Simple enough. I will refer to it as the Church here.

What are we seeing? The Pope has ordained 17 new cardinals, which is the highest rank beneath the Pope, and this is the second batch he's ordained who reside outside the European landscape. He's reaching beyond Vatican City and embracing the Church residing is diaspora as if he's intimately in touch with it, though we well know he can't be. Why the outreach? Consolidation, reassurance and reformation?

This is the pageantry of the papacy, no doubt, but this Pope isn't culled from the same mold as his predecessors. Is he a man of the world 1st, secular if we can allow for that in this discussion, and a man of the cloth 2nd? I think he's pushing past the religious rhetoric expected of him and moving straight to the resolution floor for embracing the human element chafing and struggling within the Church. In any event, he is a startling departure from the normal Church papacy we've been imbued with.

What can I take from this?

Am I to say that I'm seeing a man of power resolve himself to transitioning the Church from its traditional publicly perceived role serving its higher power to serving the people as well? It would seem that Frank is recognizing the Church's strategic alliance with the common man, its power over him, and watching it slip away with each new sacrilegious abuse by the Church's personage.

Which is it? Is he a man of the people with a paternal instinct to assuage any and all harm that they might encounter - both foreign and domestic, as it were - or is he simply witnessing and reacting to a dying doctrine and employing extreme damage controls?