P0PE FRANCIS NAMED TIME MAGAZINE’S ‘PERSON OF THE YEAR’!

emblem of the Papacy: Triple tiara and keys Français : emblème pontifical Italiano: emblema del Papato Português: Emblema papal. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With a little help from new Vatican PR guru Greg Burke, Pope Francis has been voted Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ . The Pontiff is said to have pulled the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, which is more in keeping with Jesus’s practices. Not wishing to piss on the Pope’s parade, I should remind you all that on January 2nd 1939, Time magazine’s Man of the Year was Adolph Hitler, so if I were Pope Francis, I would take the accolade with a pinch of salt!

Taking a stand against the obese rich, Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and  bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap. Good for him!

In his message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace, marked around the world on Jan. 1, he also called for sharing of wealth and for nations to shrink the gap between rich and poor, more of whom are getting only crumbs. He said, “The grave financial and economic crises of the present time have pushed man to seek satisfaction, happiness and security in consumption and earnings out of all proportion to the principles of a sound economy.” He has attacked unfettered capitalism as the idolatry of money, calling it a new tyranny. The Pontiff has urged his own Church to be more fair, frugal and less pompous and to be closer to the poor and suffering. Presumably the excesses of now disgraced German bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst who spent £26million on his mansion in Limburg, Germany still rankles the Pope, and so it should, whose own style is decidedly frugal. He shunned the spacious papal apartment in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace to live in a small suite in a Vatican guest house. A Mercedes has been replaced a Ford Focus.

I will give the Pontiff his due. I have no doubt Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a good man and an excellent representation of how the head of the Catholic Church should outwardly behave. However, if you were to strip the Vatican catacombs of all its treasures, you could probably pay off Italy’s national debts and still have enough left to buy a stranger a latte.

Updated: 18/12/13.

U.S. gay magazine ‘The Advocate’ named Pope Francis ‘person of the year’ for famously saying he would not ‘judge’ homosexuals. I don’t suppose Greg Burke had anything to do with that particular accolade.

Updated: 31/10/14.

Pope Francis has made history by appearing on the cover of rock magazine Rolling Stone. Mark Binelli’s 7,700-word cover story, entitled “The Times They Are A-Changing”, explores the “Pope’s Gentle Revolution” and dissects just what makes this particular pontiff so different from his predecessors.

 

POPE FRANCIS…’TOP OF THE POPS’ ON FACEBOOK!

St. Peter’s Basilica at Early Morning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thanks in part to the Vatican’s public relations guru Greg Burke, Pope Francis aka Jorge Mario Bergogliohas taken the world by storm since his ascendancy to the papacy. Social media sites are abuzz with his name, for Pope Francis tops the list of what Facebook’s 1.2 billion users are talking about worldwide. Why he even beat Nelson Mandela and Miley Cyrus! Furthermore, a survey by Twiplomacy named Pope Francis the most influential world leader on Twitter. The Pontiff’s, @Pontifex account gets an average of 8,200 retweets for every English tweet. Without doubt, Pope Francis is the most-talked about person of the year online. “To proclaim Christ in the digital era is a special field for the work of the young,” said the Pope. The Pontiff may well be redefining religion by reaching Christians who may have been hitherto unreachable? Not wishing to sound too much of a cynic, its easy to be an armchair Christian paying lip-service to Catholicism. I do wonder how many of the Pope’s online followers live…or will live the life he advocates? Popularity means nothing if it doesn’t lead to something significant! I further wonder what the Christ would have made of the social media phenomena? He might say, “Get out there and do as I did…make a personal sacrifice for the benefit of another!”