ONE IMMEDIATE CHANGE, MANIFESTED IN MULTIPLE WAYS, POPE LEO HAS MADE: A CHANGE IN PAPAL TONE! THANKS BE TO GOD!

 I can understand Italian very well, especially street Italian, as I have many relatives in Italy, Livorno specifically. And they know their street Italian as my mother did. 

Thus when Pope Francis became pope, my Italian relatives loved his vulgar Italian. By that I mean, his street Italian. And he was funny too, when you heard him speak his street Italian. He had an Italian sense of humor. One of my Italian relatives, who I visited in Livorno in 2013 told me that Pope Francis was a regular person that she would feel comfortable inviting into her home for dinner.

In Livorno, the term vulgar Italian means someone who is not very refined and does not have great manners in speech. They’re regular people.

But soon, that wore thin. More and more Pope Francis focused on the negative in the Church in his view. He called nuns “pickled pepper faces”. He told the Roman Curia they all had spiritual Alzheimer’s  disease, and that was the nicest thing he said to them over the years. 

He called young priests and seminarians little monsters who loved wearing their grandmother’s lace. 

He called rad trads, clergy or laity, rigid with serious underlying mental illnesses.

He called those with homosexual tendencies, fags and faggotry. That’s about as street speaking as you can get. He did it more than once too.

Pope Francis was very negative and everyone, except his circle of friends, feared with great anxiety any off-the-cuff remarks he would make that called into question orthodox Catholic teachings, especially interviews he gave which were very frequent and always caused an uproar in some parts of the Church.

Pope Leo has changed all of that and from day one! He looks and acts as a pope wearing very frequently the Mozzetta and ornate papal stole from the first moment of his election and for every formal papal event outside of a liturgy, such as this morning’s first consistory. It was always odd to see the pope wearing only his street cassock at consistories while the cardinals wore proper attire. 

He reads his speeches, not tossing them aside, so he can speak off-the-cuff. He is careful in any off-the-cuff remarks and has made no news by speaking off-the-cuff. Even in my liberal 1970’s seminary I had a professor tell me that popes don’t speak off-the-cuff as anything they say could be subject to being an official act or teaching. 

But the greatest immediate change Pope Leo has made is to be nice to his Curia, to the Roman Clergy, to the young trads on their pilgrimage in France and to everyone he meets.

Pope Leo is a breath of fresh papal air after the flatulence of the last 12 years. I doubt if we ever will hear Pope Leo speak of people eating sh-t as Pope Francis described some people. Thanks be to God for that!

Fr. Z summed it up best:

For the last month and change, one of the most frequent observations I’ve heard from people is that its funny how we are so happy just to have something like normalcy.  The most frequent word I’ve heard in Rome and in these USA, from clergy and laity, Catholics and even non-Catholics is “relief”.  One person likened it to the feeling when a migraine ends.  Another said it is like the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I told my bishop, I can breath again and I can!