After he was elected Pope he chose to live in Santa Marta, a hostel, rather than the Apostolic Palace. Pope Francis’ climate change encyclical will be a hugely important step for the church. There is arguably no one better qualified to ask questions of those in the pope’s inner circles (even though “it is virtually impossible to determine who, if anyone, is really close to him”) and then attempt to describe Pope Francis’ management style for his readers. He nods that it is, and he tells me: “I do not know what might be the most fitting description…. Other Churches have decided to admit women, but the Vatican is still reticent.

As Francis, in the job for less than two years, embarks on his second Asian tour, he has already found that wrestling with the Curia and other vested interests within the church hierarchy will be no easy matter.

Francis has said he fervently believes that the Church still has a vital role to play in the increasingly secular 21st century, and many would agree with that. Many say there would have been less sexual abuse in the past if priests had been allowed to live normal sexual as well as spiritual lives, and that this disconnection with half of the congregation does nothing to help make the Church relevant in the modern world.


Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings. The first non-European pontiff in a thousand years, and the first from the southern hemisphere, he launched his papacy with a condemnation of capitalism’s culture of waste and indifference to poverty. This is the spirit that governs his visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh too.

It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre.

IMF report on Bangladesh surpassing India’s per capita GDP: What does it reveal? Pope Francis reacted swiftly to counter the suggestion, having the Vatican press office issue a statement saying that there was no change and stressing the ordinary form is to be preferred. Usually 12 elderly persons are selected, to represent the disciples of Jesus. One way to tackle the problem is to engage with the world’s other religions, and while Francis’s predecessor rebuilt bridges with the Jewish faith, it was more a case of burning them with Islam with some ill-judged comments Francis will struggle to erase.

Are there applications from his management style for the rest of the nonprofit sector? Pope Francis took the conservative bishops by surprise early on, for example, when he suddenly streamlined the procedures by which Catholics can obtain marriage annulments.

The centre, where the leader resides, represents power.

He had reportedly been on the brink of being sacked before the pope’s untimely death, as John Paul I had made Vatican bank reform a priority.

He carries his own black briefcase, keeps his own agenda, and makes many of his own calls. Simplicity and concern for the poor are two distinctive marks of a good leader.

What is this leadership all about? Pope-Francis-Venezuela / Long Thiên October 26, 2016; Reuters Philip Pullella, the senior correspondent for Reuters in Rome, has worked in Italy for Reuters for the past 30 of his 35 years as a journalist.He is among those who travel with the popes—in his case, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict, and now Pope Francis. Rather than hide or ignore problems, he speaks quickly, loudly, and plainly, whether the issue is homosexuality, the famously corrupt Vatican Bank, or the role of women in the church.