A year ago, on 13 March 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, became the 266th head of the Roman Catholic church. His predecessor, Benedict XVI, had resigned the month before, citing a decline in his physical and mental strength, leading to an almost unprecedented handover of power. After the remote, intellectual German theologian came the church's first Jesuit leader, its first Latin American pontiff – and the first pope to take the name of Francis. 
 
 The pope was elected with a mandate to shake up the church in Rome and help turn the page on an increasingly fraught and scandal-bedevilled papacy. His many fans argue he has vigorously pursued a reformist agenda within the Vatican while radically improving the church's image outside it. But, as Rome marks his first anniversary, just how successful has this peculiarly popular pontiff been? 
 
 Good works 
 
 
 
 Image management 
 
 Pope Francis blesses Vinicio Riva in November. Photograph: Claudio Peri/EPA 
 
 Talk of the "Pope Francis effect" is ubiquitous for a reason: since stepping out on to the balcony of St Peter's on the evening of 13 March 2013 to joke that the cardinal-electors had been forced to cast their nets to "the end of the Earth" to find a successor to Benedict, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has scarcely put a humbly shod foot wrong PR-wise. Despite adhering to church teaching as closely as his predecessor, Francis has, through a mixture of charm, humour and openness, turned many preconceptions – and prejudices – on their heads. His decision to abjure the splendour of the apostolic palace in favour of the modest Casa Santa Marta guesthouse has offered proof of his personal commitment to a humbler church, while his tender embracing of Vinicio Riva, a man terribly disfigured by tumours, underlined his hands-on pastoral approach. Such actions saw him voted person of the year by both Time magazine and the US gay and lesbian magazine The Advocate, while his Twitter account - @pontifex – has almost 3.8 million followers. 
 
 Church governance 
 
 Francis's decision to appoint eight "outsider" cardinals to advise him on church reform was described by one observer as the "most important step in the history of the church for the past 10 centuries". The council, which includes cardinals from the US, Australia, India, Honduras and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has inevitably been dubbed the papal G8. "[They are] not courtiers but wise people who share my feelings," said Francis, who has often been scathing about the "introspective and Vatican-centric" nature of the Holy See. "This is the start of a church with not just a vertical but horizontal organisation." Jesuits, who have had to wait almost 500 years to see one of their number sit on the papal throne, proudly point out that consultation is one of the foundations of their order. 
 
 Overhaul of the Congregation for Bishops 
 
 Pope Francis meets bishops at the end of his weekly general audience, in St Peter's Square last month. Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP 
 
 As well as assembling his own G8, Francis has revamped the powerful Congregation for Bishops, the Vatican department responsible for selecting bishops. By appointing 12 new members and not confirming 14 existing members, he rebalanced the department to make it more moderate and progressive. Among those who were not confirmed was the highly influential conservative US cardinal Raymond Burke, who has been an outspoken critic of US presidential candidates who are in favour of abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia, human cloning and same-sex marriage. New members include Vincent Nichols, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales praised for his pastoral and inclusive style, whom Francis made a cardinal last month. The papal historian Michael Walsh described the overhaul of the congregation as a "tectonic shift" in governance. 
 
 Inclusivity 
 
 On Maundy Thursday 2013, a fortnight after becoming pope, Francis exhorted his priests to abandon introspection and to get out "to the outskirts where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters". He washed and kissed the feet of two Muslims – one a woman – at a youth detention centre near Rome. It was the first time a pontiff had included women in the ceremony. For many, the greatest proof of the pope's commitment to inclusivity and his desire to appeal to those who have long felt ignored or criticised by the church came during an impromptu press conference on a flight back from Brazil in July. "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?" he asked journalists. 
 
 Anglican relations 
 
 Francis's determination to "intensify dialogue among the various religions" has not been confined to reaching out to Jews and Muslims. Last June, he had lunch with the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the pair chatted for four hours. Despite frosty relations that have existed between the churches in recent years – caused mainly by the C of E's decision to ordain women and Pope Benedict's creation of an ordinariate to bring disaffected Anglicans into the embrace of Rome – Francis and Welby appear to have a genuine rapport. According to Sir David Moxon, the archbishop of Canterbury's representative to the Holy See and director of the Anglican centre in Rome, there was an "immediate chemistry" between the two leaders, whom Moxon describes as "men of action" equally committed to tackling poverty and social injustice. It has not hurt that Welby's personal spiritual director is a Benedictine monk; nor that the archbishop recently signalled a further rapprochement by inviting members of a Roman Catholic ecumenical community to take up residence in Lambeth Palace. 
 
 Political player 
 
 Pope Francis (kissing the feet of a young offender during a mass at the church of the Casal del Marmo youth prison on the outskirts of Rome in 2013. Photograph: AFP 
 
 It was no accident that Francis chose a career Vatican diplomat, Pietro Parolin, as his secretary of state, a position often likened to the papal prime minister. The pope has shown a desire to put the Vatican back on the international stage as a key player in external – not just messy, internal – affairs, and his stance on Syria has been the clearest sign that under him the Catholic church's voice will be loud and clear. With an open letter to the leaders of the G20, repeated exhortations for a non-violent, mediated solution, and a day-long fast and mass prayer vigil, he provided a moral counterweight to the Obama administration and its proposed air strikes. His powerful criticisms of capitalist excesses have seen the church regain relevance in the contemporary debate on social justice. And his decision to make Lampedusa the location of his first trip outside Rome, slamming a "globalisation of indifference" that allowed migrants to die in the Mediterranean, he focused the eyes of the world on an often-overlooked problem." 
 
 The jury's out 
 
 Curia reform 
 
 The "outsider" pope was elected with a mandate to come to Rome and bang heads together. In the fading light of Benedict's papacy, infighting and corruption within the Curia – the Vatican's central bureaucracy – had dominated amid the so-called Vatileaks affair. Francis has announced measures to engender reform, most notably the creation of a secretariat of the economy – a kind of finance ministry – to centralise the handling of business and administrative affairs. That will be led by the outspoken Australian Cardinal George Pell. The other key staffing decision was to replace the widely discredited Tarcisio Bertone as secretary of state –a symbolic and practical move Francis must hope will draw a line under an era of scandal and incompetence. 
 
 Core teachings 
 
 The pope appearing in a selfie taken by young pilgrims in St Peter's, Rome. Photograph: AP 
 
 Liberals who would like to see significant doctrinal shifts from Francis should alter their expectations. The pope has made clear his commitment to core church teachings on issues such as abortion and women's ordination. But that doesn't mean there will be no change at all. For one thing, Francis has said the church needs a "new balance" and a less condemnatory attitude to sexual morality. For another, he has shown himself to be a pragmatic conservative, committed to doctrine but concerned with how the church responds to pastoral realities. In concrete terms, speculation centres on whether he will see fit to announce a shift on the treatment of remarried divorcees, now banned from receiving holy communion. Walter Kasper, the cardinal Francis chose to speak on the subject at a consistory earlier this year, told La Repubblica newspaper this week that the church should try to find a "realistic application of doctrine", adding: "The church must never judge as though it had a guillotine in its hands." 
 
 Vatican Bank 
 
 All too often the cause of embarrassment for the papacy, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) is at the heart of Francis's reform – and ethical finance – agenda. He has set up a commission of lay experts and clerics to investigate the bank's running, and has replaced four of five cardinals appointed under Benedict on an oversight body. Under German president Ernst von Freyberg, the bank is trying to improve transparency and has hired an outside firm of accountants to help it meet international standards. But an Italian investigation into allegations of money laundering – which the bank denies – continues and a report by a Council of Europe body, Moneyval, in December said the IOR still had some way to go. Francis has made it clear that, if the bank cannot be adequately reformed, he would have no compunction about closing it for good. 
 
 Must try harder 
 
 
 
 Clerical sex abuse 
 
 There are growing suspicions that this, more than any other issue, is emerging as Francis's blind spot. Critics say he has done little to ramp up the church's response to the scandal. Though he has said officials must "act decisively" on the problem – and in December announced a new commission to examine ways of better protecting children and helping victims – most advocates for abuse victims say another commission is not what is needed and criticise him for not making the deep changes they, and the UN, say are necessary. They have been left despondent by Francis's occasional comments on the issue, in which he has generally defended the church while condemning the abuse. An interview published this month in which he claimed that no other institution had acted with the same "transparency and responsibility" elicited particular anger. "His comments about clerical sex abuse [in the interview] make it clear that he is using the same tired and irrelevant playbook the bishops have worn out over the past few years," wrote priest and victims' supporter Tom Doyle in the National Catholic Reporter. ||||| To read about TIME’s choice in Spanish and Portuguese, click below. 
 
 EL ELEGIDO: El Papa Francisco es la Persona del Año 2013 de TIME 
 
 A Escolha: O Papa Francisco é a Personalidade do Ano eleita pela Time em 2013 
 
 Once there was a boy so meek and modest, he was awarded a Most Humble badge. The next day, it was taken away because he wore it. Here endeth the lesson. 
 
 How do you practice humility from the most exalted throne on earth? Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly—young and old, faithful and cynical—as has Pope Francis. In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power. 
 
 At a time when the limits of leadership are being tested in so many places, along comes a man with no army or weapons, no kingdom beyond a tight fist of land in the middle of Rome but with the immense wealth and weight of history behind him, to throw down a challenge. The world is getting smaller; individual voices are getting louder; technology is turning virtue viral, so his pulpit is visible to the ends of the earth. When he kisses the face of a disfigured man or washes the feet of a Muslim woman, the image resonates far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church. 
 
 (PERSON OF THE YEAR: Pope Francis, The People’s Pope) 
 
 The skeptics will point to the obstacles Francis faces in accomplishing much of anything beyond making casual believers feel better about the softer tone coming out of Rome while feeling free to ignore the harder substance. The Catholic Church is one of the oldest, largest and richest institutions on earth, with a following 1.2 billion strong, and change does not come naturally. At its best it inspires and instructs, helps and heals and calls the faithful to heed their better angels. But it has been weakened worldwide by scandal, corruption, a shortage of priests and a challenge, especially across the fertile mission fields of the southern hemisphere, from evangelical and Pentecostal rivals. In some quarters, core teachings on divorce and contraception are widely ignored and orthodoxy derided as obsolete. Vatican bureaucrats and clergy stand accused of infighting, graft, blackmail and an obsession with “small-minded rules,” as Francis puts it, rather than the vast possibilities of grace. Don’t just preach; listen, he says. Don’t scold; heal. 
 
 And yet in less than a year, he has done something remarkable: he has not changed the words, but he’s changed the music. Tone and temperament matter in a church built on the substance of symbols—bread and wine, body and blood—so it is a mistake to dismiss any Pope’s symbolic choices­ as gestures empty of the force of law. He released his first exhortation, an attack on “the idolatry of money,” just as Americans were contemplating the day set aside for gratitude and whether to spend it at the mall. This is a man with a sense of timing. He lives not in the papal palace surrounded by courtiers but in a spare hostel surrounded by priests. He prays all the time, even while waiting for the dentist. He has retired the papal Mercedes in favor of a scuffed-up Ford Focus. No red shoes, no gilded cross, just an iron one around his neck. When he rejects the pomp and the privilege, releases information on Vatican finances for the first time, reprimands a profligate German Archbishop, cold-calls strangers in distress, offers to baptize the baby of a divorced woman whose married lover wanted her to abort it, he is doing more than modeling mercy and ­transparency. He is ­embracing complexity and acknowledging the risk that a church obsessed with its own rights and righteousness could inflict more wounds than it heals. Asked why he seems uninterested in waging a culture war, he refers to the battlefield. The church is a field hospital, he says. Our first duty is to tend to the wounded. You don’t ask a bleeding man about his cholesterol level. 
 
 (MORE: Everything You Wanted to Know about TIME’s Person of the Year) 
 
 This focus on compassion, along with a general aura of merriment not always associated with princes of the church, has made Francis something of a rock star. More than 3 million people turned out to see him on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro last summer, the crowds in St. Peter’s Square are ecstatic, and the souvenirs are selling fast. Francesco is the most popular male baby name in Italy. Churches report a “Francis effect” of lapsed Catholics returning to Mass and confession, though anecdotes are no substitute for hard evidence, and surveys of U.S. Catholics, at least, see little change in practice thus far. But the fascination with Francis even outside his flock gives him an opportunity that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, never had—to magnify the message of the church and its power to do great good. 
 
 The giddy embrace of the secular press makes Francis suspect among traditionalists who fear he buys popularity at the price of a watered-down faith. He has deftly leveraged the media’s fascination to draw attention to everything from his prayers for peace in Syria to his pointed attack on trickle-down economics, which inspired Jesse Jackson to compare him to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rush Limbaugh to wonder whether he’s a Marxist. When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak. Why has he not said more about the priest sex-abuse scandal? ask victims’ advocates. (Just this month, he set up a commission to address the abuse of children by priests.) Why does he not talk more about the sanctity of life? ask conservatives, who note that in his exhortation, abortion is mentioned once, mercy 32 times. Francis both affirms traditional teachings on sexuality and warns that the church has become distracted by them. He attacks priests who won’t baptize children born out of wedlock for their “rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism.” He declares that God “has redeemed all of us … not just Catholics. Everyone, even atheists.” He posed with environmental activists holding an antifracking T-shirt and called on politicians and business leaders to be “protectors of creation.” 
 
 (MORE: Behind the Pope Francis Cover) 
 
 None of which makes him a liberal—he also says the all-male priesthood is not subject to debate, nor is abortion, nor is the definition of marriage. But his focus on the poor and the fact that the world’s poorest 50% control barely 1% of its wealth unsettles those who defend capitalism as the most successful antipoverty program in history. You could argue that he is Teddy Roosevelt protecting capitalism from its own excesses or he is simply saying what Popes before him have said, that Jesus calls us to care for the least among us—only he’s saying it in a way that people seem to be hearing differently. And that may be especially important coming from the first Pope from the New World. A century ago, two-thirds of Catholics lived in Europe; now fewer than a quarter do, and how he is heard in countries where being gay is a crime and educating women for leadership roles is a heresy may have the power to transform cultures in which Catholicism is a growing, even potentially liberating force. 
 
 These days it is bracing to hear a leader say anything that annoys anyone. Now liberals and conservatives alike face a choice as they listen to a new voice of conscience: Which matters more, that this charismatic leader is saying things they think need to be said or that he is also saying things they’d rather not hear? 
 
 The heart is a strong muscle; he’s proposing a rigorous exercise plan. And in a very short time, a vast, global, ecumenical audience has shown a hunger to follow him. For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world’s largest church to confronting its deepest needs and for balancing judgment with mercy, Pope Francis is TIME’s 2013 Person of the Year. ||||| Religion makes a lot of mistakes. 
 
 Faith traditions can be so harsh that they drive away everyone but the self-righteous scolds. Or they can so indulge in therapeutic comfort and manufactured joy that they come to seem like a charlatan’s game. 
 
 E.J. Dionne writes about politics in a twice-weekly column and on the PostPartisan blog. He is also a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a government professor at Georgetown University and a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio, ABC’s “This Week” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” View Archive 
 
 They can be so otherworldly that they offer no guidance to those living in this one on matters of justice, freedom and how we should live together. Or they are so captive to the here-and-now that it becomes hard to distinguish between a congregation and a party headquarters. 
 
 And for many in the wealthy nations and among the young, religion has no relevance to their lives whatsoever. It’s seen by some as a charming throwback and by others as one more insidious force focused on power, money and self-preservation. 
 
 When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope a year ago, only a few expected that the new Catholic leader would confront all of these challenges simultaneously. 
 
 1 of 27 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Pope Francis: Acts of humility View Photos The new prelate, who has been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, is rewriting the rules in his first year at the Vatican. Here are a few of Francis’s symbolic moves and statements. Caption The pope’s actions are changing the rules at the Vatican. He tends to the sick Pope Francis kisses and blesses Michael Keating, 10, of Elverson, Pa., after spotting him on the tarmac of the Philadelphia airport. Keating has cerebral palsy and is the son of the director of the high school band that performed at Francis's airport arrival. Read the article. Joseph Gidjunis/World Meeting of Families via AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 Yes, his choice of the name Francis was a promising sign that he would emulate a saint devoted to the poor and to simplicity. Yes, he was already on record with searing criticisms of the injustices of global capitalism. From the beginning, he stressed his more humble role as the “Bishop of Rome,” suggesting an anti-imperial papacy. 
 
 And then it continued. He disdained the trappings of piety and might, including the ornate regalia that appeal to so many prelates. The Roman joke was that as priests got with his program, one could find many lacy surplices on sale at steep discounts on eBay. On his first Holy Thursday, Francis washed the feet not of the usual group of priests but rather of a dozen young people being held at a juvenile detention center, including two women and two Muslims. 
 
 He has not altered church doctrine, but his shift in emphasis has been breathtaking. “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” he has said. “This is not possible.” He thus declared that the church’s main mission would no longer be as a lead combatant in the culture wars. It would stand primarily with and for the neediest. 
 
 The most important aspect of a Pew survey released this month was not its finding that 68 percent of U.S. Catholics thought Francis was changing the church for the better, or that 76 percent said he was doing a good or excellent job of addressing the needs and concerns of the poor. No, the truly revealing fact about this study is that it did not even occur to Pew’s pollsters to ask in their benchmark poll a year ago whether poverty should be a priority of the new pope. This is no knock on Pew; the fact that its researchers had to include a new question about poverty this year shows how much Francis has transformed the church. 
 
 The pope said recently that he was uncomfortable with being seen as a “superman,” and indeed, he is not. Francis expressed his unease in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera during which he made the most troubling misstep of the year. 
 
 Speaking of the pedophilia scandal that has shaken the faith of so many Catholics, particularly in the United States and in Ireland, Francis was uncharacteristically defensive and aggressive, insisting that the Catholic Church “is perhaps the only public institution that has moved with transparency and responsibility.” 
 
 “No one has done more,” he added, “and yet the church is the only one that has been attacked.” 
 
 Pope Francis had a noteworthy first year as head of the Catholic church. PostTV reviews a few of the pope's memorable photo ops that seem to parallel with common Bible passages. We used The New American Bible. (Jonathan Elker, Gillian Brockell and Kate M. Tobey/The Washington Post) 
 
 In fact, the church is not “the only one that has been attacked.” Even if it were, a pope who has emphasized the urgency of seeing the world from the perspective of the vulnerable and the wounded should have been the first to hear how his words might sound to the victims of abuse. A leader who has criticized a “psychology of princes” and the “spirit of careerism” should have known better. 
 
 But the keen disappointment felt over this is a mark of how high Francis has lifted expectations. He has shown that the spiritual life is also a life of social commitment. He demands a lot while preaching about a God of mercy, confounding scolds and religious therapists alike. By engaging joyfully with nonbelievers and those who believe differently, he speaks to those skeptical that Christianity has anything left to say. 
 
 He called for a church that is “bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets” and has proved that such a church is hard to ignore. 
 
 Read more from E.J. Dionne’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. ||||| Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who has become the Catholic church's 266th pope, is the choice of humility, a Jesuit intellectual who travels by bus and has a practical approach to poverty: when he was appointed a cardinal, Bergoglio persuaded hundreds of Argentinians not to fly to Rome to celebrate with him but instead to give the money they would have spent on plane tickets to the poor. 
 
 Something of a surprise choice – he was quoted as a 30/1 outsider going into the conclave – the archbishop of Buenos Aires was one of the leading challengers to Joseph Ratzinger during the 2005 conclave that elected the latter as Benedict XVI. 
 
 A champion of those who rejected liberation theology, he was considered a candidate that everyone in the higher echelons of the church respects. He becomes the church's first Latin American pope. 
 
 Much is made of his humility: he gave up the grandiose setting of the cardinal's residence in the Argentine capital for the trappings of a small apartment, and rejected the notion of a chauffeur driven car for public transport. 
 
 Bergoglio, who will take the name Francis as pope, was born in December 1936, one of five children of an Italian railway worker. He reportedly had a lung removed while a teenager, due to an infection. He taught literature and psychology in Argentina before being ordained in 1969. He was created a cardinal by John Paul II on 21 February 2001. 
 
 Unlike other cardinals, he has been untarnished by the various scandals rocking the Catholic church, and is thought to want to make reform of the Curia a priority. He was a fierce opponent of Argentina's decision to legalise gay marriage in 2010, arguing children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother. But he takes a slightly more pragmatic view on contraception, believing that it can be permissible to prevent the spread of disease. He is ecumenical, believing in interfaith dialogue. 
 
 In 2009 Bergoglio made headlines when he criticised the government of Néstor Kirchner, husband of current Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, claiming it was "immoral, illegitimate and unjust" to allow inequality in the country to grow. "Rather than preventing that, it seems they have opted for making inequalities even greater," he said. "Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities," he said at the time. 
 
 • This article was amended on 14 March 2013. It wrongly described Bergoglio as a champion of liberation theology and referred to the government of Ernesto Kirchner when it should have read Néstor Kirchner. Both errors have been corrected. ||||| Pope Francis is the first ever from the Americas, an austere Jesuit intellectual who modernized Argentina's conservative Catholic church. 
 
 Pope Francis waves to the crowd from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Wednesday, March 13, 2013. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio who chose the name of Francis is the 266th pontiff... (Associated Press) 
 
 Known until Wednesday as Jorge Bergoglio, the 76-year-old is known as a humble man who denied himself the luxuries that previous Buenos Aires cardinals enjoyed. He came close to becoming pope last time, reportedly gaining the second-highest vote total in several rounds of voting before he bowed out of the running in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. 
 
 Groups of supporters waved Argentine flags in St. Peter's Square as Francis, wearing simple white robes, made his first public appearance as pope. 
 
 "Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening," he said before making a reference to his roots in Latin America, which accounts for about 40 percent of the world's Roman Catholics . 
 
 Bergoglio often rode the bus to work, cooked his own meals and regularly visited the slums that ring Argentina's capital. He considers social outreach, rather than doctrinal battles, to be the essential business of the church. 
 
 He accused fellow church leaders of hypocrisy and forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes. 
 
 "Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out and share, go out and ask. Become the Word in body as well as spirit," Bergoglio told Argentina's priests last year. 
 
 Bergoglio's legacy as cardinal includes his efforts to repair the reputation of a church that lost many followers by failing to openly challenge Argentina's murderous 1976-83 dictatorship. He also worked to recover the church's traditional political influence in society, but his outspoken criticism of President Cristina Kirchner couldn't stop her from imposing socially liberal measures that are anathema to the church, from gay marriage and adoption to free contraceptives for all. 
 
 "In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage," Bergoglio told his priests. "These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's baptized!" 
 
 Bergoglio compared this concept of Catholicism, "this Church of `come inside so we make decisions and announcements between ourselves and those who don't come in, don't belong," to the Pharisees of Christ's time _ people who congratulate themselves while condemning all others. 
 
 This sort of pastoral work, aimed at capturing more souls and building the flock, was an essential skill for any religious leader in the modern era, said Bergoglio's authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin. 
 
 But Bergoglio himself felt most comfortable taking a very low profile, and his personal style was the antithesis of Vatican splendor. "It's a very curious thing: When bishops meet, he always wants to sit in the back rows. This sense of humility is very well seen in Rome," Rubin said before the 2013 conclave to choose Benedict's successor. 
 
 Bergoglio's influence seemed to stop at the presidential palace door after Nestor Kirchner and then his wife, Cristina Fernandez, took over the Argentina's government. His outspoken criticism couldn't prevent Argentina from becoming the Latin American country to legalize gay marriage, or stop Fernandez from promoting free contraception and artificial insemination. 
 
 His church had no say when the Argentine Supreme Court expanded access to legal abortions in rape cases, and when Bergoglio argued that gay adoptions discriminate against children, Fernandez compared his tone to "medieval times and the Inquisition." 
 
 This kind of demonization is unfair, says Rubin, who obtained an extremely rare interview of Bergoglio for his biography, the "The Jesuit." 
 
 "Is Bergoglio a progressive _ a liberation theologist even? No. He's no third-world priest. Does he criticize the International Monetary Fund, and neoliberalism? Yes. Does he spend a great deal of time in the slums? Yes," Rubin said. 
 
 Bergoglio has stood out for his austerity. Even after he became Argentina's top church official in 2001, he never lived in the ornate church mansion where Pope John Paul II stayed when visiting the country, preferring a simple bed in a downtown building, heated by a small stove on frigid weekends. For years, he took public transportation around the city, and cooked his own meals. 
 
 Bergoglio almost never granted media interviews, limiting himself to speeches from the pulpit, and was reluctant to contradict his critics, even when he knew their allegations against him were false, said Rubin. 
 
 That attitude was burnished as human rights activists tried to force him to answer uncomfortable questions about what church officials knew and did about the dictatorship's abuses after the 1976 coup. 
 
 Many Argentines remain angry over the church's acknowledged failure to openly confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate "subversive elements" in society. It's one reason why more than two-thirds of Argentines describe themselves as Catholic, but fewer than 10 percent regularly attend mass. 
 
 Under Bergoglio's leadership, Argentina's bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church's failures to protect its flock. But the statement blamed the era's violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies. 
 
 "Bergoglio has been very critical of human rights violations during the dictatorship, but he has always also criticized the leftist guerrillas; he doesn't forget that side," Rubin said. 
 
 The bishops also said "we exhort those who have information about the location of stolen babies, or who know where bodies were secretly buried, that they realize they are morally obligated to inform the pertinent authorities." 
 
 That statement came far too late for some activists, who accused Bergoglio of being more concerned about the church's image than about aiding the many human rights investigations of the Kirchners' era. 
 
 Bergoglio twice invoked his right under Argentine law to refuse to appear in open court, and when he eventually did testify in 2010, his answers were evasive, human rights attorney Myriam Bregman said. 
 
 At least two cases directly involved Bergoglio. One examined the torture of two of his Jesuit priests _ Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics _ who were kidnapped in 1976 from the slums where they advocated liberation theology. Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the regime that he endorsed their work. Jalics refused to discuss it after moving into seclusion in a German monastery. 
 
 Both men were freed after Bergoglio took extraordinary, behind-the-scenes action to save them _ including persuading dictator Jorge Videla's family priest to call in sick so that he could say Mass in the junta leader's home, where he privately appealed for mercy. His intervention likely saved their lives, but Bergoglio never shared the details until Rubin interviewed him for the 2010 biography. 
 
 Bergoglio _ who ran Argentina's Jesuit order during the dictatorship _ told Rubin that he regularly hid people on church property during the dictatorship, and once gave his identity papers to a man with similar features, enabling him to escape across the border. But all this was done in secret, at a time when church leaders publicly endorsed the junta and called on Catholics to restore their "love for country" despite the terror in the streets. 
 
 Rubin said failing to challenge the dictators was simply pragmatic at a time when so many people were getting killed, and attributed Bergoglio's later reluctance to share his side of the story as a reflection of his humility. 
 
 But Bregman said Bergoglio's own statements proved church officials knew from early on that the junta was torturing and killing its citizens, and yet publicly endorsed the dictators. "The dictatorship could not have operated this way without this key support," she said. 
 
 Bergoglio also was accused of turning his back on a family that lost five relatives to state terror, including a young woman who was 5-months' pregnant before she was kidnapped and killed in 1977. The De la Cuadra family appealed to the leader of the Jesuits in Rome, who urged Bergoglio to help them; Bergoglio then assigned a monsignor to the case. Months passed before the monsignor came back with a written note from a colonel: It revealed that the woman had given birth in captivity to a girl who was given to a family "too important" for the adoption to be reversed. 
 
 Despite this written evidence in a case he was personally involved with, Bergoglio testified in 2010 that he didn't know about any stolen babies until well after the dictatorship was over. 
 
 "Bergoglio has a very cowardly attitude when it comes to something so terrible as the theft of babies. He says he didn't know anything about it until 1985," said the baby's aunt, Estela de la Cuadra, whose mother Alicia co-founded the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in 1977 in hopes of identifying these babies. "He doesn't face this reality and it doesn't bother him. The question is how to save his name, save himself. But he can't keep these allegations from reaching the public. The people know how he is." 
 
 Initially trained as a chemist, Bergoglio taught literature, psychology, philosophy and theology before taking over as Buenos Aires archbishop in 1998. He became cardinal in 2001, when the economy was collapsing, and won respect for blaming unrestrained capitalism for impoverishing millions of Argentines. 
 
 Later, there was little love lost between Bergoglio and Fernandez. Their relations became so frigid that the president stopped attending his annual "Te Deum" address, when church leaders traditionally tell political leaders what's wrong with society. 
 
 During the dictatorship era, other church leaders only feebly mentioned a need to respect human rights. When Bergoglio spoke to the powerful, he was much more forceful. In his 2012 address, he said Argentina was being harmed by demagoguery, totalitarianism, corruption and efforts to secure unlimited power. The message resonated in a country whose president was ruling by decree, where political scandals rarely were punished and where top ministers openly lobbied for Fernandez to rule indefinitely. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Warren reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina. ||||| If there is something the Roman Catholic church does supremely well, it is the spectacle of an election. From the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel voting and the white plumes announcing the election of a new pope, to the new man stepping onto the balcony of St Peter’s to greet the crowds, it is one moment of high drama after another. 
 
 Now such a huge global figure, it is hard to believe that when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires first greeted the crowds on 13 March 2013, and announced he would be called Pope Francis, most of the world – including Catholics – asked, “Who’s this?” 
 
 Pope Francis wowed the world but, five years on, is in troubled waters Read more 
 
 As Francis quipped on the day, the cardinals went to the ends of the earth to find a new pope. They made their decision based partly on the troubles the Catholic church faced, troubles that had so overwhelmed Benedict XVI that he had resigned. These troubles included the decline in Catholic numbers in the west, the mess of the church’s finances and evidence of money-laundering and corruption, the Vatican’s bureaucracy, the child sexual abuse scandals and the fading influence of Catholic sexual morality in the face of more secular influence. 
 
 And just as Francis had pleased the cardinals, he quickly won over the world. His modest lifestyle, his ready engagement with ordinary people, his desire for reform of the church’s structures and more compassionate attitudes to divorced, remarried and gay people, made him hugely popular. At the Vatican, he quickly took action, setting up a group of progressive cardinals to investigate how to reform it. 
 
 Five years on, Francis’s efforts at reforms have got stuck. The pope recognises the problems of overhauling the unwieldy structure of the Vatican bureaucracy: he has likened it to cleaning the Egyptian sphinx with a toothbrush. Then there is his calling of synods to discuss the family, especially the treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics. They have won him huge support among millions of people in the pews, but have led to open hostility from conservative prelates. 
 
 While the church may not have a reverse gear, its progress is at snail’s pace 
 
 Two issues above all remain a problem for him: child abuse and the role of women. Francis’s creation of a special commission to examine the global problem of children being abused by priests was considered a breakthrough. Four years down the line, and with the two abuse victims who were members having resigned, it seems no nearer to producing new ways of dealing with the issue. And despite Francis’s own zero-tolerance comments about abuse, there have been occasions when he has seemed unwilling to take action against those involved. 
 
 That Francis included women on the abuse commission was a welcome sign of change. So was his setting up of a commission to look at women deacons in the church, though two years on it has not reported. But there is an impatience among Catholic women about the extent to which the church is still dominated by a celibate male priesthood. The language used by the former Irish president Mary McAleese, when she denounced the church last week as an “empire of misogyny”, might have been extreme but it did articulate the frustrations of so many women that not only are they ignored, but also their talents are going to waste. 
 
 One of the pope’s closest aides, the Honduran cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, has said: “The church does not have a reverse gear, it can only go forward.” 
 
 The war against Pope Francis Read more 
 
 There are certain changes that Francis has made. There is a new tone, focused on mercy and understanding, rather than rigid roles and condemnation of people. This is typified by his “Who am I to judge?” comment about gay people. He emphasises the church serving others and working with other Christian churches. He highlights the plight of the marginalised. He is a charismatic public figure, a successful one-man PR campaign for Christian values. But while the church may not have a reverse gear, its progress is at snail’s pace. 
 
 Two things above all are impeding its progress. The Vatican’s career bureaucrats are one. If Francis is to enact further change, he has to rethink their hold on power. The simplest way to deal with it would be to limit how many years they can serve in Rome to 10, or even five. He could also open up Vatican posts to lay people, men and women. The other big issue that needs to be addressed is the role of pope itself. Being a roving global peacemaker, managing a church of 1.2 billion people, trying to reform Rome, writing theological documents and being a spiritual guide – it’s hard to see how one human being can do all this, especially at the age of 80. When the cardinals went to the ends of the earth to find Francis, they handed him a mission impossible. His greatest legacy, as he contemplates the next five years, would be to rethink the role of the pope itself. 
 
 • Catherine Pepinster is the author of The Keys and the Kingdom: the British and the Papacy from John Paul II to Francis (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark)
– 2013 has been a pretty unbelievable year for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis, dominated Facebook, and now finds himself Time's Person of the Year. Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs explains how he ended up on the cover after just nine months on the job: because of how he has positioned himself ("at the very center of the central conversations of our time," from wealth to the role of women to justice), for his reach in our flattening world ("far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church"), and for what he has accomplished in such a short time. "Something remarkable: he has not changed the words, but he's changed the music." Gibbs acknowledges the skeptics' likely response—that Francis faces many obstacles "in accomplishing much of anything beyond making casual believers feel better about the softer tone coming out of Rome while feeling free to ignore the harder substance." But the fascination that swirls around him gives him an ability Benedict XVI lacked: "to magnify the message of the church and its power to do great good." Writes Gibbs, "The heart is a strong muscle; he's proposing a rigorous exercise plan. And in a very short time, a vast, global, ecumenical audience has shown a hunger to follow him. For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world's largest faith to confronting its deepest needs, and for balancing judgment with mercy, Pope Francis is Time's 2013 Person of the Year" (cover story here). Also, the runners-up: Edward Snowden, Edith Windsor, Bashar al-Assad, and Ted Cruz. See past winners here.