Meeting with journalists this morning, Pope Francis laid out his vision for the Catholic church, which includes cutting spending on ornate ceremony and instead spending that money on the poor. He urged excited fellow-Argentines to skip the costly trip to Rome to visit the first non-European Pope in almost 1,300 years, and instead give that money to the poor.
"Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor," he told the gathered journalists. He explained the reason he took the name, Francis, after St. Francis of Assissi, was because of St. Francis's devotion to the poor and love of animal life. On climate change, the Pope remarked, "Right now, we don't have a very good relation with creation."
Still, questions linger about the new Pope's actions during the Argentine dirty wars in the 70's and 80's, when priests were kidnapped by the brutal military junta. The Pope has claimed he helped free the priests, while Argentine journalists have reported he was complicit in their kidnapping.
On the subject of those meddling journalists, the Pope has asked that they "always try to better understand the true nature of the Church, and even its journey in the world, with its virtues and with its sins".