Would the real pontiff please stand up?

Irish Examiner
October 5, 2015

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/would-the-real-pontiff-please-stand-up--357439.html

Monday, October 05, 2015

The image of Pope Francis as a great reformer doesn’t yet hold true, writes TP O’Mahony

IS A section of the media in danger of creating a ‘fantasy’ Francis — a Pope whose perceived liberalism is not really rooted in reality?

As the Synod of the Family opens in Rome and speculation begins about a possible papal visit to Ireland in 2018, we are left to ponder the enigma that is Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Hailed in the current edition of Vanity Fair as “the people’s pontiff”, there is no denying the popularity of Francis. The huge crowds that turned out to greet him during his recent visit to Cuba and the US were further testimony to this. It was at the end of this visit, at the closing mass in Philadelphia, that he announced that the next World Meeting of Families will be held in Dublin in 2018. Whether the pope himself will travel to Ireland for this event — held every three years — remains a matter of speculation. ...

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio opposed plans by the government in Argentina to introduce family planning programmes involving the use of contraceptives. This continues to be Vatican policy globally, a policy whose effects on families in some of the poorest and more deprived regions of the world may be very harsh indeed.

Francis has declared it part of his mission to restore credibility and authenticity to a Church deeply scarred and bedevilled by clerical sex abuse and cover-ups. Some of the worst examples of the latter have occurred in the US, where if justice was properly done, several American bishops would now be behind bars for their complicity and criminal negligence. Yet, during his recent visit, Francis praised US bishops for their “courage” in handling sex abuse cases — a decision described by one of the pope’s biographers, Paul Vallely, as “a bizarre response”.

Little wonder that there was an angry reaction from abuse victims who said the Church has not done enough. David Clohessy, head of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, who himself was abused by a priest, said he unimpressed by Francis’s words.