dad kept calling Francis "the most significant pope in over a millennium" so I finally got bored with the hype and asked why and that's how I discovered that Francis was the first non European pope since...wait for it... 741 CE
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He had recently become Pope when I was flying from Dubai to New Delhi and I joked with the Spanish luggage clerk that maybe I was related because the similarity in our names and the fact that our families are from the same part of Italy. I was upgraded to business class (only time in my life) 😆
The third world pope. He also made sure a majority of cardinals are non European. My ❤️ pope. The pope of trans, gay, poor, humble, marginalized people, for migrants and for saving the planet. The truly christic pope.
Francis rocked but John XXIII did Vatican II so he probably is still the most significant Poole in the last thousand years. He was on his way to allowing birth control as well when he died
So the guy was the first non European since Charlemagne's granddad, completely changed the voting personnel of the Church in the most radical way, empowered cardinals from places ignored through its whole history, made it the most progressive it's ever been & did it in 14 years, gotta say, Francis
the us press is completely incapable of grappling with francis’s transformational papacy. the pundits want to cast him as this wild progressive but the 75% of the conclave he appointed aren’t his ideological clones. it’s much broader than that, it’s de-centering rome.
Which, given the significance of Latin America within Catholicism, is absolutely insane. Not to diminish Francis's achievements in any way, but some kind of recognition of how Latin America has long been the heartland of the faith was *way* overdue
Amen. We've been the foundation of the faith for over a century.
The faith and the church is still powerful and strong throughout South America. Where my family is from, Sao Paulo, EVERYONE is Catholic. It's the largest archdiocese in the Church.
My husband was reading off the locations that some of these new cardinals were from. The phrase “I didn’t even know they HAD Catholics” was uttered a lot.
Yeah, for instance, while obviously it's a smaller percentage of the total population, there are twice as many Catholics in India as there are in Canada (and, as a result, a not-insignificant number of Indian-born Catholic priests in Canada!)
It’s less countries like India that I’m thinking of and more Tongo and the Ivory Coast and Myanmar. I don’t know enough about Catholicism to know how Cardinals were previously chosen but it feels like he ignored some kind of unspoken “you must be This Catholic to get a Cardinal” rule.
Sorry, TongA, I don’t know why I keep making that into an O. But, he created Cardinals from Lesotho and Saint Lucia and all sorts of places that are often overlooked by pretty much everyone, and I thought that was very cool of him.
I'm not Catholic & don't think that Francisco went far ENOUGH, but I dispute his greatest significance being his provenance. He was the most progressive pope since John Paul I (poisoned after 33 days, so didn't have time to shift The Church much).
As with JPI, I expect an ultra-
conservative next.
If he picked well, his legacy should hold. 80% of the cardinals eligible to vote were placed by him. I don't see how the Church goes backwards towards a Benedict type unless he picked very poorly.
Bro was an out and out socialist who brawled with the Argentine dictators and fought for the rights of the poor. He was real savvy politically in the church too.
Didn't he also refuse to live in the Papal Palace, and stayed in the Papal hotel instead? (I've heard theories that it was to keep the conservative faction from poisoning him.)
A papal guest house, basically, yeah. He also did not give New Pope Bonuses to the Curia, which I have since learned is a thing; he donated the money to charity. (Charities?)
I'm not sure it was a fear of poisoning 😄 His stated reason was that he was a people person and didn't think it would be good for him to live alone in the palace.
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Just in case there are questions.
The faith and the church is still powerful and strong throughout South America. Where my family is from, Sao Paulo, EVERYONE is Catholic. It's the largest archdiocese in the Church.
As with JPI, I expect an ultra-
conservative next.