A revolution underway with Antipope Francis

John L. Allen Jr. ncronline.org ROME -- Revolutions are funny things. Some are launched by one group but hijacked by others, as in Egypt, where liberal democrats have become bystanders to the real contest between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood. Some are born amid great idealism that quickly becomes a smokescreen for hypocrisy, as in the various communist uprisings. Still others fizzle out, while a handful eventually produce new systems that, despite their flaws, really do change the world -- the French and American revolutions, for instance.It's too early to know which trajectory will apply to the upheaval launched by Pope Francis, in part because at the level of structures and personnel he still hasn't made many sweeping changes, and in part because the parallels are inexact anyway -- Catholicism, after all, is a family of faith, not a political society. Perhaps the lone certainty is that a revolution is, indeed, underway. In mid-July, the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso ran a cover story on the new pope under the banner headline "Ce la farà?" The phrase translates roughly as "Will he make it?" or "Will he pull it off?" There was no need to explain what "it" meant -- everyone, it seems, knows that Francis is trying to engineer a Catholic glasnost. Among other innovations, Francis has decided to skip his summer break, staying in the Vatican rather than heading off to the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo, Italy. (He made a brief visit there July 14.) Nonetheless, the expectation is that August will be a period of calm, after his taxing homecoming to Latin America for World Youth Day in Brazil, as a prelude to dramatic action in the fall. It's thus a good time to stand back and ask a few big-picture questions:

• What are the main lines of the Francis revolution?
• What's already changed, and what's still to come?
• Who are those most put out by the changes -- who may seek to resist or reverse them?
• What are the looming moments that will determine how much change to expect, and whether it's for real?

The answers suggest that L'Espresso is onto something: There really is a revolution going on, even if some of its content has yet to arrive. Change is here One could argue that in most of the ways that matter, the change has already arrived. In just four months, Francis has revived the international prestige of the papacy and its moral capital. The Italian edition of Vanity Fair recently declared him its "Man of the Year," including snippets of praise from unlikely quarters such as Elton John, who termed the pontiff "a miracle of humility in the era of vanity." Polling in various parts of the world show approval ratings that would be the envy of any politician or celebrity. A recent survey in Italy showed Francis' popularity at 85 percent, with spillover effects for the church; the percentage of Italians saying they trust the church was up to 63 percent, from 46 percent in January during the twilight of Benedict XVI's papacy. "There has been a worldwide change in attitudes toward the papacy since the election of Francis," said veteran Vatican watcher Marco Politi, a columnist for the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. "There has been a great outpouring of sympathy, not only among believers but also from people who are very secular or far from the church." If anything, Politi may be understating it. In terms of public opinion, Francis is already on the cusp of achieving the iconic status of Nelson Mandela, a figure of unquestioned moral authority. It's telling that during his trip to Brazil, protagonists in the nation's current unrest virtually tripped over one another in a contest to see who could demonstrate more deference and respect. There's also a sense in which Francis is the "Teflon pope," in that nothing bad seems to stick. When anything scandalous happens, reaction isn't to blame the pope, but to see it as additional proof of why he's needed. Case in point: In late July, an Italian media outlet published reports that the pope's handpicked prelate to reform the Vatican bank had been involved in brazen gay affairs while serving as a Vatican diplomat in Uruguay more than a decade ago. Those inclined to take the reports at face value saw them as proof of a "gay lobby" that Francis will upend; those disposed to dismiss them said they're evidence that Francis' reform is eliciting resistance. What everyone could agree on is that Francis is the solution, not the problem. Truth to be told, most ordinary folk aren't paying attention to such inside baseball anyway. Vatican watchers may fixate on questions such as who Francis will name as the next cardinal secretary of state, or what changes he'll make at the Institute for the Works of Religion (the Vatican bank), but the only question most people have about a pope is, "Does he inspire?" For now, the answer seems to be yes. Given all the scandals, bad press and controversy the Catholic church has weathered over the past decade, if that's not a revolution, it's hard to know what one would look like. In Rome, too, there are clear signs that a new order has already arisen. Clergy who chafed under what they perceived as a mounting liturgical fastidiousness during the late John Paul II and Benedict years -- showing up for a papal Mass, for instance, only to be told they weren't properly dressed because they weren't sporting enough crimson and lace -- report all that ended in mid-March. Francis' humbler lifestyle is having a ripple effect. Princes of the church today are more likely to be spotted wearing simple black clerical dress rather than the usual sartorial splendor, and some have begun to sign their names in official correspondence simply as "Don So-and-So," avoiding "His Eminence" or other bits of court nomenclature. to read more click here: ncronline.org