[When the Gospel seems to be interpreted in different ways] is the obvious challenge, perhaps even danger, here. By its very nature as a custodial office, the papacy can't be a Rorschach test, into which people read whatever they like - whatever they fear or hope for.

The Guardian,[is] one of the most consistently anti-Catholic newspapers in the world.

[Pope Francis] has felt the mercy of God in his own life and wants to share that experience with others.

The world needs a pastor, whether it knows it or not.

I hope ["reanimated the papacy"] means that the new interest in the pope evokes a new interest in the Church's teaching, of which the pope is the custodian.

No one who reads and reveres the New Testament should doubt for a second that the pious poor and marginalized have something to teach all of us - including German theologian-bishops - about the truth of the Gospel and the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.

The Germans now seem the primary example of this [institutional-maintenance type] - which is another reason to scratch the head at their seeming determination to force the whole Church to adopt the Catholic Lite approach that has, in a bizarre inversion, emptied German churches of congregants while vastly expanding the German Church's bureaucracies.