Another Episco-Cath love letter to Pope Francis

...This mega-trend would have seemed as irreversible as a sunset until a 76-year-old cardinal from Argentina was named leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in March. That the pope would take the name of Francis — the 12th-century mystic, nature lover and friend of the dispossessed — was the first shock. Since then, the seismic waves have just kept on rolling.

Pope Francis has shown himself to be a free spirit and a free thinker. He loves the music of Mozart, the paintings of Chagall, the films of Fellini. He tweets. He talks to atheists. He stays out of politics. He calls for the faithful to “mess up the church.” He doesn’t moralize or sermonize, and famously said, when asked about gays, “Who am I to judge?” Is this pope Catholic?

Francis has befuddled the guardians of dogma and medieval sexual doctrines who have long kept sunlight out of the Vatican. He is — gasp — a liberal. Or at the least, as he said, “I have never been a right winger.” But to put him in those restrictive political terms does a disservice to the quiet revolution of Pope Francis.

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