An Essay on Pope Francis and How He Is Modernizing the Catholic Church

Derrick Miller, Fall 2015

The papacy has been around for thousands of years and we have seen its ups and downs throughout it but we are now entering an era that we have never seen before. This new era has brought about many changes to the social structure of the world. Now subjects that the Catholic Church has deemed as “nonnegotiable value” people within the church as starting to soften up to these new ideas and the man leading the charge on these issues is Pope Francis. Pope Francis is doing things that no pope has done before. He is publically calling for government to start a war on climate change and at the same time criticizing other governments for their involvement in destroying the world ecosystem. He is bringing science and religion together to fight for the well being of our planet. He is also working towards stricter punishments on priest who have been convicted of sex abuse and has started the first committed ever dedicated to the oversight and punishment of these priests that commit these crimes. To take it a step further he appointed a sex abuse victim to the committed from outside the church to give transparency to the public. Pope Francis is a humble man from humble beginnings; he started his service to the church in Buenos Aires where he joined the Jesuits. The Jesuits really turned him into the main he is today through there vows of obedience and poverty. Pope Francis is modernizing the church like no other pope has in its history and continues to do so by connecting with the younger generation through his actions as pope.