Independent voices from the TWT Communities
As with the 1978 election of Pope John Paul II, the March selection of an Argentine Jesuit, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, as Pope Francis stunned many within and outside the Roman Catholic Church: The new pontiff wasn't widely known outside of South America, and his views on many issues were a bit mysterious.
Proclaiming the first saints of his pontificate, Pope Francis on Sunday canonized 813 Italians who were slain by Turkish soldiers in a 15th-century siege.
Pope Francis ordered his staff on Friday to take "decisive action" against the sexual violation of minors.
Pope Francis said Friday that the Catholic Church was going to take decisive action against members of the clergy found guilty of sex abuse.
Italian police on Thursday arrested a priest accused of pocketing 4 million euros ($5.1 million) from a Catholic hospital he ran and helping run up 600 million euros ($769 million) in debts that forced it into bankruptcy.
A standing-room-only crowd joined Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, in celebrating Easter Mass, where he explained how Pope Francis had the honor of leading the 2,000-year-old tradition for 1.2 billion Catholics around the world.
Pope Francis reached out in friendship to "so many Muslim brothers and sisters" during a Good Friday procession dedicated to the suffering of Christians from terrorism, war and religious fanaticism in the Middle East.
Pope Benedict XVI's love for the Renaissance church caused him to revive some of the papal styles of that period. His successor, Pope Francis, is turning out to be a sartorial minimalist, reflecting his more humble, understated approach to the papacy.
Pope Francis celebrated his first Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square, encouraging people to be humble and young at heart as he promised to go to a youth jamboree Brazil this summer, while the faithful enthusiastically waved olive branches and braided palm fronds.
Pope Francis has traveled to Castel Gandolfo to have lunch with his predecessor Benedict XVI in a historic and potentially problematic melding of the papacies that has never before confronted the Catholic Church.
With the election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, there seems to have been no shortage of people — Catholic and non-Catholic — offering the new Pope Francis advice. Much, if not most, of that advice has been theological, suggesting a wide range of changes in Church doctrine and rules.
Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected by the Vatican's papal conclave last week after five rounds of voting. He took the name Pope Francis -- after St. Francis of Assisi, the revered Italian friar who founded the Franciscan Order -- and became the first Jesuit and first leader from the Americas of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.
The new pope is a puzzle to nearly everybody, particularly to the politicians, pundits and other know-it-alls. He looks and sounds like a remnant of a previous time, thrown up in the squalid swamp of a trashy and superficial age. He's not at all hip and "with it." He's not interested in "moving forward," as in the current cliche. He projects humility and kindness and speaks of his Christian faith as if he really believes in the amazing grace of the Gospel. This makes the intellectual elites, and even some "holy men" of the various bureaucracies of modern Christendom, incredulous, nervous and embarrassed.
Breaking with tradition, Pope Francis delivered off-the-cuff remarks about God's power to forgive instead of reading from a written speech for the first Sunday window appearance of his papacy.
Pope Francis has 1.2 billion followers in the Roman Catholic Church, but he's not following a single one of them on Facebook or Twitter.
"That occasion was a sign to the Middle East and to the whole world, a sign of hope," he said.
Pope Francis reaches out to 'Muslim brothers' on Good Friday →
That same joy should keep people young, he said.
