Everyone loves Pope Francis. The statement is at this point so banal that it makes you want to stop reading here. Forget Time and Rolling Stone; President Obama is a Francis fan-boy. But if Francis’s popularity is rooted in his down-to-earth humility and man-of-the-people mentality, his authority is rooted in his position as occupant of the throne of St. Peter.
Francis himself knows this. Last February, in an uncharacteristic display of hierarchical traditionalism, he told his new Cardinals that he—the Pope—will “tell [them] what the church needs.”
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