All-embracing

ELCO’S flight to Rio de Janeiro was delayed by two days. But mercifully she made it in time as the World Youth Day festivities went into high gear with the arrival of Pope Francis, who has been electrifying the world with the radical brand of simplicity and humility that he immediately put into practice in the staid and snooty Vatican.

The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has brought to Brazil his “back to basics” spirit. His packed schedule includes not only high Masses for fervent Catholics in grandiose basilicas and appearances before tens of thousands of young faithful from the world over, but also a visit to a hospital to comfort drug addicts—a gesture reminiscent of the many acts of simple kindness he has displayed in the gilded capital of Catholicism, such as washing the feet of juvenile inmates on Holy Thursday, visiting poor migrants outside Rome, and getting off his popemobile to embrace disabled children.

Francis has also called on priests to live simpler lifestyles, declared in one homily that Christ’s redemption covered “even the atheists,” and greeted Muslims during Ramadan. For all these, conservative Catholics “have not been really happy,” reports the National Catholic Reporter. That’s the surest sign there is that this Pope’s campaign to return the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic congregation to the kinder, gentler fundamentals of its faith—to become a compassionate, all-embracing Church—is working.

B