Archbishop Diarmuid Martin Pope Francis is misunderstood by people both within the Church as well as by some outside it, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said.
Speaking in St Mary’s Church on Dublin’s Haddington Road as part of the Patrick Finn lecture series, Archbishop Martin said the Pope’s example “inspires some and…upsets others and leaves them insecure”.
“Curiously, the inspired can be among non-believers and the upset even among cardinals,” he said, adding: “Pope Francis is not someone who is out to change the teaching of the Church. What he does is to find ways in which he can win hearts for what the Church’s teaching involves, not through imposing and judging, but through winning and attracting.”
There are those in the Church who do not understand this, Dr Martin said, and who feel that unless the Pontiff “daily reaffirms in every detail all the teaching of the Church, that he is somehow rejecting that teaching”.