When none of my historian friends are looking, I like to draw parallels between Pope Francis and Blessed Pope Pius IX. Of course the pairing is on its face unlikely. Francis is the cool pope, a mascot for those who believe that Christ came 2,000 years before the fullness of time, which will only arrive when we live up to the latest set of liberal platitudes. Pius is the great reactionary, the intransigent anti-modernist, the very opposite of “the great reformer”.
But the two men have much in common. Francis, like Pius before him, projects a much warmer persona than his immediate predecessor did. Benedict XVI was caricatured as “Pope Palpatine”, and people who thought him too severe thrilled at the sight of Pope Francis. Something similar happened when Pius succeeded Gregory XVI. “After the dour Pope Gregory,” David Kertzer writes in his recent book on Pius, “Pio Nono was the pope who smiled.”
