The pope [Francis] takes his vocabulary from his pastoral experience, not from the rhetorical tool kit of liberation theology, with its Marxist yammering about "center" and "periphery." The "peripheries," for Francis, are all those who have fallen through the cracks of late-modernity and post-modernity - in his native Argentina, because of colossal corruption, political and financial.

That's what the liveliest parts of the world Church today - ranging from the booming Church in Africa to FOCUS missionaries on American campuses - are living: a Catholicism that has discovered that it doesn't have a mission, it is a mission.

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.

Vital parishes built on the Bible and the sacraments, committed to evangelizing their neighborhoods, will continue to flourish. The poor will be served, the sick healed, and the dying comforted. None of that is going to change, and I'd wager that it's going to get better.

One of the most important qualities in a pope is his judgment of people - can he get around him the people who can put into practice his vision of what the Church must be doing now to fulfill its mandate from the Lord.

Freedom that lacks moral truth becomes its own worst enemy.

In the Church the transformative power of the Eucharist is experienced through the dignified celebration of Holy Mass, and people are empowered for mission because of that.