The Day Pope Francis Cracked the Gate

The first Latino Pope rolled up in a Fiat, side-eyed the Deporter-in-Chief, and blessed the people Washington forgot.

WASHINGTON—Pope Francis is dead. The first Latin American pontiff, the first Jesuit to don the papal white, and the first in generations to make the Vatican feel less like a fortress and more like a field hospital, has passed away.

He died as he lived—understated, resolute, and with his eyes fixed not on the cathedrals of Rome, but on the borders, prisons, and shelters where the forgotten huddle. His papacy was never about grandeur. It was about presence. And for a fleeting decade, Jorge Mario Bergoglio turned the world’s most powerful pulpit into a soapbox for the marginalized, the mutilated, the migrant, and the meek.

Witnessing Pope Francis

On September 23, 2015, Pope Francis made his first and only trip to the White House to speak with Barack Obama, the deporter-in-chief. Obama won his first and second election by marketing an amnesty to Latino voters who backed him with historic support at the polls.

But in the White House, Obama had become the most prolific deportation president i…