The term “globalizer” is mainly used with negative tone. The right -wing nationalists in the West, in particular, have for years attributed the problems and failures of their societies to the “globalists”, describing them as a caricature of well -known, cosmopolitan elites who chase multinational capital and implement plans to the detriment of their fellow citizens. The theory of globalization is reflected at the core of President Donald Trump’s second term: it deportes irregular migrants and foreign students and defends protectionism as it attempts to reshape the global economic class through sweeping duties.

The contempt for the “agenda of globalization” also determined the right criticism of Pope Francis, the respected Argentinean Jesuit priest, who passed away on Monday after a cerebral and cardiovascular collapse. His support for the rights of immigrants, his action for climate change, and the moderate acceptance of homosexuality led Americans to the right to call him a “woke” pope, friendly to the “theology of liberation” of Latin America, which his traditional us are abhorred. Former Trump adviser Steven Banon had told his far -right interlocutors in Europe to consider the Pope “enemy”.

The Lepanto Institute, a hyper -conservative Catholic Think Tank that was often fought against Pontiff Francis, insisted that the Pope was serving the plans of the “Communists”. His decision in 2021 to apologize for 16th -century atrocities in the New World by the Spanish conquerors in the name of the Catholic Church caused rage in Spain, with a spokesman for the far -right Vox party mocking: “I do not understand how a pope can apologize.”

Franciscus did not even escape the wrath of his compatriots, as Argentinean President Javier Miley had stated in an interview before taking office that the Pope was a “representative of the bad left”. (Since then he has become more alternative and in his statement about Francis’ death he has spoken of “small” differences).

It is ironic that one of Pope Francis’ last major meetings was with US Vice President Jay Di Vance, a convert to Catholicism, which is now self -identified as a “transfers” nationalist. In the first weeks of the Trump Presidency, Vance attempted to establish his nauticalism in medieval Catholic terms, citing the concept of “ordo amoris”, which implies that one has a greater obligation to those who are closest to him than those who are far away.

Francis, until his last days, had no time for such arguments. “The act of expulsion of people who in most cases have abandoned their homeland due to extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or severe environmental downgrade, offends the dignity of many men and women, and entire families, and puts them in a state of particular.” In Trump’s first term, Francis had said that building walls at the border and the separation of parents seeking asylum from their children make the president “non -Christian”.

The Easter message of the Pope, read this year by his replacement, mourned the hatred of an ever -liberal era. “How contemptuous is sometimes cultivated against vulnerable, marginalized and immigrants,” the text said. “I appeal to all those who have political responsibility in our world not to succumb to the logic of fear.”

Francis spent years trying to fight this fear of the “other”. It washed the legs of Arab immigrants seeking asylum in Europe. He apologized publicly to the Rohingya Muslims at a ceremony, following the criticism that he was not in favor of a visit to Myanmar in 2017, where authorities are facing the persecuted minority as illegal. And in 2023, overturning the papal tradition, he opposed the secular laws that criminalize homosexuality, saying: “Being a homosexual is not a crime.”

“It was the image of the good Samaritan, and through it, the image he gave for the Church was of the good Samaritan,” Marco Polaiti, a Pope’s biographer and a long -standing Vatican observer, told reporters.

Franciscus saw himself as a “globalizer”, but not in the way those who dislike globalization describes him. In a speech last year at the World Economic Forum – the stronghold of globalists – said that “the process of globalization” has shown “the interdependence of the nations and peoples of the world” and therefore bears “a fundamental moral dimension”. He called on states and businesses to promote “long -term and morally correct models of globalization” and to “pursue power and individual profit” at the service of the common good. In 2018, he had called on a “globalization of solidarity”, appealing for support for the poor and those trapped in war zones or humanitarian crises.

Such appeals often fell into disrepair and were completely opposed to the world -renowned White House, where Trump invoked the narrow national interest to justify the shrinking of American humanitarian aid to the rest of the world and the deconstruction of environmental regulations. In 2017, Francis gave Trump a copy of his 192 pages of circular on ecology, which recognized the strong scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and demanded drastic action to reduce carbon emissions. The US president – who is not known for his love of reading – did not seem to take the message seriously, as he subsequently withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement on the climate.

Franciscus was elected from the Conclave in 2013, after the world was leaving the international financial crisis. But in the following years they were marked by waves of crisis and instability. International diplomacy has failed to prevent horrible wars around the world, including Ukraine and Gaza – where Franciscus has long been demanding a permanent ceasefire. A global pandemic shocked humanity. In Western democracies, economic inequalities expanded, the liberal establishment was weakened and the angry right -wing populist reaction emerged.

It is not clear which cardinal will succeed Francis, but there is a possibility of a hyper -conservative folding lead to the emergence of a more dogmatic successor. Such a person would have fewer controversy with Trump and Vance, but would remind many of what was lost with the death of this Pope.

“It was still a voice – a moral voice, in the sense that it defended peace, justice and human dignity,” Austrian nun Brigitte Talchamers, who was standing next to a fountain in St. Petros, told my colleagues. “And I wonder: who will this voice now be?”