UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on March 9, 2014

If someone had told me two years ago that a man like Pope Francis would be elected in 2013, I would have been skeptical. After almost 10 years of Benedict—a man with the public persona of a porcupine and pastoral nature of a curmudgeon on a bad day—who could believe that a new pope could so quickly throw off the shackles of academia and theology and become a man of the people?

But Francis did just that. And by doing so, he has enlivened the faithful and captured the attention of an adoring world.

He inspired the Catholic faithful, who have yearned for an approachable man who understands the plight of the poor and the trials of the common man.

He’s utilized great PR, capitalizing on well-managed social media and engineering photo-ops that go viral instantly.

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