The only certainty of the days following Pope Francis’s death, is uncertainty.

With his Church-as-a-field-hospital and his personal–personalist, in the political sense—modus gubernandi, Francis left many things unclear, confused, and subject to discussion. In a word: the “Franciscan” way of doing things created division.

This is the legacy of Pope Francis, which looms over [...]

There is a stark contrast between the idea that had been given of the funeral of Pope Francis, with the simplified rites and the desire that it not be seen as a sign of power, with the manner in which the transfer of the Pope’s body from the Santa Marta house to St. Peter’s [...]

Paradoxical and incomplete. The Pontificate of Pope Francis can be summed up in these two words. The time will come for all the excellent analyses apt to help us clarify whether Pope Francis’ revolution has given direction to the Church, or whether it was just a twelve-year tempest in a teacup. In short, to [...]

Except for the prefect of the Dicastery for the Oriental Churches, Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, , there was not a single cardinal elector or even anyone with any particularly hefty role in the Vatican among the papal stand-ins during Holy Week.

When popes are ill or otherwise indisposed, standard practice in Holy Week and at [...]

Chosen to restore the Curia, overcome corruption, and even – it was said at the beginning of his pontificate – shutter the Institute of the Works of Religion once and for all (the IOR is the much-maligned and even more misunderstood “Vatican bank”), Francis finds himself at this moment of his pontificate facing a [...]

Pope Francis has been back in the Domus Sanctae Marthae for two weeks now, after more than a month in Rome’s Gemelli hospital. Besides a brief apparition on Sunday, at the end of the Mass for the Jubilee of the Sick, the Pope has not been seen publicly after the surprise stop at Santa [...]

Pope Francis has been back in the Vatican for just over a week, with at least seven more of recovery to go, all during which his doctors have ordered him to keep a loose schedule and a very much lightened work load.

The question, then, becomes: How will things work, with Francis not working [...]

The letter that Pope Francis addressed to the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera on March 14 is the epitome of the pontificate.

When the newspaper published the letter on March 18, it was immediately apparent that the Pope could not have written it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Not all of the Pope’s [...]

The Holy See has denied that Pope Francis received Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda in the first week of his hospitalization at Gemelli. The news spread very quickly and created a lot of turbulence. The fear was that Pope Francis intended to change the rules of the Conclave, as had been rumored for some time. Then, [...]

Pope Francis’s first “proof of life” since entering the hospital on 14 February came this past week, in the form of a recorded audio message played for the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square on the evening of Thursday, 6 March, before the nightly Rosary for his health.

No photo of the Pope in [...]