Pope francis

Today’s front-page splash in The Catholic Herald reads: ‘Vatican in a spin as Pope Francis grants an explosive new interview’. That interview, with La Repubblica, quoted Francis as saying that his advisors had told him that two per cent of clergy were paedophiles – including ‘bishops and cardinals’. The Independent ran with the headline: ‘Pope Francis: “One in 50” Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals is a paedophile’. What fascinates me is the reaction of the Vatican Press Office, which has gone into full L/Cpl Jones ‘Don’t Panic!’ mode.

The following blog from a Catholic commentator about the Pope’s controversial tweet suggesting that “inequality is the root of social evil” puts the row about it on Twitter into context. But the real question is the language in which Pope Francis first tweeted: Spanish or Latin? In Latin, as the author of this blog observes, the critical noun is “iniquitas”, which you might as well call “sin”; come to that “malus” doesn’t mean social evil so much as any sort of evil. And to say that sin is the root of evil is sort of tautologous, at least for Catholics. But if the pope’s thought was first expressed in Spanish, desigualdad, well, that puts rather a different take on the thing; he is talking about inequality.

There was something poignant about the decision of L’Wren Scott, Mick Jagger’s American girlfriend, who committed suicide in New York last month, to leave everything she had to him in her will. Maybe it was out of gratitude for his help in keeping her foundering fashion business afloat; or maybe it was just a mark of her devotion to the man she referred to in the will as ‘my Michael Philip Jagger’. But whatever her motive, it was a decision very much against the spirit of the times, one that will further widen the gap between rich and poor by adding property worth £5.5 million to Jagger’s already estimated personal fortune of around £200 million. He is hardly the most needy recipient of such largesse.

A year ago, a relatively unknown Argentine cardinal, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope. A few days later he announced he would take the name Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi, because, he said, he had particular concern for the poor. In the 1880s, Pope Leo XIII also drew the attention of his clergy to St Francis’s teachings on poverty. The Spectator approved, and recommended it to Protestants as well as Catholics, but it took issue with the Pope’s argument that the spectacle of rich people joyfully embracing holy poverty would be enough to encourage the poor not to mind being poor.

You know, when the pope went on in his recent encyclical about how the family ‘is experiencing a profound cultural crisis’ he wasn't half right. His reflection that ‘the individualism of our postmodern and globalized era favours a lifestyle which … distorts family bonds’ came to mind when I got this very special Valentine's press release from a money saving website. It's offering your cheapest ever divorce for £36, so long as you apply today. I always thought, myself, that no fault divorce was a really bad idea in undermining the contractual character of marriage, but I never thought that the commodification of the end of marriage - cheapening the bond in every sense - would follow it quite so quickly.

It’s filthy wet weather in Tuscany, so I’m lying on my bed in the afternoon reading through the Italian newspapers. They are full of stuff about Pope Francis — how his humility, his simplicity, and his reforming zeal are breathing new life into the Roman Catholic Church. They say that the long decline in church attendance in Italy has been reversed in the few months since a previously little-known bishop from Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected to the papacy. His public appearances at the Vatican are also drawing enormous crowds. He is, in short, a superstar, and by no means in Italy alone. Everywhere in the world, including Britain, lapsed Catholics are flocking back to church. And even among non-Catholics on the left, his popularity is huge.

The bad news for fans of G.K. Chesterton is that there are moves afoot to make him a saint. The Catholic bishop of Northampton, Peter Doyle, is reportedly looking for a priest to promote his canonisation. Pope Francis is an admirer, too; he supported a Chesterton conference in Buenos Aires and was on the honorary committee of the Chesterton Society. So why is this a bad idea? Chesterton was, among other things, probably the most engaging apologist for Catholicism, long before he became a Catholic. His little book Orthodoxy is the best personal account of the faith you’ll come across — unabashedly subjective, wildly romantic, fundamentally right. His Napoleon of Notting Hill is a riotous magnificat of the small things which are great things.

Pope Francis I’s statement about homosexual clergymen remains extraordinary; no matter how often one reads it. ‘If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?’ He also said: ‘The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalised because of this (orientation) but that they must be integrated into society...’ And there was more, perhaps a little less extraordinary in tone and content: ‘The problem is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem.

The people of Rome have always liked to believe the worst of their bishop. When I was a correspondent in Rome more than 40 years ago, I was constantly assured by its citizens that the Pope not only had the evil eye but was known for a fact to be living secretly in the Vatican with a male ballet dancer. These were absurd rumours. Not only did Paul VI have rather dull eyes; he was also a cautious, unexciting fellow, a dry bureaucrat who had served for decades in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State before becoming archbishop of Milan and, after that, pope. I doubt if he had ever met a ballet dancer.

It’s a few weeks after the election of Pope Francis, and a notoriously leaky church source is talking about the revolution to come. The new leader of the faithful is a sharp operator who finds himself surrounded by ‘a medieval court system of hopeless characters, each jealously guarding their own silos of activity. There’s lots of crap people in key positions.’ Meanwhile, away from the court, bureaucrats churn out windy memos. They may not know it yet, but the process of ‘clearing out the weeds’ will start soon — possibly as early as this August. That might seem over-ambitious, but we’re not talking about the sleepy Vatican.

There's excitement in Christian circles today about the first meeting of Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby. The two men have important things in common. Both reached their positions of power from unusual backgrounds: Welby from the evangelical HTB movement; Francis from the Society of Jesus. Both have spent quite a lot of time attacking unregulated financial capitalism. Both shun traditional pomp. They both speak to a charismatic Christianity, modern and global, which stresses social justice and proselytisation above theological rigour and tradition. They are also Christians with whom secular liberals can do business. But will having such apparently compatible leaders make any meaningful difference to Catholic-Anglican relations? The Catholic blogger William Oddie says no.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, flew to Sochi, on the Black Sea, to talk with President Vladimir Putin, principally about Syria. He then flew to Washington, to support the American tour by Prince Harry and hold talks with President Barack Obama. They said that Britain and America wanted to strengthen the moderate opposition in Syria somehow. In a joint press conference, Mr Obama also said: ‘The UK’s participation in the EU is an expression of its influence.’ Mr Cameron tried to placate Tory MPs by rushing out a draft EU referendum bill, in the face of an amendment in the Queen’s Speech debate expressing regret at the absence of such a bill in the government programme. EU officials investigating price-fixing raided the London offices of BP and Shell.

A rather charming and typically self-deprecating Easter sermon from Archbishop Justin at Canterbury Cathedral; I’m beginning to like him. His subject was the inevitability of disillusion with things like governments and councils and ‘regulatory bodies’ and indeed Archbishops of Canterbury who are all bound, in the end, to be fucking useless (although this was not how he put it). I was seated in one of the pleb pews and rather hoped he might have taken a leaf out of that Argentine left-footer’s book and wandered over and washed my feet. They’ve become unaccountably scaly of late and for some reason now resemble the claws of a Galapagos tortoise; a bit of ecumenical bathing might have done them some good. Never mind.

Just a year ago on this page I was writing about Pope Benedict XVI’s elder brother Georg and how, while ostensibly discreet and loyal to his celebrated sibling, he contrived at the same time to make him look too old and bumbling for the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. In a book, My Brother, the Pope, this old priest from Bavaria said that his younger brother had never wanted the job, was too physically frail for it, and found it a tremendous strain. Georg Ratzinger must now be feeling somewhat vindicated, but at the time he was ‘off message’, for the Vatican was insistent that the pope was on excellent form. People in high office whose authority demands dignity are often embarrassed by their siblings, as several American presidents have found.