Thirty-five-year-old shop worker Anna Romano was on holiday at the beginning of September when her mobile phone went off. She could tell it was from a Rome area code but she didn’t recognise the number. She answered any way. «Hello, Anna,» came a familiar voice down the line, «this is Pope Francis .» It wasn’t a joke. A month previously, Romano had written to the pope out of despair. Not knowing the proper address, she just marked the envelope «Holy Father Pope Francis, Vatican City, Rome». It was more like a message in a bottle. The man she had been seeing, and had recently got pregnant with, had turned out to be married. She wanted to have the child but the father was pressuring her to have an abortion.
Her mind was full of questions. Would the church baptise the child? After all, she thought, she was a divorcee and the church would surely frown on her. The pope phoned to tell her that he was sure they could find a priest to baptise her child. «But if not,» the pope added, «you know there is always me.»
To the dismay of Vatican flunkies, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has a long history of just picking up the phone – to the engineering student who couldn’t find a job, to the woman who had been raped by a police officer. Back in Argentina, when gay rights leader Marcelo Márquez delivered a critical letter on the subject of same-sex marriage, Bergoglio rang him within the hour.
Not that his position on abortion, or homosexuality, or women priests, differs substantially from Benedict XVI. He remains socially conservative . But the mood music is altogether different and not just because of his personal charm and the decision to eschew all the fancy ecclesiastical haberdashery and grand palaces. Pope Francis has regularly excoriated economic injustice and the global inequalities created by unrestrained capitalism. And his message on Syria has been unusually direct in opposing the prospect of US intervention. On Saturday he told a congregation praying for peace in the Middle East : «Violence and war lead only to death, they speak of death! Violence and war are the language of death!»
Six months in, the pope has established a totally different style from his predecessor. And it’s proving hugely popular. When he visited Brazil in July, his final mass on Copacabana beach attracted three million people . It made his message – «Jesus did not gather the apostles so they lived in isolation. He called them so they formed a group, a community» – particularly apt. Anna Romano says that if she has a boy she is going to name him Francis . Whether this is enough to detoxify the Catholic brand following the scandals of clerical child abuse is another thing entirely. But he has made a welcome and impressive start.
Her mind was full of questions. Would the church baptise the child? After all, she thought, she was a divorcee and the church would surely frown on her. The pope phoned to tell her that he was sure they could find a priest to baptise her child. «But if not,» the pope added, «you know there is always me.»
To the dismay of Vatican flunkies, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has a long history of just picking up the phone – to the engineering student who couldn’t find a job, to the woman who had been raped by a police officer. Back in Argentina, when gay rights leader Marcelo Márquez delivered a critical letter on the subject of same-sex marriage, Bergoglio rang him within the hour.
Not that his position on abortion, or homosexuality, or women priests, differs substantially from Benedict XVI. He remains socially conservative . But the mood music is altogether different and not just because of his personal charm and the decision to eschew all the fancy ecclesiastical haberdashery and grand palaces. Pope Francis has regularly excoriated economic injustice and the global inequalities created by unrestrained capitalism. And his message on Syria has been unusually direct in opposing the prospect of US intervention. On Saturday he told a congregation praying for peace in the Middle East : «Violence and war lead only to death, they speak of death! Violence and war are the language of death!»
Six months in, the pope has established a totally different style from his predecessor. And it’s proving hugely popular. When he visited Brazil in July, his final mass on Copacabana beach attracted three million people . It made his message – «Jesus did not gather the apostles so they lived in isolation. He called them so they formed a group, a community» – particularly apt. Anna Romano says that if she has a boy she is going to name him Francis . Whether this is enough to detoxify the Catholic brand following the scandals of clerical child abuse is another thing entirely. But he has made a welcome and impressive start.
