Who Is the Pope? | by Eamon Duffy | The New York Review of Books Who Is the Pope? Bloomsbury, 227 pp., $20.95 (paper) Pope Francis; drawing by James Ferguson On December 22, 2014, Pope Francis delivered the traditional papal Christmas speech to the assembled ranks of the Roman Curia. This annual meeting with the staff of the church’s central administration offers popes the opportunity for a stock-taking “state of the union” address. In 2005, his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI had used the occasion to deliver a momentous analysis of the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” that he believed had distorted understanding of the Second Vatican Council by presenting it as a revolutionary event, and to which he attributed many of the ills of the modern church.

The phrase “hermeneutic of rupture” was eagerly seized on by those seeking a “reform of the reform,” and became a weapon in the struggle to roll back some of the most distinctive developments in the church following the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965, which had been presided over first by John XXIII and then by Paul VI. The scope of Pope Francis’s 2014 address, however, was far more local and specific. Having briefly thanked his hearers for their hard work during the previous year, the pope launched into an excruciating fifteen-point dissection of the spiritual ailments to which people in their position might be prone. It was a dismaying catalog of “curial diseases”—the spiritual “narcissism” that, as part of the “pathology of power,” encouraged some to behave like “lords and masters” (in Italian, padroni); the “Martha complex” of excessive activity, which squeezes out human sympathy and renders men incapable of “weeping with those who weep”; the “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that besets those “who build walls and routines around themselves” and forget the spirit of the Gospel.

The pope’s tally of curial sins also included cliquishness, acquisitiveness, careerism, competitiveness, and indifference to others; the “existential schizophrenia” and “progressive spiritual emptiness” of many who abandon pastoral service and “restrict themselves to bureaucratic matters”; the “theatrical severity and sterile pessimism,” the “funereal face” that often attend the exercise of power; and the “terrorism of gossip” by which the cowardly “are ready to slander, defame and discredit others, even in newspapers and magazines.” Though presented by Francis as a pastoral aid to a seasonal examination of conscience, the speech was widely perceived, not least by many in his audience, as a scathing critique of the current papal administration. Such excoriation of the Curia by a pope is unprecedented in modern times, yet there was nothing in its substance that need have surprised. The conclave that elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope in March 2013 was beset by a sense of scandal and dysfunction at the heart of the church.

The cardinals met in the wake of the startling resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and under a rain of revelations about corruption and money laundering in the Vatican bank, clerical sexual abuse, and the failure of the church authorities to confront it—all given lurid coloring by the “Vatileaks scandal,” the leaking to the press by Pope Benedict’s own butler of hundreds of confidential documents revealing corruption, maladministration, and internecine feuding within the Curia itself. In the run-up to the conclave, cardinal after cardinal demanded a pope who would purge the church of these ills, starting with the reform of the Curia. Francis was elected largely because he was perceived as someone who would deliver this. His pastoral emphasis on the missionary proclamation of the mercy of God to fallible people in difficult situations seemed to point away from sterile preoccupation with ritual and doctrinal niceties, bureaucratic obstructionism, and the ignoble protection of the church’s institutional interests. One of Francis’s first major acts was the establishment of a commission of eight (subsequently nine) cardinals charged with the radical overhaul of the church’s central structures, starting with the Vatican bank.

His very choice of name signaled a turn away from the doctrinal and institutional concerns of his immediate predecessors, and pointed instead to his passionate insistence on the church’s loving engagement with the poor who make up most of the world’s population. And yet in doctrinal matters Francis is no radical, no reformer. On the central issues often taken as the litmus test of Catholic orthodoxy his views are entirely conventional. He is strongly “pro-life” and an ardent supporter of traditional family values. As archbishop of Buenos Aires he opposed the Argentinian government’s 2010 bill to legalize same-sex marriages, while supporting civil unions for gay couples, a moderate pragmatism that was rejected by the rest of the Argentinian bishops, who favored a more confrontational stance. In his published “conversation” with the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, he has called for a new and profound theology of women and a greater recognition of their crucial role in the church. But his own folksy remarks about the place of women and “the feminine genius” in the church have distressed even the most moderate feminists.

He has made clear his belief that Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (Priestly Ordination) has settled “definitively” the question of women’s ordination—“that door is closed.” This blanket endorsement of Papa Wojtyła’s attempt to close down discussion of the issue indicates the limits both of Francis’s radicalism and, arguably, of his theological sophistication. Critics of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis pointed out that popes do not have a hotline to God. “Definitive” papal utterances are not oracles providing new information, but adjudications at the end of a wider and longer process of doctrinal reflection, consultation, and debate, often extending over centuries: there are procedures to be followed if such adjudications are to command obedience. But the question of female ordination has never been subjected to this kind of extended theological scrutiny, and a properly theological basis for the prohibition remains therefore to be tested. So, it was asked, how did Papa Wojtyła know that the ordination of women was impossible, and what was meant by describing his preemptive strike on the question as “definitive”?

But these are not matters that greatly interest Francis, and his acceptance of conventional theological positions has enabled some alarmed traditionalists to downplay any suggestion that his election represents a significant break with previous papal regimes. George Weigel, biographer, confidante, and eulogist of John Paul II, for example, insisted that Bergoglio’s emphasis on evangelization, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), was a continuation of John Paul’s and Benedict’s stress on the need for a “new evangelization,” and demonstrated “the seamless continuity between John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis and the continuity between the John Paul–Benedict interpretation of Vatican II and Francis.” That judgment, however, carefully ignores the significance of Bergoglio’s consistent adoption of a rhetoric, in word and act, manifestly at odds with the ethos of the previous two pontificates. For admirers of the “dynamic orthodoxy” (a euphemism for the vigorous exertion of central authority) that characterized the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Bergoglio’s frank acceptance of clerical fallibility and the perils of authoritarian leadership are both startling and deeply unappetizing.

Outraged conservative opponents like Cardinal Raymond Burke, in a dramatic departure from the protocol that inhibits cardinals from public criticism of living popes, have described the church under Francis as “a ship without a rudder.” It’s not hard to see why. In a series of interviews and speeches, Francis has deplored clergy who “play Tarzan”—church leaders too confident of their own importance, moral strength, or superior insight. The best religious leaders in his view are those who leave “room for doubt.” The bad leader is “excessively normative because of his self-assurance.” The priest who “nullifies the decision-making” of his people is not a good priest, “he is a good dictator.” Bergoglio has even said that the very fact that someone thinks he has all the answers “is proof that God is not with him.” Those who look always “for disciplinarian solutions,…long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists” have “a static and inward-directed view of things,” and have turned faith into ideology. And so the experience of failure, of reaching one’s own limits, is the truest and best school of leadership.

He has declared himself drawn to “the theology of failure” and a style of authority that has learned through failure to consult others, and to “travel in patience.” There is a strong element of autobiography in all this. In 1973, while still in his mid-thirties, Jorge Bergoglio became provincial superior of the Jesuits of Argentina. The Argentinian hierarchy was deeply compromised by acquiescence in the savagely repressive rule of a military junta, but many Jesuits had embraced the political and theological radicalism of the 1970s. As Jesuit superior, Bergoglio avoided open confrontation with the regime, struggling to reconcile the demands of justice and compassion for those suffering atrocity with the need to preserve the order’s institutions and mission and to protect Jesuit lives. His own deeply traditional piety was in any case unsympathetic to much of the social and religious experimentalism of the time.

Hero-worshiped by many for his personal charisma and spiritual gifts, he was detested by others who saw him as a repressive influence, inhibiting the work of the Spirit in a time of crisis, and he was later to be accused of having betrayed politically radical Jesuits to the junta. All Francis’s recent biographers agree that the latter accusation was false, but his role as Jesuit provincial has divided even the best of them. Paul Vallely’s Pope Francis: Untying the Knots was one of the earliest in the field. Admiring but keenly questioning, its judgments have worn well. For Vallely, Bergoglio’s failures in wisdom and courage in the 1970s marked a watershed in his life, in the wake of which he underwent a profound conversion to the humility and insistence on the primacy of the needs of the poor that characterized his work as archbishop of Buenos Aires and that now dominate his papacy. Austen Ivereigh’s The Great Reformer benefits from the privileged insights of some of those instrumental in securing Bergoglio’s election, and from Ivereigh’s own intimate knowledge of his Latin American background.

He argues, by contrast, that while Bergoglio did make mistakes as provincial, in essence he ruled wisely and well in a wild time, and that his spiritual and personal values have remained consistent throughout his life. However that may be, Bergoglio himself has acknowledged that as provincial, “I had to learn from my errors along the way, because, to tell you the truth, I made hundreds of errors. Errors and sins.” Significantly, however, he attributes those sins not to religious or political reaction, but to inexperience and failure to consult: “I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.” That perception is bedded deep in Bergoglio’s psyche, and has shaped his actions as pope. Francis is the first pope to have been ordained after the Second Vatican Council: his commitment to conciliar values is instinctive, strong, and different in kind from that of either of his immediate predecessors. In Evangelii Gaudium, his most important papal utterance to date, he pointedly spoke of the need to “discern the signs of the times,” a crucial phrase from the council’s document on the church and the modern world that Pope Benedict especially disliked and repeatedly criticized.

Gregorio Borgia/AP Images Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis at the Vatican, September 2014 But above all, Francis is the first pope to embrace wholeheartedly the Second Vatican Council’s aspiration for a church in which authority is shared among the whole episcopate, rather than monolithically focused in the papacy. At the end of the council in 1965, Pope Paul VI had established a permanent Synod of Bishops as a forum for continued collaboration between pope and bishops. Many saw the synod as the major expression of “collegiality” that would devolve much of the decision-making of the Roman Curia to the bishops in synod and through them to the local churches. Such hopes proved illusory: the Roman authorities saw to it that the synod remained a powerless talking shop with no independence or initiating power. Bergoglio shared the general episcopal dissatisfaction with this situation, and as pope, in one of the most striking passages of Evangelii Gaudium, he has called for “a conversion of the papacy” on such matters.

John Paul II, he reminded his readers, had invited suggestions for a renewal of the papal office to make it more visibly an office of service, but “we have made little progress in this regard.” The papacy and the central structures of the Church must heed the call to “pastoral conversion,” because “excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach.” In particular, Francis insisted, there had been a failure to realize a truly collegial spirit within the church, and episcopal conferences needed to be given “genuine doctrinal authority.” He has proved as good as his word. Opening the Synod on the Family in October 2014 that, among much else, dealt with the fraught issues of sexuality, contraception, divorce, and remarriage, Francis encouraged the bishops to express their views frankly.

No one should be silent or conceal his true opinions, “perhaps believing that the Pope might think something else.” To do so would be a failure in “synodality, because it is necessary to say all that, in the Lord, one feels the need to say: without polite deference, without hesitation.” These were not empty platitudes: under John Paul II and Benedict XVI open questioning of official positions was routinely branded as “dissent,” and bishops who deviated even mildly from the official line were subject to reprimand or removal. For a pope to encourage fearless public outspokenness among the bishops was a startling novelty. The debates that ensued were the most openly contentious since the closure of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Press attention focused on an emergent liberal pastoral agenda, which favored the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to communion and a more welcoming attitude toward people in same-sex relationships. This was fiercely contested by those who saw such concessions as surrender to a godless culture.

Pope Francis, who had notoriously remarked to journalists that “if a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge him?” and who declared in Evangelii Gaudium that the Eucharist was not a reward for the perfect but medicine for the weak, was seen as favoring these calls for liberalization. The failure of the synod to endorse moves in that direction was accordingly trumpeted as a personal defeat. But that is not how he sees it. In his closing speech to the synod he reminded the bishops that discussion had not ended: they were launched on a true experience of synod, “a journey together” in which even confrontation was a sign of the activity of the spirit. He insisted that “I would be very worried and saddened…if all were in a state of agreement, or silent in a false and quietist peace.” And he reminded all the parties in the debates of the perils of entrenched positions.

On the one hand there was the temptation to “hostile inflexibility,” of “wanting to close oneself,…not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises,” clinging to “the certitude of what we know.” This was the special temptation of the zealous, and the so-called “traditionalists.” On the other hand he warned against “a destructive tendency to do-goodism” (buonismo in Italian) that “in the name of a deceptive mercy binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the causes and the roots.” This, he told them, was the special temptation of the “do-gooders,” and of the so-called “progressives and liberals.” But they should continue to listen to each other with tranquility, confident that the Spirit would guide what seemed to outside observers a “disputatious Church” through choppy waters. Though always meticulously respectful of his immediate predecessors, the differences between Francis and them are wide, deep, and, as his handling of the synod makes clear, momentous for the church.

His distrust of religious leaders who “play Tarzan,” secure in their own certitudes, does not sit well with admirers of John Paul II or his style of leadership. Though he has commended the “prudence” of Benedict XVI’s rehabilitation of the old Latin liturgy, he is suspicious of the reactionary ideological freight that the Latin liturgy often carries with it, and he despises ceremonial pomp. The exalted doctrine of priesthood that has been in favor during the last two pontificates undoubtedly contributed to a resurgent clericalism (and interest in ecclesiastical millinery) among many of those trained for the priesthood since the late 1970s. It has been notably absent from Francis’s utterances: he has abolished honorific titles and dress for the younger clergy working in the Curia, since for him priesthood is essentially about service to the poor and vulnerable, rather than a symbolic status or the exercise of sacramental power.

Perhaps most momentously, Francis has pointed the church away from culture wars with secular society that were such a feature of Benedict’s papacy, toward a less confrontational approach to the social circumstances in which the faithful have to live, and a more fruitful reengagement with the church’s mission to the poor and underprivileged, in whom he sees both the natural and the most receptive hearers of the Gospel. Where Benedict was inclined to blame the increasing marginalization of Christianity in Western society on a collective apostasy rooted in the shallow materialism of secular modern society, Francis is inclined to attribute the corresponding decline in Latin America to the church’s own shortcomings: Perhaps the Church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs…perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas, perhaps the world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions; perhaps the Church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age. There was a sense in Benedict’s pontificate that the best response to the crisis of secularization might be a strong repudiation of secular culture and consolidation within a smaller, purer, and more assertive church.

By contrast, Francis believes that the church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery. The church must be “capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy” in “a world of ‘wounded’ persons in need of understanding, forgiveness, love.” It must never retreat into itself, never opt for “rigidity and defensiveness.” It works with people as they are, not as they ought to be, taking pastoral risks to meet human need, even if in the process “its shoes get soiled by the mud of the streets.” That open evangelical and pastoral vision was memorably encapsulated during Francis’s first Holy Week as pope, in March 2013, when he celebrated the solemn liturgy of Maundy Thursday not, as was usual, in the Lateran Basilica, but in an institution for young offenders, where he washed and kissed the feet of twelve prisoners, one of them a Muslim woman.

Predictably, the gesture scandalized the liturgists and canon lawyers, who pointed out that canon law forbade the ritual washing of any but male feet on Maundy Thursday, since the ceremony (allegedly) commemorated Christ’s inauguration of an exclusively male priesthood. Pope Benedict’s penchant for solemn liturgy had been widely pressed as the model of correct practice. Crestfallen “precisians”—partisans of strict and precise observance of rules—now insisted that the pope’s liturgical actions were uniquely privileged, above law, and not a model for imitation. Unmoved, Francis broke the taboo again on Maundy Thursday 2014, when he washed the feet of men and women in a home for the elderly and infirm. Francis is manifestly, among much else, seeking to place the papacy and the church it heads on a different course from the one it has followed for the last thirty-five years. By word and example he is modeling a style of leadership that is personal without being autocratic, that encourages outspokenness and local responsibility, and that directs the eyes of the church beyond institutional concerns to the needs of suffering humanity.

In establishing his advisory council of cardinals he has launched a far-reaching scrutiny of the church’s central governance and of the Vatican’s finances, but he is concerned with far more than a renewal of the church’s machinery. His passionate concern for the poor, which underlay the denunciation in Evangelii Gaudium of an “economics of exclusion”—which outraged Catholic neoconservatives—lies at the heart of what he believes the church is called to be. Beyond institutional reform, he is calling for a new openness in which the church defines itself not by what it excludes but by whom it reaches out to. Whether he will succeed is a moot point. To achieve change a pope needs the loyalty of those around him. A pope with a long time in office can ensure that those around him share his vision. Rome appoints all the world’s Catholic bishops; the pope himself decides who will be a cardinal. The long pontificate of John Paul II and the succession of his right-hand man, Benedict XVI, have created a hierarchy who share much of their vision for the church.

Gerhard Müller, still head of the Vatican’s most influential department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is also the general editor of Benedict XVI’s collected writings, though his admiration of liberation theology no doubt commends him to Pope Francis. Francis himself is unlikely to have a long pontificate: he is an old man, with only one functioning lung. Both in Rome and in the dioceses of the world he has been quietly putting in place men who share his vision. But the announcement in January 2015 of his second consistory for the creation of new cardinals was anything but quiet, because the pope’s startling list of the twenty cardinals-designate, fifteen of them under eighty and therefore eligible to vote in the next papal conclave, represented a positive fanfare for Francis’s alternative vision of the Catholic Church. Once again, no North American was included.

Flouting convention, major sees in America and Europe whose incumbents would normally expect to join the Sacred College “ex officio,” such as Chicago, Venice, and Turin, were bypassed in favor of bishops from tiny dioceses in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, most of which had never had a cardinal before, like Myanmar, Tonga, and Cape Verde. It seems clear that the new appointments are intended to empower the “church at the peripheries,” promoting pastoral bishops who, in the pope’s own phrase, “smell of the sheep,” while simultaneously frustrating the clerical careerism he loathes, by refusing the “automatic” promotions associated with more prestigious sees. Yet he has been slow to remove critics and opponents. Even the demotion last November of Cardinal Raymond Burke as head of the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s supreme court, was notably tardy, considering that Burke’s regular appearances in the capa magna, the twenty-foot-long train of scarlet watered silk sported by cardinals until the late 1960s, signaled an understanding of the church utterly at odds with that of the pope.

Francis’s humility and spontaneity have won the plaudits of the world’s press, but his style has not delighted everyone in the organization he heads. Two generations of clergy conscious of the dignity of their priesthood and formed as culture warriors under Papas Wojtyła and Ratzinger do not immediately warm to Francis’s loathing of clericalism and disregard of liturgical convention. However traditional his personal doctrinal views are, some see his unscripted utterances and spontaneous personal inclusiveness as potentially dangerous erosions of the deposit of faith. His Christmas address to the Curia reminded some hearers of the sermons during the annual Te Deum masses at which Bergoglio presided as archbishop of Buenos Aires, and which he used to berate the policies and shortcomings of President Néstor Kirchner and the other politicians who customarily attended, until the angry president decided to absent himself. As that comparison suggests, Francis’s direct methods are not always calculated to win friends and influence people. Even the friendliest curial officials in his audience last December may have felt battered by their boss, whatever the pope’s intentions. No pope, however charismatic, can change the church alone: they need the help of their civil servants.

For as they say in Rome, popes come and go, but the Curia is immortal. Letters Pope Francis Fast Facts - CNN.com Pope Francis Fast Facts CNN Library Updated 2:53 PM ET, Fri December 2, 2016 Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. Pope Francis looks on during his weekly general audience at St. Peter's square on November 11, 2015 at the Vatican. VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty Images (CNN) Here is a look at the life of Pope Francis , the current pope and first non-European pontiff of the modern era. Personal: Birth date: December 17, 1936 Birth place: Buenos Aires, Argentina Birth name: Jorge Mario Bergoglio Father: Mario Bergoglio Photos: Pope Francis' first year Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected the Roman Catholic Church's 266th Pope on March 13, 2013. The first pontiff from Latin America was also the first to take the name Francis.

It was a sign of maverick moves to come. Hide Caption 1 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Pope Francis at the reception desk of the Domus Internationalis Paulus VI residence, where he paid the bill for his stay during the conclave that would elect him leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. Hide Caption 2 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Pope Francis embraced a young boy with cerebral palsy in March 2013, a gesture that many took as a heartwarming token of his self-stated desire to "be close to the people." Hide Caption 3 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Pope Francis washes the feet of juvenile offenders, including Muslim women, as part of Holy Thursday rituals in March 2013. The act commemorates Jesus' washing of the Apostles' feet during the Last Supper. Hide Caption 4 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Crowds swarmed Pope Francis last July as he made his way through World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

According to the Vatican, 1 million people turned out to see the Pope. Hide Caption 5 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – During an impromptu press conference on the plane from Brazil to Rome, the Pope uttered five now-famous words about gay priests: "Who am I to judge?" Many saw the move as the opening of a more tolerant era in the church. Hide Caption 6 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – In August, Pope Francis and Italian teens took what is likely the first papal selfie, another indication of the Pope's down-to-earth charm. Hide Caption 7 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Pope Francis has eschewed fancy cars, instead choosing to drive a white Renault 4L. And he told priests and bishops to do the same. Hide Caption 8 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Pope Francis embraced Vinicio Riva, a man with a rare skin disease, in November. The images went viral, with even atheists expressing admiration for the gesture.

Hide Caption 9 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Pope Francis marked his 77th birthday on December 17 by hosting homeless men to a Mass and a meal at the Vatican. One of the men brought his dog. Hide Caption 10 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – Pope Francis jokes with members of the Rainbow Association, which uses clown therapy in hospitals, nursing homes and orphanages. Many Catholics saw this image as the joyful flip side of Francis' embrace of the disfigured man. Hide Caption 11 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – In December, Time magazine named Pope Francis its Person of the Year, lauding him as "the people's Pope." Hide Caption 12 of 13 Photos: Pope Francis' first year Pope Francis' first year – In another papal first, Pope Francis made the cover of Rolling Stone in January. The magazine praised his "obvious humility" and "empathy." Hide Caption The first Latin American pope and the first from the Americas. The first non-European pope in over 1,000 years.

Reportedly received the second most votes in the 2005 papal election. As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio took the bus to work and cooked his own meals. Pope Francis had part of one lung removed when he was a young man, but is in good health, according to the Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi. Timeline: December 13, 1969 - Is ordained as a priest. 1973-1979 - Serves as provincial for Argentina. 1980-1986 - Rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel. June 3, 1997 - Appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Buenos Aires. February 28, 1998 - Succeeds Cardinal Antonio Quarracino as archbishop of Buenos Aires. February 21, 2001 - Is made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II . November 8, 2005-November 8, 2011 - President of the Bishops' Conference of Argentina.

February 11, 2013 - Pope Benedict XVI announces that he will retire, effective February 28th. He cites his "advanced age" as the reason. February 28, 2013 - Pope Benedict XVI leaves the Vatican. At 8pm local time (2pm EST), his reign officially ends. March 13, 2013 - Bergoglio is elected the 266th pope by 115 cardinals on the second day and the fifth ballot of the cardinals' conclave. White smoke appears above the Sistine Chapel just after 7pm local time. He takes the name Francis and appears on the balcony at St. Peter's to greet the crowd. March 14, 2013 - Pope Francis celebrates a televised Mass in the Sistine Chapel at 5pm (noon ET). March 19, 2013 - Pope Francis is inaugurated before a crowd of tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square. March 23, 2013 - Pope Francis flies to Castel Gandolfo to meet with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

The Vatican says this is the first time in the history of the church that the current pope has met with his predecessor. March 26, 2013 - The Vatican announces that Pope Francis has decided to continue staying in a suite in the Vatican hotel instead of moving into the papal apartment. April 13, 2013 - It is announced that an international council of eight cardinals has been appointed to advise Pope Francis in reforming the Catholic Church. July 29, 2013 - During his first news conference Pope Francis makes the statement, "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" while discussing the gay and lesbian community within the church. September 19, 2013 - An interview is released in which Pope Francis says that the church has the right to express its opinions but not to "interfere spiritually" in the lives of gays and lesbians. November 26, 2013 - Pope Francis releases "Evangelii Gaudium" (The Joy of the Gospel), an 85-page call for the church to rethink some traditions.

December 11, 2013 - Pope Francis is named Time magazine's person of the year. December 24, 2013 - The pope visits with Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI at the monastery Mater Ecclesia, where the pope-emeritus lives. Francis later visits children in a local hospital. December 24-25, 2013 - At St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Francis celebrates his first midnight mass as head of the Roman Catholic Church. December 25, 2013 - From the basilica's balcony facing St. Peter's Square, the pope delivers his Christmas message and blessing to a crowd of 70,000. April 27, 2014 - Presides over the Canonization of Blesseds , installing popes John XXIII and John Paul II as saints . Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI attends the ceremony as a guest. July 7, 2014 - In a homily given during a private Mass with six victims of church sexual abuse, Pope Francis apologizes for the abuse and asks for forgiveness, pledging that Catholic bishops "will be held accountable" for failing to protect children.

August 30, 2015 - Pope Francis announces that priests around the world will be able to forgive the "sin of abortion" during the Catholic Church's "Year of Mercy" beginning on December 8 and ending on November 20, 2016. September 8, 2015 - The Vatican announces reforms to the legal structures Catholics must follow to achieve marital nullity. September 19, 2015 - Visits Cuba for the first time and praises the reconciliations taking place between Cuba and the United States. Francis also asks Cuba to allow for more religious freedom as the communist country prepares to build the first Catholic Church since the Cuban Revolution . September 22-28, 2015 - Pope Francis becomes the " fourth head of the Church to visit the United States , nearly 50 years after Pope Paul VI made the first visit by a pontiff to the country in October 1965." While in the United States, Pope Francis visits Washington, D.C., speaking at a joint meeting of Congress, addresses the UN General Assembly in New York and holds Mass at Madison Square Garden, and attends the Festival of Families in Philadelphia.

November 25, 2015 - Pope Francis arrives in Nairobi for his first-ever Apostolic journey to Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic. April 8, 2016 - Urges priests around the world to be more accepting of gays and lesbians, divorced Catholics and other people living in what the church considers "irregular" situations. May 13, 2016 - Says the Vatican should study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, answering a call that women, particularly in the United States, have been asking the church to address for decades. November 1, 2016 - Indicates that he believes women should never be allowed to be priests . November 21, 2016 - Extends indefinitely the power of Catholic priests to forgive abortions. This follows a special dispensation during the Year of Mercy, which ended November 20, 2016 and allowed all priests, rather than just bishops and specially designated confessors, the power to absolve the "sin of abortion." Pope Francis - Telegraph The Pope Pope Francis Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected Pope on March 13, 2013.

He is the first pope born outside Europe in more than 1,000 years. Holy smoke! Is this final pope before Jesus? Holy smoke! Is this final pope before Jesus? Predictor of Benedict's resignation eyes vote through lens of prophecy Published: 03/12/2013 at 9:40 PM Print An author who predicted Pope Benedict XVI would be the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to resign is keeping close watch on the conclave of cardinals through the lens of a medieval prophecy that indicates the man they select will be history’s “final pope.” Tom Horn, co-author of the book “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here,” told WND he has a list of 10 men among the 115 sequestered in the Sistine Chapel who best fit St. Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes,” said to be based on a prophetic vision of the 112 popes following Pope Celestine II, who died in 1144.

As WND reported , Horn and his co-author, Cris Putnam, predicted in their book Benedict would step down last April, and it turns out that April apparently was when Benedict made the historic decision he announced to the world last month. “We said if he didn’t step down in 2012, he certainly would in 2013,” Horn told WND. Malachy’s prophecies culminate with the “final pope,” “Peter the Roman,” whose reign ends with the destruction of Rome and the judgment of Christ. Horn said he concluded Benedict would resign rather than die in the papacy based not only on St. Malachy but also on a host of historical and current information. Earlier today, a plume of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel indicated the cardinals have chosen the 266th pope on the second day of conclave. The 2012 prediction Remarkably, Horn told WND, more than 60 years ago a Belgian Jesuit theologian and academic named Rene Thibault came up with the date 2012 as the culmination of Malachy’s prophecies.

Thibault’s rare 1951 book, “The Mysterious Prophecy of the Popes,” was published in French only four months before Thibault died. Horn and Putnam translated the Belgian priest’s work into English. “Adopting the methodology of a mystic as well as a scholar,” Horn and Putnam write in the first chapter of their book, Thibault “makes a compelling case that ‘The Prophecy of the Popes’ is a real supernatural prophecy.” Horn noted Thibault is among many Catholic leaders, including popes, cardinals and priests, who have affirmed Malachy’s work, which was kept in the Vatican archives for five centuries before it was first published in 1595. He said Thibault used a number of methods of cryptographic analysis to come up with the date 2012, including calculating the average length of papal reign up until the time he wrote his book. “In other words,” Horn and Putnam write, “2012 was seen as an end-times ‘event horizon’ by at least one Jesuit priest before most readers were born.” St.

Malachy, an Irish saint and the archbishop of Armagh, who lived from 1094 to 1148, described the “final pope” this way: “In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will nourish the sheep in many tribulations; when they are finished, the City of Seven Hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people.” As WND reported , he described the penultimate pope, which Horn believes is Benedict, as “Gloria Olivae,” or “Glory of the Olive.” Benedict was not a Benedictine priest, yet he chose the name of the founder of the Order of Saint Benedict, which also is known as the Olivetans The symbol of the Benedictine order includes an olive branch. Top 10 Horn and his co-author have created a list of 10 candidates to succeed Benedict and become “Peter the Roman.” In their top three is Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan. Horn said Scola has at least 50 of the Italian cardinals in his corner, which puts him in a very strong position.

But Horn noted that anti-Mafia police today raided the offices in his diocese, which could hurt his standing with other cardinals. Interestingly, a leading candidate is Cardinal Tarcisio Pietro (Peter) Evasio Bertone, the cardinal secretary of state, who was born in Romano, Italy. His name could, as WND reported last month, therefore, be rendered “Peter the Roman” or “Petrus Romanus.” Horn pointed out, however, that while Bertone appeared to be Benedict’s choice to succeed him, recently leaked Vatican documents include letters Bertone wrote to his secretary of state predecessor that indicate a tumultuous relationship and cast him in a negative light. “I think, as a result, that has weakened Bertone’s opportunity to be elected,” Horn said. “But he is an Italian, and those guys stick together. Many cardinals, on the other hand, Horn said, want to see someone outside of Italy, and a couple of leading Peters are Peter Turkson of Ghana, who would be the first African pope, and Peter Erdo of Hungary. Turkson is the current president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Regardless, Horn said he’s always maintained that it doesn’t take someone whose Christian name is Peter to fulfill the prophecy. “In fact, if any Italian is elected, that would be a fairly transparent fulfillment,” he said. Moreover, he argued, “in a very general sense, every pope could be regarded as ‘Peter the Roman,’ and in that sense, this could be the last one.” “You had the first Peter, you had the last one.” Along with Bertone, Turkson and Scola, the other candidates on Horn’s list are Francis Arinze of Nigeria; Gianfranco Ravasi of Italy, the president of the pontifical council for culture; Leonardo Sandri of Argentina, the prefect of the congregation for the oriental churches; Ennio Antonelli of Italy, retired president of the pontifical council for the family; Jean-Louis Tauran of France, president of the pontifical council for interreligious dialogue; Christoph Schönborn of Vienna; and Marc Ouellet of Quebec, president of the pontifical commission for Latin America. Do you expect the forthcoming pope to be the last pope before Jesus returns?

No, because there is no God, and it's a bunch of fairytales No, Jesus doesn't care about popes No, I don't believe in extrabiblical prophesies No, I expect at least a few more popes before Jesus returns No, I don't believe Jesus is ever going to return No, to mainstream Catholics, St. Malachy's prophesies are just legends and fables No, the Bible says, 'But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.' So how can anyone possibly know? I don't know, but I hope Jesus comes soon Yes, coupled with all the other signs of the times, he could very well could be the last Yes, the Malachy prophesy is very persuasive, and we are at the last pope in the list Yes, it certainly feels like we're living in the End Times Yes, I believe in Jesus' imminent return, regardless of the Malachy prophesy Yes, I happen to believe in Malachy's prophesy Other

Question: Who is the current pope?
Answer: Francis