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However, the Vatican quickly shot down reports that the pope's comments were evidence of his support for same-sex unions in Italy, Reuters pointed out.  The pontiff's latest remarks follow end-of-year praise he received from a number of media outlets with regard to his stance on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

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While 2013 Will be Remembered for the Work of Hundreds in Advancing Marriage Equality,

it Will Also be Remembered for the Example of One Man 

The Advocate named Pope Francis its 2013 "Person of the Year," though the distinction ruffled more than a few feathers among LGBT rights advocates. Many pointed to the Pope's July comments about homosexuality in the context of a question about gay friends, according to the Wall Street Journal.  "Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?" the pontiff said at the time, speaking in Italian. "You can't marginalize these people."  "Pope Francis is still not pro-gay by today's standard," wrote Lucas Grindley of The Advocate. "The pope's impact isn't on whether we're deciding to sit in the pews, it's on the people who are already in the pews. More so, it's on the devoted who are there every Sunday plus the middle of the week and who volunteer for charity work and who are sometimes our most ardent opposition."


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Pope Francis, The People's Pope

He took the name of a humble saint and then called for a church of healing. The first non-European pope in 1,200 years is poised to transform a place that measures change by the century.

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While still in his home country, the future Pope also said that priestly celibacy is a recent development (it dates to about the year 1000) and has seemed open to change. Again, in Argentina, he startled conservatives by attending the funeral of a rebel bishop who left the church to marry, comforting the deceased prelate's widow, who used to concelebrate Mass with her husband. Francis is sympathetic to people whose ­marriages have fallen apart: his only surviving sibling, María Elena Bergoglio, is divorced. In Argentina, he worked very closely with Catholics who were divorced and remarried, some of whom continue to take Communion.

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The Pope has called an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops—only the third such gathering in almost 50 years—in October 2014 to discuss pastoral challenges that face modern families, including sexual ethics, divorce, cohabitation and reproduction.

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A place that measures change in terms of centuries doesn't do relaunches often. It is important to remember that Francis has been Pope for less than a year, and a papacy can change character in midstream. In 1846, Pope Pius IX came to the throne as the great hope to liberalize Catholicism but by the end of his pontificate had become the great champion of conservatism—the font of infallibility and angry confrontation with secular powers like the newborn Italian state. The entrenched dynamics of the church can transform the would-be transformer.  

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Behind his self-effacing facade, he is a very canny operator. He makes masterly use of 21st century tools to perform his 1st century office. He is photographed washing the feet of female convicts, posing for selfies with young visitors to the Vatican, embracing a man with a deformed face. He is quoted saying of women who consider abortion because of poverty or rape, "Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?" Of gay people: "If a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge." To divorced and remarried Catholics who are, by rule, forbidden from taking Communion, he says that this crucial rite "is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."

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