Pontifex Maximus

Well, yes, it's been a hiatus.  Friday was applying for yet another job (this time internal to the company but no doubt futile), then out drinking with a birthday celebrated, among other things.  Saturday was largely spent hosting friends and their families with clearing up in the aftermath no small matter.  And Sunday so far has been a trip to church, a fence in serious need of a second coat of weather protection and looking after the daughter on my own after the wife takes a trip to the uni library for much of the afternoon and the whole night.
Anyway, topic up for discussion: Pope Francis.  Count Metternich, the arch diplomat for thirty years in the wake of the defeat of Napoleon, quipped, "I could have predicted anything except a liberal Pope," on the election of Pope Pius IX, who rapidly abandoned his easy-going inclinations in the upheavals of 1848.  For Pope Francis, it is still early days and the mask has not slipped.  Rather, he has gamely battled the forces of conservatism.  Like Barack Obama signing executive orders to bypass an obstructionist Congress, Francis has been making media-savvy statements to shame the upper echelons as appeal to the rest of the world that the Roman Catholic Church can modernise.  Recently, a meeting was convened to propose a new approach to homosexuals and divorcees.  A 'working paper' was released which held forth on the positive attributes of homosexual unions and how it was cruel to deny divorcees communion.  At the end of the meeting, the conservatives triumphed again, shooting down anything that could be construed as meaningful change.  But did they really win?  It was clever of Francis and his circle to release the 'working paper' as it  short-circuited the conservative backlash.  So Francis could say to those who seek modernisation of the Roman Church that he wants what they want but his hands are tied.  While the reactionaries are unhappy, they have kept their doctrine in place.  Quite masterfully, Francis has managed to keep both sides under one tent.  In a past half-century of largely noteworthy Popes, Francis really has earned the title of Pontifex Maximus.