Originally Posted by CatholicKnight3
There have been many that have been chosen by the Holy Spirit who have gone the wrong way. Even with good intentions. Popes included.
There is an unwarranted fear in the thought that “there have been bad Popes before”. If you go back to the times of the anti-popes, you see they were not charactised as such by their teachings or developments of doctrine. They were charactarised by their lifestyles and collusion with sin. They existed within a sick institution of either secrecy and or openly in bed with the worldly powers.
If you look at the life and history of this Pope, he is open and blameless and fully understands through St Ignatius, about the dangers of secrecy and hiddenness. The way he threw open the doors of the Curia publically revealing the diseases that can flourish behind closed doors, that all goes against what the devil wants for his workspace.
Our man Cardinal Pell related that it is obvious being in the close vicinity of Pope Francis that he is a holy man. He exudes holiness that can’t be feigned.
It angers me when this reference to previous bad popes is made as though a Pope can
teach error and it is up to us to decipher Church teaching in that way.