Pope Francis brought an outsider’s eye to the papacy – with a focus on justice, ecology and humanity | Catherine Pepinster

He will be remembered as one of the great communicators of Christian faith – but healing the church’s divisions was beyond him

Just three days before he was admitted to hospital for bronchitis in February, Pope Francis delivered a strongly worded message to the US about Donald Trump’s attitude to migrants. In a letter sent to the country’s Roman Catholic bishops, he made clear that he completely disagreed with Trump’s mass deportation plans for illegal migrants. “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”

The sentiment was not only reserved for Trump. Throughout his 12 years as pope, Francis, who died this morning at the age of 88, focused on the dignity of people, especially those viewed by others as outsiders – whether migrants, prisoners, whom he often visited, or LGBTQ+ people. “Who am I to judge?” he famously said when asked about his attitude towards gay men and women, a remark that contrasted starkly with his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who once described homosexuality as a tendency “ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil”.

Catherine Pepinster is a former editor of The Tablet, the Catholic journal