NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
12 MARCH 2014
Pope Francis is a PR dream; a ‘pin-up’ for liberals worldwide. But as his papacy reaches the one-year mark, how much of it is show and how much substance, asks Malachi O’Doherty.
Pope Francis is just the sort of change the Catholic Church needed to save itself. If, in the last days of his own reign, Benedict XVI had pulled together some of the best image manipulators in the world and asked them for a strategy to make the Church lovable again, this is what they would have come up with.
He fits with the occasional fantasy in literature and cinema of a pope who is actually saintly, actually Christian in his humility. Charles Saatchi and Alastair Campbell banging their heads together couldn’t have come up with anything better.
He is a sinner, too, a repentant one. And he’s lovely, with his chubby cheeks and his granda manner. He’s not at all like his predecessor; that reptilian creep with his sharp temper, his impossible ideals and his presumption of royal distance.
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