Sandro Magister: Francis, Spin Doctor To Himself. His Latest Exploits

Finally, the third modality of communication dear to Francis had as its “partner,” in recent days, a Benedictine monk and psychologist among the most widely read in the world, the German Anselm Grün.

Last February 15, in conversing behind closed doors with the priests of Rome, as he does every year at the beginning of Lent, Pope Francis recommended that they read a book by Grün - whose affectionate reader he is too - describing it as “modern” and “close to us.”

So then, Grün is the one who in an interview with the “Augsburger Allgemeine” on March 30, Good Friday, said that "there are no theological reasons that speak against an abolishment of priestly celibacy or against female priests, female bishops, or a female pope." It is an “historical process” that “needs time” – he added – and ‘the first step has to be now the ordination of women as deaconesses.”

An ordination, this last, that turns out to be among the short-term objectives of Francis, on a par with the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

While on the subsequent steps of the “historical process” delineated by Grün, that of women priests, bishops, and pope, Francis has not yet gone off the rails, either in public or in private (*).

But meanwhile he has recommended listening to someone who enunciates them as goals to be reached, no matter if these are in stark contrast with the “non possumus” of all the previous popes.