Catholics thank Pontiff for making church cool

Roman Catholics thank Pope Francis for

These comments come as the Pontiff marks the fifth anniversary of his election as the Pope on March 3, 2018.

Tributes to Pope Francis

In his statement, Premier reports that Catholic journalist Austen Ivereigh commended the leader for making the church innovative.

He said: “He’s introduced a free-wheeling news conference on the papal plane coming back from his trips.

“In his first big foreign trip in July 2013, he stood in front of the world’s media for an hour and a half — and they literally asked him anything they wanted — and of course that generated a huge amount of headlines.

“There’s no question that he’s fascinated the world, he’s fascinated the news media; that’s really his single greatest accomplishment, to make the Church exciting, dynamic and interesting in many ways to the world outside the Church.”

Paul Vallely, who wrote a biography about Pope Francis, also weighed in on the Catholic leader’s papacy.

In his words, “I think he’s been an enormous success; people feel that there’s a freshness to his approach.

“He’s not a liberal, actually, he’s quite conservative on lots of issues but he’s got this new approach of putting people before doctrine.”

The Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin had one word for the pope — joy.

He said: “I would like to say that the fundamental characteristic of this Pontificate is precisely joy, a joy that does not arise evidently from carelessness, but from the fact of knowing that one is loved by the Lord.”

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