Are you pointing to another pope with "another symbolic figure with empty gestures"? Would be clearer to name him then! Having read a bit of the previous pope Benedict XVI I liked a lot what he did/wrote
If only one thing it's his series of books Jesus of Nazareth: the only theology book I've ever read, it clarified so much about the Scriptures, and was written from the point of view of a world-class scholar, much more scientific than I would have thought, taking into account the views of other scholars, Jew, Protestant or atheists alike, as long as they had interesting ideas.
