We know people often joke that the way Catholics feel about the Pope is akin to how die-hard music fans feel about their favourite rock-star, but we never expected that the Pope would ever actually appear in place of a rock-star on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
However, as the magazine says on its cover, “the times they are a-changin’” and Pope Francis has become the first Catholic leader to appear on Rolling Stone’s front cover.
Explaining why he chose to put Francis in the issue, editor Mark Binelli says: "In less than a year since his papacy began, Pope Francis has done much to separate himself from past popes and establish himself as a people's pope."
Pope Francis really became the people’s Pope after proving he has a sense of humour by making jokes at his own expense, having a much more relaxed view of homosexuality and seeming truly humble.
In the feature on Francis, Binelli writes: “By eschewing the papal palace for a modest two-room apartment, by publicly scolding church leaders for being 'obsessed' with divisive social issues like gay marriage, birth control and abortion ('Who am I to judge?' Francis famously replied when asked his views on homosexual priests) and – perhaps most astonishingly of all – by devoting much of his first major written teaching to a scathing critique of unchecked free-market capitalism, the pope revealed his own obsessions to be more in line with the boss's son."
He really is a rock-star.
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Posted by Hannah Wood.