UNITED STATES
Naitonal Catholic Reporter
EDITORIAL
A year ago, Pope Francis’ photo adorned the covers of Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, TIME magazine and The Advocate. The latter two named the pope their person of the year. Francis’ personal humility and simplicity, his common-sense rhetoric seasoned with homespun charm had captured the imagination of Catholics, non-Catholics and even nonbelievers. Acutely aware of the power of simple language and of images, Francis set about molding a pontificate for the age of Facebook and Twitter. Though he has little computer knowledge himself, Francis harnessed these tools for a new kind of evangelization.
Many among our readers, editors, staff and contributors embraced the message he advocated. They heralded not just a change in tone and style, but a change in substance and direction. Just as many among us, however, were not convinced. The refrain was, “Yes, but what has he done? To what real change can we point?” And so NCR resisted naming Francis our person of the year for 2013.
A year later, the resistance is weakening. We can name many points of disagreement with Francis: He is consistently tone-deaf in the way he speaks about women. We do not believe he clearly understands the powerful contribution women are already making to church life, and we believe he is mistaken not to appoint more women to leadership positions in church administration. His remarks to the November symposium at the Vatican, “An International Interreligious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman,” suggest he and the church hierarchy need an updated theology and science on human sexuality. Despite these objections, we also find a growing list of accomplishments.
One clear message from the conclave that elected Francis was that the new pope must reform the Roman Curia — not only to bring it up to date, but to restore its mission of service to the church at large. We have said that the reform of that institution needs changes in at least three key areas: a change in culture; personnel to support the reform; and new structures, policies and procedures to make it work. …
We have taken Francis to task for not understanding the seriousness of the sex abuse crisis in the church. In the last year, Francis has made tremendous strides in this area by — most important — meeting with victims of clergy sexual assault and by appointing a high-level commission of professionals, half of whom are lay and women, to advise him directly. The commission has yet to act, but its formation indicates the pope is grappling with the issue.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.