The international debate on the legacy of Pope Francis: reformer or misunderstood?

The distance between Bergoglio and his predecessors was also measured by the French newspaper by his refusal to live in affluence: he preferred a two-room flat in Santa Marta to the sumptuous apostolic palace and a small hatchback as popemobile.

Handelsblatt, on the other hand, emphasised the distance between Bergoglio and one of his most recent guests, US Vice President JD Vance: 'The Pope was the antithesis of the dominant political spirit of our times, which J.D. Vance and his superior Donald Trump represent'.

'Synonymous with humility and not arrogance', claims the German newspaper, while for Bloomberg he was 'a powerful man stooped in humility, praying for the poor and embracing the humble - as the founder of his faith did two thousand years ago'.

In the Wall Street Journal the pen of Francis X. Meier instead called the legacy of Pope Francis "a big question mark". His pontificate has offered the side of much criticism, including his rapprochement with China (a country where Christians are persecuted), his 'privileged' relations with the Jesuit order (from which Bergoglio comes) in matters of doctrine, and his criticism of the clergy, which allegedly alienated many willing priests and bishops. Meier criticised the pontiff's anti-American positions, which he attributes to his Latin American roots. As well as 'a lack of Christian anthropology at a time when human and sexual identity are in crisis'.

For Matthew Hennessey, also for the Wall Street Journal, Pope Francis was 'a shepherd, not a reformer. He had the smell of his sheep about him'. Being an outsider to the Roman Curia and coming from as remote a place as Argentina, Bergoglio did not know its institutions well enough, so he could not make changes that would last. He adds: 'The manipulators and inside players in the Roman Curia ate him for lunch'.

In the eyes of those who recognised him as a reformer and in the eyes of those who criticised his choices, Bergoglio was an outsider, a man who stood out from his predecessors for better or worse. He has left the progressives unhappy who demanded he reform the priesthood, giving access to women and allowing priests to marry; he has been tough and inflexible with traditionalist Catholic circles.

As Walter Russell Mead of the Wall Street Journal argues, Jorge Bergoglio's pontificate has moved in the conservative spirit represented by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard: 'If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change'.