In his first year as pope, Francis has staked out a claim as the "people's pope", as Time magazine called him in selecting him as their 2013 Man of the Year, by trying to shift church efforts away from contraception and gay marriage and toward providing mercy of one sort or another for the poor, exiled, and sick. Here's our list of the top 5 revolutionary changes - whether they represent exercises of power within the Catholic church or just statements or actions which have probably altered the nature of what the church does irrevocably - made by the Argentine pontiff (and one-time bar bouncer, back when he was Jorge Bergoglio) since being named pope.
1. Booted Cardinal Raymond Burke from the Vatican's office that selects bishops around the world.
The Congregation for Bishops is in many ways the most important Vatican office, as it evaluates and nominates candidates for bishop everywhere - and in the process, impacting who's in power in the church's most important positions. Last week, the pontiff appointed Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, who will serve in the place of Cardinal Raymond Burke, who has said Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights, like John Kerry and Rudy Giuliani, should be denied communion. Burke remains at the head of the supreme Vatican court in Rome.
2. Booted Justin Rigali from the Congregation for Bishops, too.
The former leader of the archdiocese in Philadelphia, Rigali's tenure there was plagued by allegations from two grand juries that the archdiocese did not report or remove priests who were known to be engaging in sexual abuse with minors. The New York Times reported that Rigali initially responded with a denial, which he reversed a month later by suspending 21 priests in a single swoop.
3. Lived like his namesake.
The pope has abjured most of the luxuries of the office and adopted Saint Francis's spirit of modesty in his accommodations. He lives in a two-room apartment in the Vatican guest house, and prefers simple black shoes and his 1984 Renault 4 to the traditional red shoes and papal Mercedes.
4. Continued Benedict's reforms of the Vatican bank.
The Vatican Institute for Religious Works -- its bank -- has been wracked by scandal, including one in which a senior accountant stands accused of trying to shuttle about $27 million from Italy to Switzerland without declaring it. Now, Promontory, which the Washington Post calls a "New York-based outfit specializing in regulatory policy and bank cleanups", has gone about vetting each of the bank's 19,000 personal accounts.
5. Kicked off a process of decentralization.
The Associated Press reported that at the end of September, the pope convened with his eight cardinal advisors to discuss reforms to the Vatican bureaucracy, with the intention of planning how to incorporate local church leaders in the decision-making of the church. It's a push associated with his stated distaste for the "narcissism" of the church's heads. "The court is the leprosy of the papacy," Francis said then. "It is Vatican-centric. It sees and looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, for the most part, temporal interests. This Vatican-centric view neglects the world around us. I do not share this view and I'll do everything I can to change it."
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