Reading Francis

Ever since Pope Francis’ election, I’ve been thinking that the mainstream has been missing the mark by saying that we’ve never had a pope like him before. John XXIII has always been one of my favorites, even though he died years before I was born and decades before I became a Catholic. I can’t do justice in this blog to the points of comparison, but is just finished Greg Tobin’s The Good Pope and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It doesn’t have all the Yogi Berra-esque humor that he was known for, but it captures the man well. It’s so fitting that Francis recognized him as a saint (so, yes, this is the one that was proclaimed a saint along with John Paul II), because the similarities are so strong. Read up on him and you’ll see. Whether Francis’ focus on family life over the next year approaches Vatican II in impact, we will see. But they are at least kindred spirits.