VATICAN CITY
The New Yorker

POSTED BY JOAN ACOCELLA

Why did the Roman Catholic cardinals choose, as their Pope, a man who liked to ride the bus and cook his own dinner? Didn’t they guess that such a person might not be a good advertisement of the Church’s magnificence? And when Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, probably the most self-abnegating man ever to direct a religious order—and one whose name, tellingly, had never before been selected by a Pope—didn’t they worry a little bit? They should have. El Mundo says that “several Vaticanists” have commented that “the Pontiff is capable of speaking without restraint on any matter, as delicate as it may be.” Recently, he gave a good example. He spoke about homosexuality in the Vatican.

On June 6th, in a meeting at the Vatican with a group named CLAR (the Latin…