warm, generous and forgiving welcome of his younger son, he is described as being incensed by what he perceives as a breach of justice and fairness – a father’s love granted too lavishly, his mercy extended too freely.
Rembrandt’s subtle but expressive rendering brings to life the theological and moral complexities embedded in the Lukan narrative. With poignant clarity, it captures not only the gist of a biblical moment of intimate reunion, but of two enduring human tensions: the struggle between justice required under law and undeserved divine mercy, sustained resentment and liberating reconciliation.
The unyielding elder son faces his father not with love but with a ledger, reckoning worth by cold endurance and stubborn perseverance in terms of mere staying power rather than by the warmth of heartfelt affection. More servant than son, he casts himself as the righteous, ever-faithful, unwaveringly exemplar of filial duty – utterly obedient, diligent and steadfast in service and loyalty through long yet unrewarded years.
Against this backdrop, it is with pointed bitterness that he voices a deep-rooted grievance: the absence of even the smallest reward and token of fatherly appreciation – not even a young goat had been afforded to him for rejoicing with his companions.
Tellingly – and arguably not by accident – the pater familias is conspicuously absent from that imagined revelry. It is framed as an exclusive gathering among peers, yet void of familial warmth and communion – a sterile conception of fleeting joy in a friend-filled space that, in reality, isolates rather than unites.
When considered alongside the elder son’s complete failure to acknowledge or share in his father’s happiness and joy about the return of the lost one, the seemingly inconspicuous yet profoundly striking nonappearance of the familial figurehead in the hypothetical festivity – all evident signs of emotional estrangement and indifference – invite serious doubts. The disjunction prompts the question of whether the elder son truly harbors genuine love and authentic filial affection towards his progenitor or if he merely masks wounded pride behind worn-thin obedience – rooted solely in the self-righteous performance of obligation rather than the substance of empathetic and heartfelt love.
This critical inquiry, then, is existential: Can genuine love exist where shared joy is absent and – and where, in place of a relational ethic, a transactional model prevails, one rooted in the spirit of do ut des (a Latin expression meaning “I give so that you may give”), in which obedience without intimacy is mistakenly considered as ground for favor?
When viewed through a historical-critical lens, the parallels to the legalistic rigidity and resistance of the religious elites at that historical juncture, who prioritized strict legal adherence over relational reconciliation, in response to Jesus’ radical, disruptive and transformative message of love, mercy and grace become strikingly apparent.
In a similar vein, Jesus recounted the profound and arresting parable of a Pharisee and a tax collector who both ascended to the temple to pray (Luke 18:9-14). The Pharisee – an exemplar of religious orthodoxy and a scrupulous adherent of the law – offers a prayer not of supplication but of self-congratulation, extolling his own piety and expressing gratitude that he was not as “other men” whom he deems morally inferior.
By contrast, the publican, despised as a collaborator and sinner, stands afar off, his posture lowly, his eyes cast down, his breast struck in sorrow. With unfeigned humility, he contritely confesses his guilt and implores God for mercy.
Jesus, ever the consummate rhetorical craftsman of subversive and peripeteian paradox, concludes with a striking climatic reversal that invites anagnorisis – a seismic moment of profound recognition that may reconfigure moral expectations: Contrary to prevailing assumptions, it is not the ostensibly righteous Pharisee, but the penitent publican who departs justified. At the narrative’s culminative apex, the Nazarene seals the parable with a timeless antithetical aphorism that overturns conventional worldly hierarchies and elevates humility as the pathway to divine favor: “Every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:14 KJV).
The positive contributions of the first Vicar of Christ from Argentine may be more profoundly apprehended and judiciously evaluated within the intricate splendor of this rich theological landscape and, as its radiant and luminous reflection, the ornate visual tapestry of Rembrandt’s opus magnum.
Papal merit № 1: Emulating the father’s compassionate mercy
In theological terms, Pope Francis’ welcoming and inclusive stance towards so-called LGBTQ+ people may be interpreted as a sweeping pastoral gesture that seeks to mirror the tender heart of Christ, engaging them as the Good Shepherd does: as beloved spiritual children, in need of grace and salvation, gently beckoned to embark on a journey of spiritual renewal.
For example, on the sidelines of the “Synod on Synodality” convened in Vatican City in October 2023, Pope Francis engaged in a private meeting with representatives of New Ways Ministry, a US-based organization that advocates for so-called LGBTQ+ Catholics.
Imbued with a deep-seated and fervent spirit of pastoral outreach and eager commitment to engage in constructive dialogue, the pragmatic pastoral revolutionary occupying the Cathedra Sancti Petri (Chair of St. Peter) evidently was undisturbed by the glaring conceptual dissonance inherent in the group label LGBTQ+ Catholics. A designation that inevitably raises theological eyebrows, it may reasonably be construed as a theological and moral oxymoronic misnomer – a contradiction in terms sharply diverging from the Church’s long-held and well-established understanding of human identity as articulated in traditional ecclesial anthropology.
Even the designation LGBTQ+ itself warrants critical scrutiny, insofar as it reflects a shift toward novel, complex and false ontological assumptions concerning human nature. Significantly, it denotes individuals who, palpably in a distorting tension with fundamental theological anthropology, assert an autonomous identity that is exclusively self-constructed and, at its core, reduces personal essence to fluid, and often affect-driven, erotic inclinations.
Against this backdrop, the Supreme Pontiff’s non-rejectionist and non-confrontational approach – one that consciously forgoes wielding a moral sledgehammer against the public sinners – may be more aptly interpreted as a well-calculated and strategic pastoral initiative.
Manifestly, this inviting posture of papal embrace seeks first to lay relational bridges, cultivate trust-based friendship and foster open dialogue. Presumably, such a prelude is intended to create fertile conditions for authentic conversion in due course. To grasp the logic of this pastoral move, recall the earlier image of the father and son at the amusement park: it is patience, connection, and shared joy that form the soil necessary for meaningful and enduring transformation to unfold.
Had the Holy Father, from the outset, chosen to ostracize, rigorously exclude and thus utterly and irrevocably alienate the doctrinally deviant group of public sinners, its members would likely have responded with yet more obstinate rebellion and deeper resistance. This defiance would have been directed against God’s boundless love – anchored in His liberating and redemptive truth and expressed through His gentle call to change heart.
To catch a glimpse of another facet of Pope Francis’s audacious strategy and intricate methodology, one must turn to a second pivotal figure in Rembrandt’s timeless masterpiece: the enigmatic elder brother.
Papal merit № 2: Check the elder brother’s claim to supremacy
Cold, resentful, morally rigid and alienated from both divine mercy and human community, the elder brother stands as the living emblem of the defiant Pharisaic opposition to gratuitous grace and manifests the very spirit of exclusion that the Successor of St. Peter from Argentine appeared determined to deliberately and daringly confront.
The elder son’s solitary presence, shadowed by contempt and bitterness arising from a profound sense of injustice, functions as a narrative foil to the father’s compassionate embrace and the younger son’s genuine humility, contrition and repentance. In particular, it strikes a sharply resonating theological and moral counterpoint to the “mercy-first” approach of the compassionate father – a dynamic tension that finds an echo in Pope Francis’s own pastoral vision and approach, especially his critique of ecclesial legalism in favor of relational and inclusive evangelization.
As if summoned by the stark pictorial representation of rigid moralism and refusal to partake in the joy of reconciliation, the charitable and seemingly fearless Shepherd of the Catholic fold at the Vatican – ever adept at capturing headlines – consistently and unequivocally warned against self-righteous clerical elitism. In various forms – explicitly or implicitly – Pope Francis denounced the vices that tend to accompany it: haughtiness, hypocrisy, judgmental rejectionism and double standards.
These attitudes, which the Bishop of Rome sought to counter by leading with bold gestures of unreserved mercy and radical inclusion, risk enclosing Church actors within a bubble of ecclesial insularity – what can provocatively be likened to a form of spiritual autism – presenting a formidable hindrance to authentic evangelization.
In 2013, during the inaugural year of his pontificate, the vociferous Successor of St. Peter forcefully and vividly denounced clericalism as “one of the worst evils” and cautioned metaphorically that certain modes of priestly formation risk producing “little monsters”.
In 2024, he critiqued the perceived double standards evident in the reaction surfacing among certain traditionalist sectors of the Church to the blessing of homoerotic couples, which he ostensibly identified as a theologically inconsistent and morally selective response, contending: “Nobody gets scandalized if I give my blessings to a businessman who perhaps exploits people, and this is a very grave sin. But they get scandalized if I give them to a homosexual. This is hypocrisy.”
In this context, it is pertinent to observe that, according to Catholic moral doctrine, every single act of carnal intimacy – understood as a sacred gift requiring proper ordering – outside the life-long, sacramental covenant of biblical marriage bears the weight of constituting objectively grave matter. Unknown to many, this also encompasses the premarital physical union between a boyfriend and girlfriend, a practice that has regrettably become increasingly normalized and prevalent in the cultural milieu of contemporary Western society. When such acts are committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent, they fulfill the conditions for mortal sin, which, if left unrepented, results in eternal separation from God in Gehenna, the biblical toponym for the realm of eternal punishment.
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From the theologically guided and visually mediated process of interpretation and assessment, the following interim result emerges: Pope Francis appears to have aligned himself with the silent and implicit messages embodied by at least two of the three central figures in Rembrandt’s profoundly moving visual hymn to unearned grace and unmerited forgiveness, both mirroring the father’s boundless mercy and issuing a pointed critique of the haughty and embittered religious elitism personified by the elder son.
But what of the third and titular protagonist in this deeply human drama – the younger, wayward prodigal son? He may be wordless on canvas, but his evocative presence still demands an answer…
[To be continued]
