What is wonderful, though, is that Pope Francis while thanking the young people who were chanting his name in a celebrity type fashion, told them there is another Name they should be Chanting and that is the Holy Name of Jesus and he got them chanting it.
Pope Francis knows how to communicate in Italian by voice inflection and typical, ordinary Italian ways of saying thing. He is a populist in this regard, not an academician, not that there is anything wrong with orthodox academicians.
Pope Francis is getting huge crowds for Sunday's Regina Coeli (replaces the Angelus during Easter):
2 comments:
And for some reason there is this idea that Benedict didn't connect with young people because why...they didn't cheer like they were at a rock concert?
Here's a newsflash...he wasn't putting on a rock concert. Pope Benedict was trying to teach people how to be culturally Catholic again, and shockingly, people were buying into it.
What is the fastest growing segment of the Church, the TLM crowd. That isn't because of the last 4 Popes prior to Benedict. Who are the adherents to the fastest growing segment of the Church, YOUNG families. We are so caught up in today's understanding of what constitutes popularity, that we forget that being Catholic isn't about being popular, socially. It's about drawing people toward salvation. Benedict did that. Moreso than Popes John, Paul, and the JP's. People were leaving the Church in droves, priestly formation was a scandal with regard to the mass exodus as was religious life, yet under Benedict's watch, those segments of the Church grew as well.
I think that if you're going to count who connects and communicates, I think that it has to be Benedict, as much, if not more than any other Pope since Pius XII.
Andy,
You may well be right about Pope Benedict as compared with previous Popes and now Pope Francis, and there may be some injustice in not recognizing sufficiently effective evangelization by Benedict. That said, presumably we can still be thankful for the evangelizing fruits of both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis.
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