In September 2015, Pope Francis of the Catholic Church, announced that churches who were running
profitable hotels and restaurants should pay taxes like any other business.
This is the latest in a long line of surprising and progressive statements from the Pope over
the last two years.
While most popes have been relatively conservative and followed strict religious doctrine, Pope
Francis has been modern, progressive, and socially conscious.
So, how has Pope Francis changed Catholicism?
Well, since the ex-nightclub bouncer turned Pope entered the papacy in 2013, his tenure
has been expressly different from his predecessors.
Francis has fulfilled a huge number of firsts for a Pope, including being the first non-European
pope in more than a millennium.
While other popes have been happy to wear tons of ornate jewelry and flaunt the Vatican’s
wealth, Francis has been known to be overwhelmingly humble.
Instead of living in the papal palace, he stays in a nearby guesthouse.
His robes are simple, and even his rings are silver rather than traditional gold.
This humbler stance is directly related to Pope Francis’s focus on poverty, saying
that churches should help the poor and needy.
During the current migrant crisis, the pope has even agreed to take in two refugee families
to set an example for the rest of the Catholic world.
Many have appreciated his direct, and informal methods of communicating important ideas,
without being bogged down in appealing to the more conservative Catholic base.
But besides advocating for the poor, the pope has also opened up, and shown acceptance for
previously marginalized groups.
Although the Church still opposes same-sex marriage, Francis has said that it is not
his place to judge gay priests, as long as they want to be closer to God.
This is a considerable shift from the previous pope’s judgment that homosexuality is “an
intrinsic moral evil.”
Francis has also reached out to atheists, and reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s positive
stance on evolution.
Progressive stances like these support the Pope’s assertion that the church needs to
be a home for all, and has focused too much on gays, abortion, and birth control.
He stands in stark contrast to his predecessor, Pope Benedict, who was actually a member of
the Hitler Youth in his childhood.
Benedict called for a smaller, purer church, with a strict focus on doctrine.
This ideological shift coming from the Church’s highest moral authority has been a breath
of fresh air for many Catholics, who have felt stagnation in the Church’s vision.
Still, some have attributed Pope Francis’s rhetoric as a method of distraction from the
Church’s child molestation scandals.
Critics believe that although he has addressed and apologized for the sexual abuse within
the clergy, no concrete steps have been taken to dismantle decades of inappropriate behavior.
Pope Francis may be changing the face of the Catholic Church for the better, but there
still exist a number of problems the Church needs to address directly.
To learn more about how Pope Francis is changing what it means to be Catholic, check out Seeker
Daily’s video.
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