Who imagined a pope would use the words “who am I to judge?” Pope Francis became one of the most consequential popes in history, and not just because he was in many ways a radical and a hero to liberals (without himself being a liberal). He was the first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years, and his origins affected his mission. Francis moved Catholicism’s center of gravity.

Francis, who died Monday at age 88, spoke in a new key about capitalism, poverty and the environment. He “turned the page toward a real globalization of Catholicism,” said Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at Villanova University, “not just in symbols and words, but also in actions.”

Francis’s remarkable 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si,” insisted that action against climate change was a moral imperative for Christians and for humanity. This engagement, like so much else, was prefigured by the papal name he chose, honoring Saint Francis of Assisi. He wanted to identify, the pope explained, with “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation.”

He became that man. Francis shunned regal trappings, including the papal apartments. His habits favored simplicity. He was known to treat Vatican staff more as co-workers than employees.

His goal, he said, was “a poor church for the poor” - one that is “bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets.” “If you understand that preaching a God of mercy is central to his ministry,” said Catholic writer Michael Sean Winters, “everything else falls into place.”

“Francis famously called the Church a ‘field hospital,’ not a fortress,” said John McGreevy, author of “Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis” and a Notre Dame historian. “His openness to gay and lesbian Catholics - inconceivable during the era of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI - was one example of his interest in meeting people where they were, not where they doctrinally should be.”

Francis was beloved among many progressive Catholics who saw him as an opponent of culture wars, a vindicator of social justice, and a champion of the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, which modernized and liberalized the church under Pope John XXIII in the 1960s.

Francis fiercely rebuked the “globalization of indifference” and the “idolatry” of money. He explicitly condemned “trickle down” economics as based on “a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

His approach generated many enemies on the Catholic right. Breaking with their long habit of deference to Rome, some conservatives, including bishops, excoriated him, sometimes even referring to him as heretical. Right to the end, Francis battled openly with American conservatives - including Catholics. In a letter about immigration to American Bishops on Feb. 10, he was unmistakably critical of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, without mentioning them by name.

“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” the pope wrote. “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”

While remaining a steadfast foe of abortion, Francis sharply altered church priorities. Early in his pontificate, he declared that the church “cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible.” He opposed denying Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, arguing that the sacrament “is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners,” and held warm meetings with President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California).

Francis did not escape criticism from his allies. He made only modest moves toward enhancing the power of women in the church. And though he eventually recognized the need for ongoing atonement by the church for the sexual abuse scandals, he did so only after early missteps.

He spoke of “the joy of the Gospel,” and took on the “theatrical severity and sterile pessimism” and “funereal face” of some of those who exercise power in the church. He criticized “those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists.” He is likely to endure as the only pope ever to scold “sourpusses.”

John Carr, founder of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, explained why Francis was so different from what the church and the world expect a pope to be. “Pope Francis looked at the world from the bottom up,” Carr said, “and the church from the outside in.” This is how Christians should think. Yet it is so very hard to imagine another papacy like his.