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By Robert Mickens | Vatican City
Who would have thought at the start of the 21st century that, just a couple of decades later, the pope would be the most forward-thinking and progressive leader on earth?
And, yet, despite the fact that the Catholic Church is "200 years behind the times", as Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini SJ noted just before his death in 2012, his Jesuit confrere -- Pope Francis -- has emerged as one of the prime advocates of some of the world's most progressive causes.
These include strict environmental protection measures, free healthcare, a universal basic wage, radical reform of capitalism, a face-mask mandate to halt the current health pandemic, and the list goes on.
Oh, he is also staunchly opposed to abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, embryonic stem-cell research, gay marriage, so-called "gender theory", something he's named "ideological colonization" and, apparently, women's ordination... among other things.
But the mainstream secular media -- and some progressive Catholics -- do not give much attention to the pope's more conservative views.
Perhaps that's partly because Francis, who will be 85 next month, doesn't act or sound like the typical conservatives that swell the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy.
He's a Roman outsider who is seen as an anti-institutional figure.
The Church's top cleric also presents himself as an anti-clericalist who appears more progressive and less afraid of change than many of his fellow clergymen.
He's more open than a lot of them, especially the vast majority of priests who are young enough to be his grandsons!
The mainstream media is, by and large, supportive of what it sees as Francis' more progressive-looking agenda. And perhaps that is one of the reasons why it gives him such favorable coverage, certainly more than it gave Benedict XVI when he was pope.
The Argentine pope's tone and approach is markedly different from his more conservative Bavarian predecessor. It's like the difference between night and day.
Whenever Francis makes a questionable remark or does something dubious, the media generally tolerates or even ignores it. Benedict could never have gotten away with a fraction of what many reporters let slide with Francis.
But the favorable and, at times, uncritical coverage of the current pope also has to do with the fact that Francis has some extremely tenacious and media-savvy critics (it would not be unfair to call many of them opponents or even enemies) within the Church itself.
And mainstream journalists do not want to add any fuel to the in-house fire that these conservative, "anti-Francis" Catholics are stoking. Who does? So they tend to temper their own criticisms.
The anti-media cardinal who become the pro-media pope
There is yet another reason, perhaps the strongest and most plausible of all, that explains the secular media's love affair with Francis.
It is the fact that he, the cardinal who never liked or trusted reporters, has become the pope who just can't get enough of them.
John Paul II was extremely successful at schmoozing with the media, certainly in the first decade or so of his pontificate. But Francis has been even more clever in building bridges with journalists.
The late Polish pope (and even Benedict, though in a more carefully managed way) almost always held in-flight press conferences with reporters who travelled with him during his 104 trips abroad.
These were usually held while returning to Rome. Only rarely did the scribes get the opportunity to individually greet John Paul on the plane.
But now they see Francis up close and personal both on the flight out and on the flight back.
Outbound, the Jesuit pope makes his way up and down the aisle of the press section, stopping row-by-row to greet and chat personally with each journalist. He signs objects for them, receives gifts and takes selfies.
Then on the return flight he holds a no-holds-barred press conference with them.
This is a shrewd strategy. This core group of Rome-based secular (and foreign) journalists that cover him and the Vatican have been given the unique privilege of becoming "friends" with the pope.
"We are travelling companions," he said at a recent gathering of journalists in the Consistory Hall at the Apostolic Palace.
It was an occasion for Francis to award two of our senior colleagues -- both who have covered the Vatican for secular news outlets for more than 40 years -- with the Grand Cross of the Pian Order, a papal knighthood.
What's not to like about this pope?
This pope -- like no other before him -- also gives interviews routinely to secular newspapers and TV programs. He even gave one to an Italian daily sports paper!
Francis has very clearly opted to favor the secular media over even his own Vatican Media or other official Church communications networks.
Perhaps it should be seen as another example of how he has moved the Church -- or at least the papacy -- out of the sanctuary and beyond strictly ecclesiastical confines.
There is one more extremely compelling reason why members of the secular media are so kind to Francis -- they genuinely like him as a person and support his global agenda.
Because of all these reasons, they are also less likely to challenge him when he says or does things they would normally criticize in other leaders and in other popes.
There is no shortage of examples of when Francis has stuck his foot in it, as it were. And that's fine in a certain sense, because no one should expect the pope to be perfect or to never make mistakes.
And gaffes should also be overlooked at times, especially when viewed within their broader context and meaning. But sometimes even a pope deserves to be called out when he makes insensitive, erroneous or tone-deaf remarks.
One of the most recent cases came during his November 12 visit to Assisi for an event connected to the "World Day of the Poor".
During a gathering in St. Francis' hometown, the pope went off script and spoke words of praise for French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin.
"I would like to thank the cardinal for his presence: he is among the poor, he too has suffered with dignity the experience of poverty, of abandonment, of distrust," Francis said.
The cardinal and his team of lawyers
Barbarin was the conservative archbishop of Lyon from 2002 until 2020 when he was forced to resign six years before the normal retirement age of 75.
He had been convicted in 2019 for failing to report one of France's most notorious pedophile priests to civil authorities and had totally lost the confidence of his clergy and people.
"He (the cardinal) defended himself with silence and prayer, " the pope added.
Actually, the cardinal defended himself with a team of top-notch lawyers who helped overturn the conviction.
Francis then publicly thanked Barbarin again, this time for his "testimony which builds up the Church".
Fair enough. The cardinal is now working with an association in France that assists the poor, the same group that helped organize the event in Assisi.
But coming in the wake of the devastating abuse report that was recently published in France, the pope's remarks seemed insensitive to abuse victims.
Most in the mainstream media either ignored or downplayed his comments.
Birds of a feather
Another questionable move that went largely unpublished involved Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the retired archbishop of Genoa and former president of the Italian bishops' conference.
In March 2019, just a month after the pope had held a Vatican summit on pedophilia with heads of the world's bishops' conferences, the cardinal wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and tried to stop a canonical trial (under his jurisdiction) of a priest accused of sexually abusing minors in the confessional.
Bagnasco proposed that the priest be sent away quietly without informing the people of his parish or anyone else publicly. The CDF immediately took the case away from him and sent it to a tribunal overseen by another bishop.
So how did it happen that Francis allowed this same Bagnasco to investigate charges of abuse cover-up against another cardinal?
In fact, that is exactly what happened. Bagnasco spent ten days in Krakow last June to investigate the actions of John Paul II's longtime personal secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz.
Behind the face mask
The Italian cardinal concluded there was no basis to the allegations against his Polish confrere. The mainstream media never even questioned the propriety of entrusting the investigation to someone who had earlier tried to cover up an abuse case.
Pope Francis has also done other questionable things that the media has been reluctant to report.
Remember his refusal to wear a face-mask or observe physical distancing, even when this was the law in Vatican City and well before vaccines were available?
Most in the mainstream media -- which has actually been a major voice in promoting anti-Covid measures -- initially just ignored the pope's irresponsible actions, until it became too embarrassing for them to do so any longer.
Like hiring a hitman
Secular journalists -- again, like many progressive Catholics -- also tend to conveniently dismiss or ignore the harsh rhetoric that Pope Francis routinely uses when speaking about abortion.
The pope has said on numerous occasions that getting an abortion is like "resorting to a contract killer to resolve a problem" or like hiring "a hitman".
"Abortion is more than a problem, it's murder," he told journalists last September on his flight back from a visit to Budapest and Slovakia when he again repeated the hitman analogy.
There would have been an uproar, especially among so-called Church progressives, if Benedict XVI had repeatedly used such grim language..
And what about Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York? He sure got hammered back in September when he compared a woman who has abortion to a landlord who executes his or her tenants.
Progressive Catholics rightly consider such insensitive language outrageous and unacceptable. They are incensed when conservative or traditionalist bishops use it. But they, and the mainstream media, seem to merely roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders when Francis does.
There is something not quite right or honest about that.
Popes, including the current one, are only human. Like all of us, they make mistakes at times or say things in a way they probably should not.
And sometimes popes, too, can get things terribly wrong.
It's not being disloyal or acting in bad faith to acknowledge that or even point it out. After all, even popes should be held accountable.
Follow me on Twitter @robinrome
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