The first in­di­ca­tion that Car­di­nal Jorge Mario Bergoglio would be dif­fer­ent from oth­er popes was in the name he chose.

It sig­nalled a par­a­digm shift that he chose to ho­n­our St Fran­cis of As­sisi, a 16th-cen­tu­ry fri­ar known for his de­vo­tion to hu­mil­i­ty and care for the poor, qual­i­ties that were re­flect­ed in his pa­pa­cy.

He was the first pope to be called Fran­cis. That name was one of the many firsts that de­fined the pro­gres­sive pa­pa­cy of the for­mer Car­di­nal of Buenos Aires, Ar­genti­na, elect­ed on March 13, 2013, fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Pope Bene­dict XVI.

The leader of the world’s ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.3 bil­lion Catholics was al­so the first Je­suit pope, the first from the Amer­i­c­as and the first from a coun­try in the south­ern hemi­sphere.

It was clear through­out his 12 years at the Vat­i­can that St Fran­cis of As­sisi was a strong in­flu­ence based on his re­spons­es on a range of is­sues from cli­mate change to cler­i­cal sex abuse.

Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, the pope’s com­ments on so­cial, eco­nom­ic, and po­lit­i­cal is­sues ruf­fled feath­ers at the Holy See but the vi­sion he shared of an in­clu­sive church ush­ered in a new era for mod­ern Catholi­cism.

He con­sis­tent­ly preached about the moral ur­gency of car­ing for mi­grants and in­sti­tut­ed broad re­forms at the Vat­i­can that were de­par­tures from cen­turies of Catholic doc­trines.

His ap­proval of bless­ings for same-sex cou­ples, his ap­peals to Catholics to love LGBTQ+ peo­ple and his strong con­dem­na­tion of laws that tar­get them was un­prece­dent­ed for the pa­pa­cy, rep­re­sent­ing a more pro­gres­sive stance on a con­tro­ver­sial is­sue his pre­de­ces­sors had avoid­ed.

His call for vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse to be “wel­comed, lis­tened to and sup­port­ed” by cler­ics was al­so a de­par­ture from the norm for the Vat­i­can.

Al­though he didn’t go all the way in in­tro­duc­ing the more lib­er­al doc­trines some fac­tions of the church had hoped for, his will­ing­ness to tack­le hot-but­ton is­sues alien­at­ed con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics.

Pope Fran­cis lived what he preached, ex­em­pli­fy­ing his vi­sion of a poor­er church “for the poor” in a sim­ple lifestyle far re­moved from the op­u­lence of the Vat­i­can.

By the time of his death yes­ter­day (East­er Mon­day), he had laid the foun­da­tion for the hum­ble, so­cial­ly con­scious, and in­clu­sive Ro­man Catholic church he de­sired by ap­point­ing 110 of the 138 vot­ing mem­bers of the con­clave that will soon con­vene to choose his suc­ces­sor. Among them are car­di­nals from re­gions pre­vi­ous­ly un­der­rep­re­sent­ed at the Holy See, in­clud­ing Asia and Africa.

In T&T, the in­flu­ence of Pope Fran­cis ex­tends well be­yond the Ro­man Catholic com­mu­ni­ty, which con­sti­tutes about 25 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. That is clear from the heart­felt trib­utes and prayers that have been of­fered fol­low­ing his death.

It is fit­ting that one of the Pope’s fi­nal bless­ings for T&T was con­veyed by Charles Ja­son Gor­don, who he ap­point­ed as the eleventh Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain in Oc­to­ber 2017.

It was a mem­o­rable mo­ment on the side­lines of the Sixth Syn­od As­sem­bly at the Vat­i­can in Rome last Oc­to­ber, when Pope Fran­cis greet­ed Arch­bish­op Gor­don, smiled, made the sign of the cross, and said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go, God bless you in the name of the Fa­ther, the Son and the Holy Spir­it. And pray for me, don’t for­get.”

To­day, the na­tion that re­ceived that bless­ing joins the rest of the world in of­fer­ing prayers for Pope Fran­cis. May he rest in peace.