Francisco’s reform will be tested at the conclave

In private and public meetings, Francisco did not disguise his contempt for the Curia. At a meeting with nuns, at the end of 2013, he admitted that he did not agree with the group that administered the Holy See and, for centuries, accumulated rights and luxury.

“Church leaders have always been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy,” he said.

The most critical moment of his struggle against these privileges took place in December 2015. When he met with the Curia for the Christmas message, the Pope accused them of “hypocrisy.”

There was another fact that Francis considered as intolerable: the existence of beggars in the Vatican arches, full of gold and art. After installing showers, bathrooms and ordering the distribution of food and clothes to the hundreds of beggars and homeless people who sleep every night under the Vatican and Rome pilasters, the Pope opened a free barber shop for the most miserable.

When the initiative was announced, Rome hairdressers and volunteers gave the Holy See dozens of scissors, combs, mirrors and chairs so that new customers can be served. Francisco also celebrated his birthday distributing 400 sleeping bags to beggars and homeless, and invited 200 of them to dinner at the Vatican.

The gale that caused Francisco seemed to have no end. Four months after his inauguration, he broke a taboo – but did not change dogmas – when he said, “Who am I to judge the homosexuals?” He continued to indignate the church’s most radical wings by washing the feet of a Muslim refugee. His mission, he said, was to welcome, and used the church image as a campaign hospital, which attended to everyone without asking.