“Prophetic is probably the best word for the role the pope is playing…”

“The pope is not a politician, a media loudmouth or an activist. He is a religious figure, wholly dedicated to representing the Gospel of Jesus Christ as he understands it to a world caught up in a thousand other things.

As conservative Catholic George Weigel writes, ‘Pope Francis is a revolutionary. The revolution he proposes, however, is not a matter of economic or political prescription, but a revolution in the self-understanding of the Catholic Church.’

Prophetic is probably the best word for the role the pope is playing — not in the sense of predicting the future, but of standing outside of business and politics as usual and speaking hard and inconvenient moral truths.”

—Tom Krattenmaker, religion writer

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