How do you make sense of this? The pope famously asked “who am I to judge?” on gay Christians; then for months he blocked the appointment of the new French ambassador to the Vatican, a practicing Catholic who is gay. Or this? The pope pronounced “zero tolerance” on sex abuse in the church; then he appointed a bishop in Chile whose flock were so angry at his reputation for covering up abuse that local people physically disrupted his service of installation.
Both those incidents have happened too recently to appear in John Allen’s perceptive new volume on Pope Francis. And yet anyone who reads this book will be far better-equipped to understand such bemusing events as they unfold in Rome. Allen, an associate editor of The Boston Globe and its associated Crux website, is the doyen of English-speaking Vatican commentators. For almost two decades he has been immersed in the minutiae of church politics. The result, in “The Francis Miracle,’’ is a cascade of acute insights set against a background that establishes a clear context in which to understand what is happening as Tornado Francis tears through the musty corridors of the Vatican.
Read Full Article »