Pope Francis' first year

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 13/03/2014

Reporter: Mary Gearin

A look at what Pope Francis has achieved in his first twelve months in the Vatican.


TONY JONES, PRESENTER: When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis exactly one year ago, the headlines were about an ailing Church mired in sexual abuse and corruption scandals. Since then, the press, the faithful and the world have been beguiled by the pontiff's down-to-earth manner and media savvy ways, raising expectations that he'll carry out sweeping reforms, but he's already played down this notion. So what can and what will he achieve? Europe correspondent Mary Gearin has taken a look at Francis' first year and filed this report from Rome.

MARY GEARIN, REPORTER: He certainly packs them in. This just last Sunday. After the rock star welcome, ...

POPE FRANCIS: Bongiorno.

MARY GEARIN: ... he even turns a technical glitch into a disarming moment. He's not your average Pope.

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Francis a year ago, he blew fresh life, at least fresh headlines, into a Church bogged down with scandals.

Now he's the selfie-snapped populist pontiff shaking up the papacy, from his refusal to wear the traditional Prada red shoes and stay in the lavish papal apartments to his decentralising of Vatican power, his insisting on using a Ford Focus rather than a limousine and speeches attacking rampant capitalism.

POPE FRANCIS (July 6, 2013, voiceover translation): It hurts me to see a priest with a car that's the latest model. It's just not right.

ELISABETTA PIQUE, PAPAL BIOGRAPHER: The change is so big that it seems that more than one year has passed. He did - I call what a kind of revolution here in the Vatican and around the Church.

MARY GEARIN: This was Francis' final address before a week-long retreat for Easter. True to form, he insisted it be held outside the Vatican for the first time in living memory and to ride on the bus with everyone else.

VOX POP: He listen to the people. He hear the people.

VOX POP II: He is very friendly, he's so human, so - you can feel he is very like yourself, with someone that can be your neighbour or something like that.

MARY GEARIN: Whether Pope Francis is hero or hype or something in between depends on where you stand and certainly he's popular here. Authorities report a doubling of the crowds that come to these weekly addresses at St Peter's Square compared to the time of his predecessor, Benedict. But beyond greater popular appeal, just what real change does Francis offer his church?

Although the Pope himself has played down the notion of sweeping reforms of the Church's teachings, expectations have been raised by the Pope's own remarks, including the now-famous quote about gay priests, "Who am I to judge?"

Pope Francis has called an extraordinary synod of bishops, just the third in the Church's history, to discuss marriage and the family this October, a hint that change is in the air.

GERARD O'CONNELL, VATICAN ANALYST: He's saying that it's not a question of rules and regulations, it's a question of respecting them as people that God loves.

MARY GEARIN: Gerard O'Connell is a veteran Vatican analyst. His wife is Elisabetta Pique, a former war correspondent from the Pope's home country, Argentina. They've known him for 15 years. They say although Francis may only be changing Church practice rather than law, that's a revolution in itself.

ELISABETTA PIQUE: It's someone that when he says, "We have to be near the people that suffers, the wounded of the society," he means it and he does it. For that reason people knows that he's authentic, he's not a fake leader.

GERARD O'CONNELL: Well what has he done? He's raised questions. People have interpreted, put many interpretations into the questions he's raised, and there was a revolution in the questions because he's raising questions which were taboo up to now.

MARY GEARIN: Francis has given the impression of a leader focused on making his church more relevant to modern life and concerns. But some believe he hasn't done enough to address the most explosive issue facing the Church, the scandal of sexual abuse by clergy, and that until he does, any other gain he makes will be overshadowed.

Miguel Hurtado was abused when he was 16 by a priest in Spain. He, like many other survivors of abuse, was disheartened by the Vatican's representative's performance before a UN panel about the Church's record of tackling clerical sexual abuse, a performance subsequently slammed by the UN itself.

MIGUEL HURTADO, SNAP ADVOCACY GROUP: I think that charisma only lasts so far. I think it would be a mistake to think that only with nice words or with out-of-the-box actions the crisis is going to go away.

MARY GEARIN: The Pope's supporters point to his creation last year of a commission of experts to advise on the issue, but so far no members have been appointed and abuse survivors say the Pope should take more direct action immediately.

MIGUEL HURTADO: They have to open the archives, they have to report child abuse to the authorities and they need to fire bishops who have protected child abusers. They don't need the commission to tell them that.

MARY GEARIN: A prominent case is that of American bishop Robert Finn, convicted in 2012 for failing to report a paedophile priest, but so far not disciplined by the Vatican.

Cardinal Turkson told Lateline he believes a Pope who's already sacked a German bishop for being too ostentatious will soon act on this issue.

PETER TURKSON, PONTIFICAL COUNCIL, JUSTICE AND PEACE: I don't see how, in such a case, this - if it's a proven case, what you're talking about - I don't see how that priest or that minister will continue to function.

MARY GEARIN: It could be that it's behind the scenes that the Pope makes his most dramatic transformations in the cloistered world of the Roman Curia, the Vatican's powerful administrative arm, accused over the years of corruption. Francis has appointed a group of eight cardinals to investigate and last month put Australian Cardinal George Pell at the head of a group to overhaul the Vatican's financial practices.

Between potentially disappointing pro-reformers and scaring conservatives, this Pope risks backlash from several quarters.

PHILIPPA HITCHEN, VATICAN RADIO JOURNALIST: Will there be a backlash? Yes, people don't like change, they don't like sudden change, they don't like doing things in a different way to the way it's always been done. It's a very Italian thing too. And part of his - if you look at the new cardinals he's just named, part of his way of doing things is to try and perhaps make the universal Church just that in a way that it hasn't been for so long; it's been so concentrated in the hands of the Italian Church.

VOX POP III: I don't think he can change it. They have ruined the world for 2,000 years and they will ruin the next world the next 2,000 years. It's old men.

GERARD O'CONNELL: It's sure that not everybody is applauding, but you look - we've seen in one year enormous crowds every Wednesday, every Sunday here. They understand what he's saying.

MARY GEARIN: A man on a mission with popular power and enemies to make is indeed a man to watch.

Mary Gearin, Lateline.


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