When the news broke that Pope Francis had died, Christianity Today responded in the only way it knows how: with an incense-scented eulogy that doubled as a love letter to ecumenical confusion.

The article, penned by Franco Iacomini, bore the misleadingly tame headline, “Died: Pope Francis, Friend to Evangelicals,” but what followed was less obituary and more beatification—not in the Catholic sense, but in the smug, blurry-eyed Protestant admiration of a man who spent more time cozying up to Pentecostal preachers than defending even the basic pretense of biblical clarity.

Let us not be naive. Jorge Mario Bergoglio—known globally as Pope Francis—was not some quirky retiree from Buenos Aires who happened to dabble in interfaith dialogue. He was the head of the Roman Catholic Church. The Vicar of Christ, according to the harlot church he oversaw. The spiritual CEO of a billion-member empire built on centuries of sacramental error, gospel distortion, and theological tyranny.

But to Christianity Today, he was apparently just a relatable guy who liked coffee chats with evangelicals and had a flair for humility.

According to Iacomini, Francis was beloved by everyone from charismatic youth pastors to Presbyterian Bible society heads. The article revels in stories about Francis calling Protestant friends on their birthdays, asking for their opinions, and even appointing one of them—Marcelo Figueroa—to run the Argentine edition of the Vatican newspaper. You know, as one does when the boundaries between orthodoxy and flattery have been completely erased.

We’re told Francis was “not the pope” when meeting with these men. He was just Jorge. Just a humble shepherd who smelled like his sheep. Just a man who liked to laugh, who prayed for his friends, who apologized for past offenses and asked for advice on how to handle Protestants. But here’s the thing… Francis wasn’t just Jorge. He was the pope. And for twelve years, he used that office not to proclaim the gospel but to distort it beyond recognition.

This piece, like so many others churned out by the theological human resources department that is Christianity Today, commits the cardinal sin of our age… mistaking friendliness for faithfulness. It offers readers a portrait of Francis as a kind-hearted, bridge-building, diversity-loving man of the people.

But what it doesn’t offer is any serious engagement with what the pope actually believed and taught. No discussion of transubstantiation. No reflection on Mariology. No mention of indulgences, purgatory, or the blasphemous assertion that the Catholic Church alone is the means of grace. Instead, we are asked to admire his humility and ignore the mountain of doctrinal sacrilege he sat atop like a smiling grandfather in a white cassock.

Let’s take a closer look at the article’s own words, which read more like something plucked from a Vatican press release than from a magazine that once claimed evangelical roots. “Francis seemed to enjoy his evangelical Argentinian friends,” Iacomini writes, like he’s talking about a man who shared garden tomatoes, not a religious leader who systematically upheld and reinforced the antichristic errors of Rome.

Another gem: “He was a person of relations… he respected the institutions but built bridges on the foundation of relationships.” What is this—a papal Tinder profile? The gospel isn’t about being “relational” for its own sake. It’s about truth. The truth Francis rejected, obscured, and replaced with a counterfeit version that looks good in press photos and ecumenical tea parties.

Then there’s this sycophantic pearl: “Humility was one of the hallmarks of his papacy.” Yes, because nothing says humility quite like presiding over a global empire from a golden throne while daring to call oneself the “Holy Father.”

Francis mastered the art of affectation—a sort of Jesuitical charisma that fooled journalists, evangelicals, and globalists alike. He was the soft-spoken velvet glove over the iron fist of Roman supremacy. A man who asked for Protestant prayers one moment and issued papal bulls the next.

Even his carefully curated image of “being among the sheep” was weaponized. We’re told he repeated the phrase “a pastor must have the odor of the sheep” as if this was some Christlike beatitude, but the real odor surrounding his papacy was that of sanctified confusion.

By the way, this was the same pope who rebuked conservative Roman Catholics for being too rigid while blessing statues of Pachamama, the pagan fertility goddess, inside the Vatican.

And of course, Iacomini makes sure to include that Francis once told evangelicals, “Do not be afraid to take risks for love!” A phrase so cloying and generic it might as well be stitched onto a pillow in a dorm room at Union Theological Seminary and invoked during a plant-worship session.

The only risk Francis ever took was how far he could stretch biblical language before it snapped entirely. He spoke often of “diversity reconciled by the Holy Spirit,” but what he meant was theological relativism baptized in sentimentalism—a church with no lines, no spine, and no need for truth.

Let’s not gloss over what Christianity Today wants you to forget. This is the same pope who kissed Qurans, praised atheists for following their conscience, and referred to evangelism as “solemn nonsense” if done without a relational pretext.

This is the same man who opened wide the doors of the Vatican to LGBTQ activists while keeping biblical Christians at arm’s length.

This is the same pope who muddied the waters of justification, softened the exclusive claims of Christ, and declared that God wills the diversity of all religions.

But none of that finds its way into Iacomini’s article. Why? Because Christianity Today isn’t interested in guarding the truth. It’s interested in celebrating feelings. It doesn’t contend for the gospel. It curates vibes. And in their world, a pope who plays nice with evangelicals is more praiseworthy than one who boldly defends the authority of Scripture or the sufficiency of grace.

What we have here is another episode in the long-running drama of Protestant amnesia. A puff piece for a pontiff who spent his reign blurring the lines between Rome and Wittenberg, truth and error, Christ and culture. It is a eulogy soaked in sentiment, utterly devoid of discernment.

And rather than warning readers about the eternal consequences of embracing a false gospel, Christianity Today has once again opted for a journalistic group hug around a corpse in a cassock.

No one should be surprised. This is Christianity Astray, after all—the place where doctrinal lines go to fade and where popes go to be praised as “friends” of the very gospel they oppose. Their legacy is not clarity but confusion, not conviction but compromise.

And Pope Francis? He wasn’t just a “friend to evangelicals.” He was a master at winning over a generation too theologically timid to see the danger behind the smile.