In his first words from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in 2013, the newly elected Pope Francis, told the packed square below: “You all know that the duty of the conclave was to give a bishop to Rome. It seems that my brother cardinals have come almost to the ends of the earth to get him.”
The wry observation struck a winning self-deprecatory note. But the Argentinian pope’s allusion to his outsider status was telling: having been chosen by his peers, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio intended his to be a far more radical and reforming papacy than the conclave had bargained for. In the 13th century, St Francis of Assisi is said to have received the divine instruction: “Go, rebuild my house.” The first Pope to take the saint’s name viewed his own task in similar terms.
