@PONTIFEXCELLENT: Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone…

For the first time in its 46-year-plus history, Rolling Stone Magazine has chosen to put a pope on its cover. (This also means Papa has scored the Holy Trifecta of Magazine Covers: Time, The New Yorker, and now this.)

Papa Frank is the cover-pontiff (and lead story) in Rolling Stone’s February 2014 edition. The story, written by contributor Mark Binelli (who has most recently also written about the Nuns-on-the-Bus controversy, the “hijacking” of Kansas politics by conservatives, and Johnny Depp the “last buccaneer”) is lengthy and as riveting as any of the magazine’s best narrative pieces.

In his story titled, “Pope Francis: The Times They Are A-Changin‘” (with the subtitle, “Inside the Pope’s Gentle Revolution”), Binelli writes in part:

After the disastrous papacy of Benedict, a staunch traditionalist who looked like he should be wearing a striped shirt with knife-fingered gloves and menacing teenagers in their nightmares, Francis’ basic mastery of skills like smiling in public seemed a small miracle to the average Catholic. But he had far more radical changes in mind. By eschewing the papal palace for a modest two-room apartment, by publicly scolding church leaders for being “obsessed” with divisive social issues like gay marriage, birth control and abortion (“Who am I to judge?” Francis famously replied when asked his views on homosexual priests) and – perhaps most astonishingly of all – by devoting much of his first major written teaching to a scathing critique of unchecked free-market capitalism, the pope revealed his own obsessions to be more in line with the boss’ son….

Down in the rainy square, the crowd cheers for its new friend, Cool Pope Francis, until he retreats back into the mysteries of the walled city he now rules. I’m reminded of another moment from the press conference on the plane, when a reporter attempted to pin Francis down on gay marriage and abortion. And what is His Holiness’ own position on these matters? The pope’s artful dodge struck me as brilliantly Clintonian. “That of the Church,” Francis said simply. “I’m a son of the Church.”

He didn’t add, because he didn’t have to, that he’s the father now, too.