THE NEW BISHOP OF ROME, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires and perhaps former chemical engineer before entering into the much-hated fraternity of the Jesuits, promises to be something of a revolution in the Roman Catholic Church. As indeed all popes tend to promise before they become bogged down under the weight of trying to supervise (when they try) the most labyrinthine, underhand, corrupt and incomprehensible organisation that exists on the face of the Earth. If it is in any manner a reflection of what life after death may be then Heaven help us.
HOWEVER, AS IS ALWAYS STATED each time a new pope is "elected", he may well bring something new to the Roman Catholic Church.
THE MOST OBVIOUS FACTOR which differentiates him from the last cluster of popes is that he is the first one for over fifty years who is not openly a war criminal, given the fact that he has not been a member of the Curia, which, when not helping the Nazis outright at the time of World War II, did their best to conceal the fact that the Vatican either concealed, contrived to conceal or in fact destroyed documentation detailing the papacy's involvement in the horrors of the Holocaust and other sundry mass executions in Italy.
ONE IMAGINES THAT A FURTHER feather in his mitre might be the fact that -- to date -- there are no widespread stories of priests buggering young boys in Argentina, unlike the churches in Europe.
YET AS I WRITE I AM WATCHING a news item suggesting that our good Francis I was not, as one might state, wholly forthcoming in his defence of the thousands of people who disappeared during the ruthless, bloody dictatorship in Argentina. Everything changes but everything stays the same.
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