The colossal mess in Vatican finances that [Pope] Francis inherited has been cleaned up, and cleaned out. Real budgeting and accounting procedures are in place; so are real professionals, not somebody's nephew.

More pro-active Vatican communications might be able to do something about all this, but when the Holy See is constantly in the mode of, "No, what the pope really meant was . . . ," the game has already been largely forfeited.

Younger theologians will continue to pursue and understand truth rather than deconstructing it, as a lot of their elders seemed to want to do.

There's the trope about an impending "global-warming encyclical." The pope is preparing an encyclical on nature and the environment, including the human environment (which includes the moral imperative of a culturally affirmed and legally recognized right to life from conception until natural death). So what happens? A low-ranking Vatican official for self-promotion gives an interview to the Guardian in which he claims that this is a global-warming encyclical - which he couldn't possibly have known, as the document wasn't drafted yet.

The Church offers the medicine of the divine mercy so that healed souls can grasp the truth that will liberate them in the fullest meaning of human freedom.

Optimism and pessimism are mere matters of optics, of how you look at things, and that can change from day to day, or with a new prescription for your glasses - or with a new set of ideological filters.

The only future is intentional Catholicism, evangelical Catholicism.