No, the Pope isn't infallible by definition. Catholics believe he is capable of making infallible statements, but it isn't a 24/7 eats breakfast infallibly superpower and not every statement is infallible.
No the Pope is not infallible and you can disagree with the Pope. Sure. But you cannot use that as a cop out to turn Catholicism into an arbitrary Protestant sect where you make up moral values as you go based on your political inclinations. The whole point of Catholicism is that you have a whole institution whose job it is to guide the Church. If you believe you know better than the clergy on every single topic, you are by definition a Protestant. Lots of these Protesting Catholics have worldviews that are entirely incompatible with the fundamentals of Catholicism, but they do not want to drop the Catholic aesthetic, because it gives them an air of superiority over their fellow Protestants which they look down upon.
The pope, as all humans, is fallible. It's only when speaks ex cathedra that his teachings are considered infallible. These are very rare (Francis never did it).
Now, I agree with you. As a Catholic, I'll support any pope, i.e., I want them to do good. That doesn't mean I have to be fond of him. I really liked Francis, though. I'm afraid I'll deeply miss his wisdom.
> It's only when speaks ex cathedra that his teachings are considered infallible.
That's the infallibility of the extraordinary magisterium. The Catholic Church also teaches that the Pope possesses the infallibility of the "ordinary and universal magisterium", which makes less than ex cathedra statements infallible, when he teaches something and (almost) all Catholic bishops agree with the teaching.
But, I think many Catholic theologians would say, that whatever infallible teaching Francis gave by the ordinary magisterium, was largely just a repetition of what his recent predecessors had taught, without any significant doctrinal developments. (Probably the biggest point of contention is the status of his catechism change on the death penalty, but I think even the majority of theologians who support the change wouldn't argue it was infallible.)
An example of a teaching which many Catholic theologians say is infallible ordinary magisterium is John Paul II's 1994 declaration that women can't be ordained as priests (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis) [0] – which wasn't teaching anything new per se, but arguably the first time it had been stated with such explicitness and solemnity
An interesting meta issue, is that theologians debate which papal statements are infallible, but the judgement of a statement as infallible isn't itself infallible. So, while Cardinal Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI) issued an official declaration in 1995 stating it was infallible ordinary and universal magisterium, [1] that declaration itself isn't infallible – and some (progressive-leaning) Catholic theologians have argued the declaration is mistaken. [2] Conversely, a minority of (conservative-leaning) Catholic theologians go beyond Ratzinger and argue Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is infallible extraordinary magisterium (ex cathedra). [3] Some even argue the Pope can teach infallibly and then erroneously claim he wasn't doing so. [4]
