If faith, as the nuns said, was the substance of things hoped for,
then lace was the outline—the suggestion—of things not seen.
—Iris Anthony, The Ruins of Lace (2012)
From time to time it seems as though Pope Francis can’t resist the urge to tell priests off in his speeches; he’s not afraid to employ mockery and sarcasm, either. That he has never been a simple parish priest frequently seems to come across in the content of his reproofs; so many of them tend to be anticlerical, as if this somehow profits the flock. It doesn’t necessarily make life easier for those of us at the coal face.
