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.

There's an obvious investment in some media circles in the "narrative" of "the pope who's finally going to get with it."

If [Pope's Francis] media-generated popularity, fragile as that may turn out to be when the world discovers that the pope is really a Catholic, opens windows of possibility for explaining that divine mercy leads us to the truths God revealed to us (and inscribed into the world and into us), then his reanimation of the papacy will advance the "Church in permanent mission" for which he called in Evangelii Gaudium, which is the grand strategy document of his pontificate.

"You don't believe what you read in the papers about anything else; why do you believe it about the pope?" That's where I'd start.

Then [Catholics] owe [pope] the loyalty that is expressed in speaking the truth to him - and that puts a premium on knowing whether what you're happy about, on unhappy about, has a basis in fact, or is merely a reflection of the "narrative.

In the Vatican, if you don't get something new done quickly you may not get it done at all.

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.