Don’t believe everything you read. Study the words that Francis actually used, not someone else’s characterization of them. And you will see that Francis’ view on allowing divorced people to remarry is actually consistent with that of Benedict, and his predecessors.
As to receiving communion, he is consistent with his predecessors as well. (Believe me, I wish it wasn’t so!) Francis left just a glimmer of hope for divorced Catholics in his admonition, AMORIS LÆTITIA ¶ 303, that “individual conscience needs to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage. Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an ever greater trust in God’s grace. Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal. In any event, let us recall that this discernment is dynamic; it must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized.”
