BOSTON (MA)
KSPR
By Daniel Burke CNN
POSTED: 05:34 PM CST Mar 08, 2014
BOSTON (CNN) –
In some ways, the “Pope Francis effect” doesn’t seem very effective at all.
Despite the immense popularity the aged Argentine has won since his election last year, not a jot of doctrine has changed, nor has the Catholic Church swelled with American converts.
But there’s more than one way to measure a pontiff’s influence on his far-flung flock.
Start asking around — here in Boston and beyond, Catholics and atheists alike — and it’s easy to find people eager to share how one man, in just one year, has changed their lives. …
But Boston is also a city scarred by a church sex abuse scandal that harmed hundreds of children, demoralized dozens of innocent priests and broke the bonds of trust between clergy and congregants.
To say that Pope Francis has smiled and salved all those wounds is a stretch longer than the Boston Marathon, people here say. There are plenty of ex-Catholics who’ll never give the church a second look. But there are many others who say they just might.
In other words, this the perfect city to take a measure of the “Francis effect” — to visit churches, classrooms, coffee shops and bars and learn how this Pope is shaping the lives of rank-and-file Catholics.
“He’s sent us an invitation,” says Mark Mullaney, president of Voice of the Faithful, a Boston-based reform group born in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.
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