Pope francis

Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane is one of the bishops who'll be voting on the final report of the Synod on the Family at the Vatican tomorrow. He's 'quite a character', I'm told by a priest who knows him. But anyone who's been reading his startlingly frank and witty diary of the Synod, published on his diocesan website, will have already worked that out. There are cardinals and bishops who, after a few jars, will let slip what really goes on at these occasions. And then there's Archbishop Mark, who – although no doubt great company in the pub – doesn't need any prompting to spill the beans. He hasn't broken any rules, mind. There are no leaks in his dispatches. But let's just say that it's lucky for him that Pope Francis doesn't read English.

I first saw the YouTube film from which these photographs are taken over a year ago. I'm surprised it hasn't gained wider currency. It appears to show the future Pope Francis, then Cardinal Bergoglio, distributing Holy Communion to a crowd at a Mass at San Cayetano, Buenos Aires. On the film, he hands the hosts (i.e., the consecrated wafers that Catholics believe are the body of Christ) to people in the middle of the crowd who stick out their hands. He doesn't check what happens to them; indeed, the hosts are apparently passing hand to hand. For traditional Catholics, this is a shocking way of distributing communion that breaks every rule in the book. I suspect any English priest caught doing it would be hauled in front of his bishop.

Pope Francis yesterday gave an address to the profoundly divided Synod on the Family in which he confirmed his plans to decentralise the Catholic Church – giving local bishops' conferences more freedom to work out their own solutions to the problems of divorce and homosexuality. This is the nightmare of conservative Catholic cardinals, including – unsurprisingly – those in the Vatican. They thought they had a sufficient majority in the synod to stop the lifting of the ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion, or any softening on the Church's attitude to gay couples. But in yesterday's keynote speech, delivered as the synod enters its last week, Francis told them that the decentralisation will be imposed from above.

The Catholic Church is this week in the biggest mess it's been in since the Second Vatican Council, and Pope Francis is to blame. The Vatican cardinals in charge of doctrine, finance and worship are believed to have written to Francis at the beginning of the Synod on the Family – now in its second chaotic week – privately warning him that it was likely to spin out of control. That's because most of the world's bishops don't support any major change to the church's rules on allowing divorced and remarried people to receive communion, or to the way it treats gay couples. You may think they're wrong, but that is the situation.

Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Vatican's Secretariat for the Economy, has just issued a statement saying there is 'no possibility' that the 'minority' of Synod Fathers who favour allowing divorced and remarried people to receive Communion will get their way at the chaotic Synod on the Family. His spokesman said: 'There is strong agreement in the Synod on most points but obviously there is some disagreement because minority elements want to change the Church's teachings on the proper dispositions necessary for the reception of communion. 'Obviously there is no possibility of change on this doctrine.' The cardinal confirmed the existence (but not the accuracy) of a letter to Pope Francis, leaked today, reportedly signed by himself and very senior cardinals.

Pope Francis’s three-week Synod on the Family began on Sunday. Most of the 279 ‘Synod Fathers’ are senior bishops, many of them cardinals. They have no authority to change any aspect of Catholic teaching or pastoral practice. They are discussing the ‘hot button’ issues of communion for the divorced and remarried and the spiritual care of gay Catholics — but, once the meeting is over, power will rest entirely in the hands of the Pope. Conservative Catholics aren’t happy. Last year, at a preparatory ‘extraordinary’ synod, officials hand-picked by Francis announced in the middle of the proceedings that the Fathers favoured a more relaxed approach to gay relationships and second marriages.

The Pope has in effect said this to his Catholic flock: Let our rhetoric be liberal; Let us sound like a Church that is moving from harsh rigour to soft friendliness. Does that mean he seeks the reform of any of the Church’s traditional teachings? God knows. He began his US tour in Washington, where he warned the bishops that there is a temptation 'to think back on bygone times and to devise harsh responses'. They should try to persuade people 'with the power and closeness of love' rather than obsessively condemning 'their positions, distant as they may be from what we hold as true and certain'. In his final address, in Philadelphia, he presented himself as the enemy of legalism, like Jesus railing at the Pharisees.

On Tuesday, Pope Francis set foot in the United States for the first time in his life. His plane touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, where American presidents depart and arrive on Air Force One. But, according to a Spanish journalist on the papal plane, this was not how Francis had wanted to arrive. He would have preferred to cross over from Tijuana, the grubby Mexican city menaced by drug gangs from which countless migrants slip across the border into California. In other words, if the report is true, the Pope wished to turn his arrival into a political gesture, aligning himself with America’s 11.

Pope Francis today made sweeping changes to the procedures by which Catholics get their marriages annulled – that is, receive official permission to marry again because their first marriage was invalid. Here's part of a news story by Reuters Vatican correspondent Philip Pullella: Pope Francis on Tuesday made it simpler and swifter for Catholics to secure a marriage annulment, the most radical such reform for 250 years, and told bishops to be more welcoming to divorced couples. Under the old norms, it often took years to win an annulment, with hefty legal fees attached. Francis said the procedure should be free and the new rules mean that a marriage might be declared null and void in just 45 days in some cases ...

The headline on page 33 of today's Times reads: 'Repent and we will forgive abortions, Pope tells women'. It's a bad headline, because the Church already grants absolution to women who repent of their abortions. CNN did much better: 'Pope Francis says all priests can forgive women who've had abortions'. (In fact, the Church teaches that God does the forgiving, but 'priests can forgive women' is OK as shorthand.) That said, headlines aren't written by reporters, so you'd expect the Times article to set the record straight. On the contrary: Tom Kington, the author, litters his piece with ignorant misrepresentations of Francis's ruling.

Pope Francis, unpredictable as ever, has just announced that during the forthcoming 'Year of Mercy', Catholics can receive absolution from priests of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St Pius X (SSPX), which has illicitly ordained its own bishops and doesn't recognise the Second Vatican Council. He's also given all priests permission to absolve anyone who truly repents of the sin of having or procuring an abortion – which they could already, though they might need the permission of the local bishop since it incurs automatic excommunication. So this isn't such big news.

'The Church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.' In that one sentence, Cardinal Pell puts his finger on what is wrong with Laudato Si', Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment. In that document, Francis waded into an argument about climate change and took sides. Moreover, he gave the impression that he was speaking for all Catholics when he did so; and, if by any chance he wasn't, errant faithful should fall into line. In an interview in Thursday's Financial Times, the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy stepped out of line. See above. It was a brave thing to do: Pell's wholesale reform of the Vatican's finances is making him plenty of enemies as it is, and now he's even more vulnerable to attack. Why take the risk?

Home In his Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, slowed the planned rate of bringing in £12 billion of welfare cuts. He forecast a surplus by 2020. The bank levy would be reduced but a surcharge on bank profits imposed. The total of benefits that a family can claim a year would be cut to £23,000 in London and £20,000 outside it. Tax credits for those with more than two children were to be reduced. Local authority and housing association tenants in England who earn more than £30,000 (£40,000 in London) would have to pay more rent. Maintenance grants for students would be turned into loans. Income tax thresholds were raised.

In his latest encyclical Pope Francis will apparently describe global warming as a ‘major threat to life on the planet’. If the leaked reports are accurate, his Holiness is absolutely right. Here are some examples of the havoc ‘global warming’ has wrought in the past decade: Honduras:US-backed security forces implicated in the killing of more than 100 peasant farmers involved in disputes with palm-oil magnates. Kenya: Teenage boy shot in February this year while protesting against a ‘wind park’ in Nyandarua. Mt Elgon National Park, Uganda: According to a newspaper report, more than 50 locals killed by park rangers and 6,000 evicted to make space for a ‘carbon offset’ plantation.