The Week Ahead: Remaking the church

Pope Francis has been making waves since he was elected almost two years ago. During his homilies and public statements, his gentle demeanor gives way to a leader insistent on bringing the 2000-year-old Catholic Church into the 21st century. His remarks on issues like poverty, the LGBT community and climate change have won him praise from many Catholics while gaining him fans outside the church who see him as a reformer.

In September he will continue his global approach by becoming first pope to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, where he is expected to focus on inequality around the world. His predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II tended to devote more attention to cultural issues like homosexuality and abortion.

Last week Francis met with Iran's vice president for women and family affairs at the Vatican. The two talked about improving interfaith relationships and promoting a culture of peace.

Francis has made clear what he believes are major issues for the Catholic Church. These include climate change, the church's sex abuse scandal and corruption and cronyism in the Vatican.

The pope’s intentions for the church were evident this weekend when he welcomed 20 new church officials into the College of Cardinals. Fifteen of the cardinals are under the age of 80 and therefore are eligible to vote for Francis’ successor when the time comes. Many of them are from dioceses outside Europe. They include a cardinal from Panama who has helped indigenous people fight mining companies and one from the small island of Tonga, where the population is fighting the effects of climate change.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Thomas Drayton spoke to Father Thomas Reese, a senior analyst at the National Catholic Reporter in Washington, D.C., and Sister Mary Waskowiak from Congregation Sisters of Mercy in San Francisco.

“I think the values of the new cardinals that the pope is choosing both in Europe and outside of Europe are the values of the pope,” said Reese. “These are people who … are pastoral in their approach to their people, who are concerned about the poor and the marginalized in their dioceses. So the kind of emphasis that he wants and the reimagining of the church that he wants to do — I think these cardinals are going to be on board.”

Waskowiak was equally excited about Francis’ reimagining of the Catholic Church. “I love his efforts in structural transformation and spiritual transformation,” she said. “The pope is bringing the voices of those who have often been silenced or invisible. He’s bringing them to the table, bringing them to the public eye, and hopefully they will be pastoral people capable of changing our entire world.”

She said that there’s room for improvement in some areas. Francis spoke last year about making the church a more welcoming place for divorced Catholics, the LGBT community and those who have premarital sex, but the church has yet to reform its approach to this type of diversity.

“I’m not sure he’s been clear on those issues,” she said. “I personally believe some of that can change. I will be curious to see how the pope listens to the Catholic faithful, to married couples, to gay and straight people. I’m holding out hope.”

She compared the task before Francis to the wide-ranging reforms of the Second Vatican Council pioneered by Pope John XXIII in the 1960s. Francis is the first pope who began his career in the church after those reforms were instituted. “We celebrated 50 years since the opening of Vatican II a couple years ago, where John XXIII was recognized as opening the windows of change. And I really feel like this pope is opening doors and windows of change at the Vatican and calling for change beyond the Vatican,” she said.

However, Reese questions whether Francis is a true reformer, saying that he’s simply taking the church back to its roots.

“He’s not changing church doctrine because he’s going back to the gospel of Jesus. The gospel of compassion, the gospel of love,” Reese said. “He has emphasized that the first words of evangelization should be ‘God loves you.’ Not a list of rules and regulations … And how we should respond to God’s love for us is by loving one another.”