Miserando Atque Eligendo: Pope Francis and the Eyes of Mercy

  

I did not appreciate nor even realize that the Holy Spirit had chosen a pontiff who had spent the entire twenty-plus years leading up to his election ostracized by his own order – his spiritual family, the members of the very matrix through which his vocation would be realized – precisely because he was a moderate, doctrinally orthodox son of the Church. Francis was a man who had suffered deeply and heroically, under severe ideological extremes, and had come out like purified gold. He was a man who could be trusted to steer a faithful narrow way affording mercy to all.