Pope Francis has shown that Catholicism is a dynamic institution, whose leader can face unresolved questions openly.
went to confession in St. Peter’s Basilica. A little more than a year after his election, he was leading a penitential service, which had been organized to encourage Catholics worldwide to fulfill their obligation to confess their sins before Easter. Priests were stationed in confessional booths that had been arrayed around the basilica.
Francis’s pontificate was tagged as surprising from the start. In February, 2013, Benedict resigned, the first Pope to step aside in nearly six hundred years. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, of Buenos Aires, Argentina, was elected the next month: the first Jesuit Pope, the first Pope from the Americas, and the first to take the name Francis—in emulation of Francis of Assisi, the medieval Italian saint known for “holy poverty.
At the same time, Francis has purposefully directed the papacy outward: devoting his second encyclical letter, “Laudato si’,”; travelling to about a dozen predominantly Muslim countries; opening the Secret Archive of documents pertaining to the Vatican’s diplomatic machinations during the Second World War; and speaking to the press with an offhand ease that is rare for any public figure.
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