Roman Catholics call it “the Francis effect”, the way the new Pope is paring down the inherited pomp of his office to become more accessible. No more dainty red Prada shoes or fully tricked out Mercedes-Benz, like his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Francis I wears plain black shoes and is driven in an old Ford Focus. He refers to himself as “bishop” rather than “Pope” and has refused the papal apartments, deeming them too lavish. He has chosen to stay instead in the Vatican guest house, where he can have breakfast in the communal dining room with visiting priests.
During last week’s trip to Brazil, he reflected on the Church’s recent failures. “Perhaps the Church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas. Perhaps the world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions; perhaps the Church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age.” These are words of an organisational as much as a religious leader.
Pope Francis I’s modest style reflects a new set of priorities at the Vatican. Less pageantry, more focus on the nuts and bolts of management. He has set up a commission to reform the Vatican’s administration, notably its bank, and seems determined to restore its tarnished reputation.