The contest over the meaning and implication of papal statements has probably never been this intense. Ever since Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio stepped onto a balcony at St Peter's Basilica as Pope Francis, his words have been abbreviated, deconstructed and turned into memes.
The interview published last week, conducted by La Civiltà Catolica and America on behalf of major Jesuit journals worldwide, has prompted fresh fervour. It presents a candid profile of the first Latin American and first Jesuit Pope. The interview has been met with admiration and delight, as well as astonishment and caution, as has been the pattern for seemingly every remark and gesture the Pope has made over the past six months.
If nothing else, the attention suggests that the Roman pontiff is still held relevant, even by those who regard religious institutions as anachronistic. What he says, matters. What this Pope says and does probably matters more than usual, given the crossroads at which the Catholic Church finds itself, as well as the global challenges to which it must respond. The Church still has something to say in a world that continues to demonise and exploit the vulnerable, and it must be able to say it with force and resonance.
All this would have weighed on the conclave last March. At the time, however, I did not think the election of a new pope mattered. It seemed to me that the conclave had always been about maintaining the status quo. The sitting pope appoints the cardinals who must eventually choose his successor, which tends to secure continuity.
Still, I got into the spirit of poring over papabili and wished for a pope from Africa or Asia, saying that it would be like having Yoda in the Vatican. A desire for change lay underneath my irreverence. I wanted to see some sort of institutional acknowledgement that things aren't working; that the hierarchy understood what was required to revive the Church for the ages. I wanted, most of all, to be surprised.
Of course, there was already the surprise of Pope Benedict XVI relinquishing office, nearly six centuries after the last papal resignation. Perhaps it was this unexpected turn of events that enlarged the sense of possibility for the cardinal electors; it constituted opportunity and permission to do something different. On the fifth ballot, they elected a man who had not even appeared on anyone's radar.
I had wanted a surprise outcome, yet met it with great ambivalence. Maybe it was the shock of a Jesuit pope. I reserved judgment for quite some time, against an overwhelming impulse to own him.
I had studied at Ateneo de Manila University, which is Jesuit in history, culture and outlook. I was a member of Ateneo Student Catholic Action, which is animated by Ignatian spirituality and liberation theology. I had undertaken silent retreats based on the Spiritual Exercises and directed by Jesuit priests. Yet I decided that none of these necessarily lends insight into the man. I did not want to be reckless in my regard, conscious of the bias.
Perhaps it is a measure of my sense of alienation from the Church that I was also sceptical of his capacity to address the suffocating aspects of bishopric language and clerical culture, the moral and ritual fastidiousness that has hurt good people yet failed to protect and care for the children in its pews.
So I reserved judgment when Francis took the bus with the cardinals after his election, paid for his hotel bill himself, carried his own bag and moved to simple quarters at Casa Santa Marta. I reserved judgment when he downsized the papal throne to a simple white chair and wore plain black shoes rather than the customary papal scarlet. These seemed nothing more than anecdotes, charming though they were.
Then he washed the feet of prisoners, including women and Muslims, at Easter. He spoke at Lampedusa, holding a crozier made from a shipwrecked boat that had borne asylum seekers. He rang people who sent letters that triggered a paternal response. He spoke with great resonance and consistency on mercy and healing, on meeting people of good work and good will regardless of belief or unbelief and sexuality, on taking the Gospel to the streets where people are.
I finally realised: here is a pope who articulates the sentiments closest to my sense of faith and church, a truly pastoral pope who finds God in everything, even in the brokenness and darkest regrets of the human heart.
It brings some amusement, therefore, to see the mad scramble to dilute and reconfigure the sense of his words, the caveats — offered always by others, not himself — around some of his more provocative statements. It is interesting to hear the chorus in some quarters that he does not change anything, and probably won't.
Yet for someone like me who has been looking for someone like this, the change has already come. If nothing else, Pope Francis has shown me how much I had underestimated the God of surprises. I can't wait for more.
Fatima Measham is a Melbourne-based social commentator who contributes regularly to Eureka Street. Her work has also appeared in The Drum, ABC Religion & Ethics, and National Times. She is a recipient of the Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship in 2013. She tweets as @foomeister.