BALTIMORE (MD)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

November 10, 2013

By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Several months into the era of a new pope with a flair for disarmingly dramatic pastoral gestures, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops begin meeting in Baltimore today to elect their own new leadership, with several candidates for top positions hailing from Pittsburgh and other parts of Pennsylvania.

This will be the first major gathering of the bishops since many of the headline-making actions of Pope Francis, such as his denunciations of clerical privilege; his literal embrace of the poor; and his interviews with media outlets, both secular and religious, in which he has called for a poorer, more pastoral and less combative church.

Francis, while calling himself a “son of the church” upholding its traditional teachings on sexuality, has said in interviews the church should not be “obsessed” with such battles and that he would not…