Revelation that Pope Francis’ total earthly wealth was $100 (90 euros) that was recovered from him quickly spread like wildfire given that the pontiff’s constituency has 1.406 billion faithful or just over the population of Africa.

Compared to prosperity pastors in countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, South Korea and many that others fly around the world in jets or helicopters that are maintained by their flock, the pope was poorer than a church mouse.

Consequently, there is an ongoing comparison between Pope Francis and his predecessors, particularly Pope John Paul I, formerly Cardinal Albini Luciani. Pope John Paul I was an edification of tenacity, courage, humility, selflessness and righteousness, according Jewish journalist, David Yallop, who traces his lineage to Jesus Christ.

In a brief profile received by Tell Media from Uganda, Pope Francis who will buried on Saturday is celebrated as a friend of the downtrodden and the poor – very much in the league of Pope John Paul I. The profile reads:

“The only thing that matters is that, it is not a question of time. You won’t believe this! Pope Francis died leaving only 100 US dollars behind. Yes, one hundred dollars. Less than 90 euros. No house. No bank account. No investments in his name. And yet, he was the head of the Catholic Church. A position that could have paid him around 340,000 euros a year. But he refused this money. Every year. Since 2013.

“Why? Because he was a Jesuit, and Jesuits take a vow of poverty. Rather than live in the Vatican’s luxurious apartments like his predecessors, he chose to settle in the Casa Santa Marta, a simple, modest residence. No gilding. No personal servants. Just a bed, a desk and his faith.

“He wore his old, worn black shoes, refusing the traditional red loafers. He travelled in a small Ford Focus, while other religious leaders drove in limousines. He ate with Vatican employees, not in a private dining room. He dressed simply, with no special adornment, just his white robes and an Iron Cross.

 Invisible wealth…

“While some cling to their possessions, their properties, their image… Pope Francis chose to own nothing in order to offer everything. No millions. No complex wills.”

In a chapter headlined ‘The Thirty Three Days’ in the book In God’s Name, Jewish investigative journalist David Yallop, how the Vatican gang of cardinals known as the Curia connived to assassinate Pope John Paul I, who in just 33 days into his papacy had vowed to root out the Roman Catholic Church rotten apples. Here are excerpts from ‘The Thirty Three Days’:

“When Albino Luciani threw open the windows of the Papal Apartments within twenty-four hours of his election, the gesture personified his entire Papacy, fresh air and sunlight rushed into a Roman Catholic Church, which had grown increasingly dark and sombre during the last years of Paul VI.

“Luciani, the man whose self-description during his Venice days had been, ‘I am just a poor man accustomed to small things and silence’ and now fond himself obliged to confront the Vatican grandeur and the curial babble. The son of a bricklayer was now Supreme Head of a religion whose founder was the son of a carpenter.

“Many of the Vatican experts who had failed even to consider the possibility of Luciani’s election hailed him as ‘The Unknown Pope’. He had been well enough known by the ninety-nine cardinals to be entrusted with the Church’s future, this man without any diplomatic training or Curial experience. This considerable number of Curial cardinals had been rejected. In essence the entire Curia had been rejected in favour of a quiet, humble, man who promptly announced that he wished to be called Pastor rather than Pontiff.

“This how the papacy of John Paul I began; a Papacy with clear aims and aspirations. Immediately, Luciani set cats among a variety of Vatican pigeons. Before the inaugural Mass, he had addressed the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Vatican. His own diplomatic staff visibly blanched when he observed on behalf of the entire Roman Catholic Church:

‘We have no temporal goods to exchange, no economic interests to discuss. Our possibilities for intervention are specific and limited and of a special character. They do not interfere with the purely temporal, technical and political affairs, which are matters of your government.

‘in this way, our diplomatic missions to your highest civil authorities, far from being a survival from the past, are a witness to our deep-seated respect for lawful temporal power, and to our lively interest in the humane causes that the temporal power is intended to advance.

The cardinals, among Paul Marcinkus, Luigi Manelli and Pellegrino De Strobel, and banker Roberto Calvi – a Mafia gang leader with connections in the Vatican – immediately knew that their goose had been cooked. This because the Vatican Bank, which they managed, was being investigated by the Bank of Italy serious crimes money-laundering and drug trafficking that roped in the ‘Sicily Crowd of Mafia.’ They began plotting how to assassinate him, which they did 33 days later by administering him with cyanide.

David Yallop writes:

“It was from Giovanni Benelli that the Pope learned of the Bank of Italy investigation into Banco Ambrosiano. It was typical of the way the Roman Catholic Church operated.

“The former number two in the Secretary of State Department had built a strong network of contacts throughout the country. Lucio Gelid of P2 would have been suitably impressed at the range and quality to which Benelli had access. It included very well-placed sources within the Bank of Italy. These were the sources which had informed the cardinal of the investigation taking place in Roberto Calvi’s empire, an inquiry which was moving to its climax in September 1978. What particularly concerned Benelli and subsequently Luciabi was the part of the investigation that was probing Calvi’s links with the Vatican. The Bank of Italy contact was certain that the investigation wold be followed by serious criminal charges against Roberto Calvi and possibly against some his fellow directors. Equally certain was the fact that the Vatican Bank was deeply implicated in a considerable number of deals that broke a variety of Italian laws. The men at the top of the investigating team’s list of potential criminals inside the Vatican Bank were Paul Marcinkus, Luigi Manelli and Pellegrino De Strobel. Benelli had learned over nearly a decade that one did not influence Luciani by strenuously urging a particular course of action.

“Thus, writes Yallop:

“With Pope Luciani, you laid out the facts, made your own recommendation, and then gave him time and space to consider. Having absorbed all the available information, he would decide and when Pope Luciani decided, nothing, and understand me on this, nothing would move or shift him. Gentle, yes. Humble, yes. But when committed to a course of action, like a rock.

It is against his strong morality The National Catholic Reporter says every pope should be judged independently despite striking similarities in character and disposition. In story by Michael Sean Winters, The National Catholic Repoter says

“Much of the coverage of Pope Francis’ legacy on Monday (April 21) dwelt on the ways he differed from his predecessors, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. It is natural to compare a pope to his predecessors and, in the long history of the church, the selection of a new pope has often evidenced a desire to maintain balance within the universal church. In the 19th century, the reactionary Pope Pius IX was succeeded by the more diplomatic Leo XIII who was, in turn, succeeded by the more conservative Pius X.”

Unfortunately, says Michael Sean winters, many of the comparisons being made now betray an ideological edge that does no justice to the legacy of any of the three most recent popes.

“When Pope Francis was elected on March 13, 2013, the Vatican’s reputation as a forceful, effective global advocate for basic human rights and a humane world order was at its apogee, thanks to the work of Francis’s two papal predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI,” wrote George Weigel in the Washington Post. “Francis, who died on Monday at age 88, does not leave a similar legacy. It will be up to his successor to rebuild a Catholic global witness now in disarray.”

Winters disagrees with The Washington Post story.

“Disarray? There is an argument to be made for each of the criticisms Weigel voices but those arguments are not self-evident. For example, the deal the Vatican struck with the Chinese government over the appointment of bishops – a deal that remains secret so people like Weigel and me can’t be sure of its stipulations – could be seen as ceding too much influence over the selection of bishops to the Chinese Communist Party,” he argues.

He goes on to say that the Holy See had similar concordats with regimes of equally suspicious moral character through much of its history. What Weigel fails to acknowledge is that there was a price to be paid for continuing the standoff between the regime and the church in China. Some brave Chinese Catholics think it was a price worth paying and others do not. Does it constitute, with the other examples, an “unhappy, even tragic, record?”

“Nonsense. Francis built bridges when Weigel wanted him to build walls. Some bridges fail, others succeed. Time will tell, not Weigel. Worse was the essay by the former archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, at First Things. It was so churlish, I will not dignify it with a response. In fact, there were elements of continuity and discontinuity between Francis’ pontificate and those of his immediate predecessors,” Winters argues.

He explains that all the three recent popes met the changing needs of the times as they perceived them. He says, “In 1978, when John Paul II was elected, there was a sense that the centrifugal forces unleashed by the Second Vatican Council had grown too strong, that it was time to reassert the fact that the word “religion” comes from the Latin religiare, to bind. Pope Benedict XVI feared that the moral relativism of the ambient culture threatened the church’s moral clarity. Francis saw that humanity was hurting, and that the church should become a “field hospital” where the wounded were treated, not castigated.

All three men, he points out, brought their enormous talents to bear on the work of being pope. John Paul II displayed his tenacity and courage. Benedict XVI deployed his immense theological learning. Francis brought both a pastoral touch, and the insights of a pastoral theology rooted in the lived experience of the church, to his pontificate. The Catholic Church is better for having had such remarkable men in leadership the past four and a half decades.

• A Tell Media report / By Juma Kwayera