Faith foes: Pope Francis' fight with the Catholic right

Pope Francis, who died on Monday aged 88, aroused both fervour and fury within the Church with reforms aimed at opening the doors of a centuries-old institution to the modern-day faithful.

Here are the main disputes, which set ultra-conservatives within the Catholic Church against the pope.

Latin Mass

Francis in 2021 signed a decree limiting the use of the Latin Mass, reversing a more flexible edict from 2007 by his predecessor Benedict XVI.

The decision provoked incomprehension and anger among part of the clergy and Catholics attached to the so-called "Tridentine" Mass – which is conducted entirely in Latin with the priest facing the altar, like the congregation. Some went so far as to accuse him of preventing them from practicing their faith.

'Traitor' cardinals 

Pope Francis attracted the wrath of several cardinals, the red-hatted prelates who are supposedly his closest collaborators, but also next in command in the hierarchy of the Church.

In 2017, Francis spoke out against unnamed "traitors" who were holding back his institutional reforms.

The bad blood was aired in public in 2023, when an Italian journalist named then-recently deceased Australian Cardinal George Pell as the author of an anonymous note attacking Francis.

In the note, Pell – previously a close advisor to Francis – described the papacy as a "disaster in many respects" and slammed "serious failures" of diplomacy, particularly regarding the Ukraine war.

The same year, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, former prefect of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published a book in which he railed against Francis's governance.

He denounced an influential "coterie" around Francis, and criticised the pope's "doctrinal confusion."

Settling of scores

Francis had a particularly conflictual relationship with Georg Gaenswein, private secretary to his predecessor Benedict XVI.

After Benedict's death in 2022, Gaenswein said Francis had "broken" the retired pope's heart by limiting the use of the Latin Mass.

Francis hit back, saying he regretted that Benedict's death had been "instrumentalised" by "people without ethics, who act for partisan ends."

Ousting bishops

In a rare move in 2023, Francis ousted US bishop Joseph Strickland, one of his fiercest enemies, who had accused the pope of being lax on abortion and too open towards homosexuals and divorcees.

In 2024, it was the turn of ultra-conservative Italian bishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who accused Francis of "heresy" and "tyrannical" behaviour.

Vigano, a former ambassador of the Holy See to the United States, was excommunicated – expelled outright – for rejecting the authority of Francis, head of the world's nearly 1.4 billion Catholics.

LGBTQ, migrants 

In 2023, the Vatican published a document which paved the way for blessings for same-sex couples, provoking an outcry in the conservative Catholic world, particularly in Africa and the United States.

The wave of criticism forced the Vatican to make a "clarification" to defend itself from any doctrinal error, while acknowledging it may be "imprudent" to apply it in certain countries.

"In their opposition to blessings for same-sex couples, the African bishops are criticising what they call European moral decadence or European Catholicism. They include the pope in that," Francois Mabille, director of the Geopolitical Observatory of Religion, told AFP in February 2025.

The Argentine pontiff also irritated far-right Catholics with his calls for migrants to be given welcome in the Old Continent, with some warning Europe could lose its Christian identity.