When Pope Francis was elected five years ago today, he came into office with a reform mandate and a vow to make the Church less self-referential, focused on the peripheries rather than the center. Many of the challenges ahead seemed obvious: shaking up the Roman curia, cleaning up the Vatican’s finances, and continuing the work of clerical sex abuse reform efforts.
In his formal documents, many speeches and unscripted morning homilies the past five years, Pope Francis has given the church plenty of “food for thought” on many issues of great importance.
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ election, retired Pope Benedict XVI defended the continuity of the Church’s teaching under his successor and dismissed those who criticize the pope’s theological foundations.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope just a few days after telling the College of Cardinals that the Catholic Church faced a clear choice between being a church that “goes out” or a church focused on its internal affairs.
Pope Francis has “catapulted” the concerns of working people and placed them at the center of the conversation for the Church, said an all-star panel assessing the Holy Father’s influence on the labor movement.
Pope Francis’ exhortation on the family should prompt discussion and even debate, but accusing him and others of heresy is completely out of place, said German Cardinal Walter Kasper.
Pope Francis will visit Geneva in June, the Vatican confirmed.
In the advent of Pope Francis’ fifth anniversary in the papacy, a new Pew Research poll of U.S. Catholics shows their regard of the pope is colored by their political leanings.
Pope Francis’ upcoming Synod on Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment will be more important than the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family, says Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles, Calif.
POPE FRANCIS WAS elected five years ago on March 13, 2013. Two firsts about him captured people’s imaginations: the first Jesuit and the first Latin American ever elected pope.
