“one reporter asked what was in the briefcase. “The keys to the atomic bomb aren’t in it,” Francis joked. So what did it contain? “My razor, my breviary, my diary, a book to read—on St Therese of Lisieux to whom I am devoted. … I always take this bag when I travel. It’s normal. We have to get used to this being normal,” he added.”
“It’s a new normal: Francis has presented himself to the world as an icon of simplicity and humility, eschewing papal limousines and the grand Apostolic Palace, and instead being driven in a Ford Focus and living in the Vatican guesthouse. But being simple can be a complex business if you are the leader of one of the world’s largest religious denominations and also a head of state. And Francis’s life story shows that humility is not an innate quality of his, but a calculated religious, and sometimes political, choice.”
“The political division centered on Liberation Theology, a new approach to Catholic teaching that declared a need to liberate the poor not just spiritually but also from unjust economic, political, or social conditions.”
“Progressives were enthused. Conservatives rejected the theology as Marxist, and a way of allowing communism into Latin America through the back door.”
“For the new Bergoglio, humility was more like an intellectual stance than a personal temperament—a tool he developed in his struggle against what he had learned were the weaknesses in his own personality, with its rigid, authoritarian, and egotistical streaks.”
“As Francis settled into the early months of his papacy, big gestures like moving to live in two rooms in a Vatican hostel surprised and even shocked people. But it has since become clear that the gestures are not spontaneous or random responses to situations in which he happens to find himself. They are being planned to set out what is in effect the program of his papacy.”