The Argentine pontiff was a vital progressive influence on issues such as migration, and fought for a more merciful, less rigid Catholic church<\/p>\n
Defying doctors\u2019 orders to rest following his battle with double pneumonia, a weak Pope Francis last week visited<\/a> Rome\u2019s Regina Coeli prison, where he blew kisses towards inmates and spent half an hour in discussion with some of those incarcerated. Sadly, this Maundy Thursday encounter turned out to be one of the last acts of a supremely hardworking papacy. In\u00a0retrospect, its location was entirely appropriate.<\/p>\n Throughout his 12 years in Saint Peter\u2019s chair, Francis sought admirably to refocus the Catholic church\u2019s energies on the marginalised, while challenging the power of entrenched interests. Coming, as he put it<\/a>, \u201cfrom the ends of the earth\u201d, the first non-European pontiff of modern times was an outsider pope and a radical one. Within the church, the Argentine was a sometimes spikily direct reformer; outside it, he was a\u00a0significant, high-profile ally of progressive causes.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Argentine pontiff was a vital progressive influence on issues such as migration, and fought for a more merciful, less rigid Catholic church Defying doctors\u2019 orders to rest following his battle with double pneumonia, a weak Pope Francis last week visited Rome\u2019s Regina Coeli prison, where he blew kisses towards inmates and spent half an … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}