VATICAN CITY
NBC News
[with video]
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
Pope Francis has a to-do list as long as his cassock.
The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio will lead 1.2 billion Catholics and a church at a crossroads — wrestling with scandal after scandal, changing demographics and calls for liberalization.
Here are seven pressing challenges for the new pope:
1. Cleaning house at the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI ordered that a report on church bureaucracy be shown to only two men — himself and his successor. After he gives it a read, Francis will have to address backbiting, corruption and cronyism inside the Vatican and increasing pressure to make its finances more open. Church analysts were watching closely to see whether cardinals would elect a Vatican insider protective of church secrecy. Instead they picked a man from halfway around the world.
2. Leading the church out of the sex abuse scandal. The crisis consumed Benedict’s papacy and threatened to overshadow the conclave, with abuse victims even calling for some cardinals to recuse themselves from the selection process. Victims’ groups still want the Vatican to disclose more about its role in failing to protect children. One such organization, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said it was grateful that Francis was not on its list of the worst choices for pope — but warned that very little about the crisis has been exposed in South America
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