During his only trip to the United States, Pope Francis was introduced to a Kentucky court clerk who had famously refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, citing her religious beliefs.

As with so many moments in Francis’s papacy, the 2015 meeting immediately polarized many Catholics. Some conservatives were thrilled that Francis had made time during his trip to meet with someone taking a public stand against same-sex marriage. But more liberal Catholics were concerned that Francis, who had gone further than any other pontiff in building bridges to gay Catholics, was sending a muddled message on a key issue.

The Vatican would later say, in a statement, that the only “real audience” the pope had granted that day was with a former student — a gay man — and his partner. The meeting, the statement said, shouldn’t be considered a sign of support of the Kentucky clerk but a reflection of the pope’s “characteristic kindness.” It was one of the many times Francis’s casual, inclusive style ended up roiling American Catholics, who were increasingly polarized along partisan and theological lines.

Here’s a look at how Francis’s papacy affected the U.S.:

Francis took the U.S. down a peg

Francis was the first modern pope not to make the U.S. central to his papacy.

While other popes had visited repeatedly, before and during their times in office, Francis visited just once. During that 2015 trip, Francis, who was from Argentina, spoke mostly in Spanish. And although he was in the U.S., his focus was on poorer, marginalized parts of the globe.

“The U.S. church wasn’t his focus,” said Lino Rulli, host of the popular radio show “The Catholic Guy.” “His whole focus [was] reaching out and not catering to the inside-baseball crowd.”

When hard-line conservative U.S. Catholics sharply criticized him, Francis appeared to relish it. In 2019, when a French journalist asked about frequent verbal assaults against him by right-leaning U.S. Catholics, Francis called it “an honor that Americans attack me.” In 2021, he characterized a large, U.S.-based conservative Catholic TV channel, EWTN, as “the work of the devil.”

At times, his words suggested a particular unease with American values.

Francis’s predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II, had expressed skepticism of some of those values, including capitalism. But Francis went further, bringing a classic Latin American distrust of U.S. motives to the debate.

One of his major teachings, known as Laudato Si and published in 2015, criticized consumerism, out-of-control economic development and global warming. “The warming caused by huge consumption on the part of some rich countries has repercussions on the poorest areas of the world,” he wrote.

“His emphasis on capitalism and consumerism [were] primed to really impact the U.S. church in particular because he [was] talking about us,” said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a University of Notre Dame historian who has written multiple books on U.S. Catholics. “Laudato Si has had a profound impact in the United States. I hear people talking even in secular circles about it all the time.”

The U.S. church became more polarized during Francis’s tenure

U.S. Catholics overwhelmingly viewed Francis favorably. His popularity, however, had fallen in recent years and become increasingly split along partisan lines.

Francis’s favorability was at its highest point, 90 percent, in early 2015, a few months after the Vatican announced his trip to the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center. This year, 78 percent of U.S. Catholics said they viewed the pontiff in favorable terms.

When he took office, there was a small disparity in his popularity between conservative and liberal Catholics, but that gap has grown. In 2013, 84 percent of right-leaning Catholics and 77 percent of left-leaning ones had a favorable view of the pope. In 2025, according to Pew, 88 percent of Democratic-leaning Catholics gave him favorable marks, while his popularity among GOP-leaning Catholics fell to 69 percent.

During his visit to the U.S., Francis spoke to Congress with two Catholic political leaders seated behind him — Vice President Joe Biden and GOP House Speaker John A. Boehner. “It was like: ‘Look, Democrats and Republicans reaching across the aisle!’” Cummings said. Now, the country’s political divides have grown, she said. “Polarization has gotten worse, but it’s not his fault; it’s U.S. politics,” Cummings said.

There was also an explosion in the use of social media and in the size of Catholic media during Francis’s tenure, Rulli said. That led to more division, he said, with media personalities encouraging followers to fall into an “us-versus-them thing — who is against the pope or for the pope.”

Francis’s conservative critics complained that he often spoke off the cuff and imprecisely, creating confusion about church teachings.

Many pointed to his response in 2013 to a reporter’s question about gay clerics: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis said. In 2023, he described transgender women as “daughters of God.”

During his papacy, Francis also reaffirmed church teachings against same-sex marriage and transgenderism, but those comments came less often and in more subtle ways than with his predecessors. That left room for doubt, his critics said.

His “rare” comments “in defense of church teaching on sexual morality” led some Catholics to “criticize and reject [his] doctrinal innovations,” said the Rev. Gerald Murray, a New York City priest and commentator for EWTN, the Catholic conservative news channel.

Francis’s efforts to be “polite, kind, welcoming” may have been “unwise and likely to be counterproductive,” said Robert George, a lawyer and philosopher at Princeton University who often writes from a conservative Catholic perspective. But that doesn’t mean he was being “nefarious,” he said.

The pope didn’t mind the chaos his comments sometime stirred, Rulli said. Francis was in “the uncomfortable middle, and I think that’s where he [wanted] the church to be. He [wanted] these conversations,” he said.

Political engagement between Francis and U.S. politicians got more confrontational

Francis may have been the first pope to directly — and repeatedly — challenge U.S. political leaders.

In 2016, hours after praying for Mexican migrants who died trying to reach the U.S., Francis singled out then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, who was promising to deport millions of immigrants and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“A person who thinks only about building walls — wherever they may be — and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said, according to a translation from the Associated Press. “This is not in the Gospel.” Trump replied that it was “disgraceful” for a religious leader to question someone’s faith.

In 2022, Francis called Biden’s belief that life does not begin at conception an “incoherence” that the president should talk to his pastor about. Biden often spoke with respect about Catholic teachings and characterized his abortion views as falling legitimately within them.

In February, Francis criticized the Trump administration’s stance on migrants, calling the president’s pledge of mass deportations “a major crisis.” He also pressed Catholics to reject the idea that a person’s residency status makes them a criminal. Deporting people who flee their homes in crisis “damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he said in a letter to U.S. bishops.

In the same letter, Francis also appeared to directly challenge Vice President JD Vance — a Catholic convert — on immigration.

In January, Vance cited Ordo Amoris, a concept discussed by ancient Christian theologian Augustine, to support his call for mass deportations. The teaching advocates for humans to care first for their family and neighborhood and then the rest of the world, Vance said in multiple interviews and on social media.

But Francis said the correct understanding of Ordo Amoris takes into consideration the needs of others, and calls for a “love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

This type of engagement with U.S. leaders was relatively new, experts on U.S. Catholic history said. The U.S. had opened full diplomatic relations with the Vatican only in 1984, and the relationship between the White House and the Vatican had since been publicly cordial and respectful.

Previous popes had, at times, challenged other world leaders. In 1988, Pope John Paul II told Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that Nicaraguans should be allowed to live “according to the principles of true democracy,” according to a Vatican transcript.

The tone of Francis’s letter about Vance’s comment was a direct message to U.S. bishops that he was paying attention to the American church and that they should speak out, said John McGreevy, a University of Notre Dame professor and expert on Catholicism. “This shows the real differences between the Vatican and the administration. It was true with the first Trump administration, but now it’s more pointed than ever,” McGreevy said.

Francis made the top leadership of the U.S. church look more like him

During his papacy, Francis promoted six like-minded U.S. clerics to cardinal, the highest and most visible position in the church, outside of being pope.

The appointments included some of the country’s largest and highest-profile U.S. dioceses — Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark and Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C. Cupich and Tobin were also appointed to the Vatican body that selects bishops, giving them even more influence.

Francis “sought to put people in leadership who will pursue his goals of structural reform and spiritual renewal, people who know his reforms aren’t about breaking with tradition but being faithful to the Gospel in new times and contexts,” said Kim Daniels, a consultant to the Vatican.

Francis appointed McElroy, known for his outspoken defense of the humanity of migrants, earlier this year, just as Trump was promising mass deportations. McElroy is a “very significant appointment,” Daniels said, “and looks like a direct challenge to President Trump.”

These decisions will affect the U.S. Catholic Church for generations, said Daniels, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.

Francis also declined to promote to cardinal more-conservative-leaning archbishops, including now-retired Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia and Denver and Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles, the country’s largest Catholic diocese. They both organized against the mainstreaming of LGBTQ relationships and cracked down on Catholic politicians who support abortion access. They also urged that Biden be denied Communion.

Francis’s decisions reflected his belief that U.S. bishops were more conservative than they really were, said George, of Princeton. Based on that misguided view, he said, Francis wanted to bring more balance to the leadership of the U.S. church but went too far.

Francis is not likely to be succeeded by an American

Francis’s death sets in motion an elaborate process to pick the next pope.

An American pope has always been considered highly unlikely, if not taboo, experts say, in part because the U.S. is viewed — especially by the heavily European Vatican — as already too powerful, culturally and economically.

However, the first-in-a-millennia retirement of Benedict, in 2013, shook things up. Some Vatican watchers said at the time that perhaps Benedict’s retirement would usher in a new era for the Catholic Church and what many saw as American faults — too much capitalism and secularism — could be attributes for the next pope. In 2013, among the contenders were Boston’s Cardinal Seán O’Malley, who retired last year, and New York City’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who submitted his retirement — as required at the age of 75 — earlier this year.

This time, an American pope is still considered a long shot. But one American may be a contender: Cardinal Robert Prevost. Born in Chicago, Prevost, 69, served in Peru for decades. Francis elevated him to bishop in 2014. In 2023, the pope brought him to Rome, where he now serves as the head of the powerful Dicastery for Bishops, which helps pick the world’s bishops. He is also president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, a region that is one of the centers of Catholicism.