UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Damian Thompson
Last updated: July 29th, 2013

Three million. That’s more than the entire population of Albania. Or Jamaica. The crowds of young people who greeted Pope Francis on Rio’s Copacabana beach yesterday demonstrate his extraordinary appeal; Benedict XVI couldn’t have attracted such jaw-dropping numbers. How many were devout participants in World Youth Day is another question: one poll claimed that 65 per cent disagreed with Catholic teaching on birth control. But if Francis was attracting “cafeteria Catholics” or non-believers, then he’d surely say: so much the better.

The spectacle of a Pope visiting a muddy Brazilian slum in order to scold the rich has delighted most Catholics. Some traditionalists are less easily won over, however. They distrust a humility that’s expressed in soundbites and photo-ops. Benedict, they point out, is just as humble a man. When Francis said last week that the Catholic…