The death of Pope Francis leaves us with some very different narratives and perspectives of who he was and how we might assess his life and pontificate. We are faced with trying to reconcile some of the many contradictions his pontificate presented to both the Church and the world. One element with a significant degree of confusion is the way the Press understood him.
We are left with the paradoxical impression that he might have been more popular with the secular Press than he was with the Church. He was almost universally celebrated by the media. The response within the Church was a matter of greater complexity.
