Francis: A Pope for the Age of Twitter

A great insight from Elizabeth Tenety at the Washington Post: 

In homilies and speeches in the months since assuming the Seat of Saint Peter, Pope Francis has demonstrated his simple style applies not only to his dress and living accommodations –but to the words he uses to share the faith. A few recent examples:

Eternity “will not be boring.”

“Long faces cannot proclaim Jesus.”

“War is madness. It is the suicide of humanity.”

“We are not part-time Christians.”

“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!”

“Think about a single mother who goes to church, in the parish and to the secretary she says: ‘I want my child baptized’. And then this Christian, this Christian says: ‘No, you cannot because you’re not married!’. But look, this girl who had the courage to carry her pregnancy and not to return her son to the sender, what is it? A closed door! This is not zeal! It is far from the Lord!”

“If the investments in the banks fall slightly… [it is] a tragedy… what can be done? But if people die of hunger, if they have nothing to eat, if they have poor health, it does not matter! This is our crisis today!”

In contrast to the richly theological style of Pope Benedict, Pope Francis seems a pope made for the age of tweets. His “simple, direct language,” (as described by L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s newspaper) is making the sometimes-mystical leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics veritably meme-worthy. And that is raising eyebrows across the religious spectrum.

Read more about what she calls his “made-for-meme style.”