The pontiff had barely stepped onto the loggia wearing the mozzetta and papal stole before social media was ablaze with traditionalists claiming, "We're so back."
In many respects, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and Cardinal Timothy Dolan have traveled similar paths to the most powerful office in the church, except for pope.
View from the Vatican: Hope is less autobiography than it is an aggregation of existing stories, interviews, speeches and history that are already known about the now-88-year-old pontiff.
Fiducia Supplicans arrived in reporters' inboxes at 2:15 in the afternoon one year ago today, on Dec. 18, for "immediate" publication. In many respects, it defined the year ahead for Pope Francis and some of his key allies.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to office, it's worth considering what Vatican-U.S. relations might look like during the four years ahead, NCR's Christopher White writes.
Rome's Caravita community has served as an unofficial parish for synod members from Australia, Great Britain, the United States and elsewhere over the past two Octobers.
As the yearslong synod on synodality inches toward its Oct. 27 conclusion, the resistance has effectively gone silent, a stark contrast to last year's summit, as well as to Pope Francis' earlier synods.
Delegates are officially barred from discussing specifics of the conversations inside the Vatican's synod hall. But members told NCR that hot-button issues are being discussed both inside the room and on the sidelines.
"It's often when Francis is on the road that he's able to underscore the simplicity that he expects from church leaders," writes Christopher White, NCR's Vatican correspondent.
