Yearbook 2019
Vatican City. After seven years as the leader of the
Catholic Church and at the age of 82, Pope Francis continued
his unremitting journey in the world during the year. Often
the trips have gone to small countries on the periphery of
the Catholic Church. It is in some of the countries in
Africa and Asia that Catholicism is growing fastest.
According to
CountryAAH, the
Pope's travel patterns have clearly shown how gravitational
centers are increasingly moving from the historical base in
Europe.
During the year, the Pope also visited two countries
where the number of Christians is less than 1% of the
population: Thailand and Japan. During the visits to
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pope Francis announced that he now
intends to incorporate resistance to the possession of
nuclear weapons in the official teaching of the Catholic
Church.
Common to the message during all the Pope's travels have
been his heart topics: the climate issue, the situation of
migrants and the fight against poverty. The Pope's radical
message has made him controversial, not least in the United
States, but also at home. Conservative forces within the
Vatican also look with unblinking eyes on what they regard
as Pope Francis's overly generous approach to homosexuals
and divorced. His simple lifestyle and attempts to clear up
the Vatican's business have also seemed provocative.
During the year, pedophile scandals among the men of the
church continued to occupy much of the pope's time and
energy. Francis inherited the issue when he took office
seven years ago and the revelations do not seem to end. The
pope is initially considered to have underestimated the
phenomenon but later came to realize the extent of the abuse
of thousands of children around the world. One of the
Vatican's tops, Australian Cardinal George Bell, was
sentenced during the year to prison for committed child
molestation. At the beginning of the year, the Pope hosted a
summit at the Vatican, where bishops from all over the world
drew the lines for a common front against an abusive culture
of a worldwide scale.
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