Who is beneath the pope

A permanent deacon can be married and assists a priest by performing some of the sacraments. Updated February 11, Infoplease Staff. See also:. Roman Catholicism. Trending Here are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about. Is Vatican City a Country? The Languages of Africa. The cardinal lives in a large flat just off the grand thoroughfare built by Mussolini that leads into St Peter's Square from the River Tiber.

It is here that he runs his operation for promoting what he calls "doctrinal clarity". Custom and ceremony are held in high regard. When I visited to interview him I was shown past a cardinal's red hat sitting enclosed in a glass case, as if it was a holy relic, and then into a drawing room with high-backed chairs, where we waited in anticipation for the grand entrance.

Sitting alongside me was his press adviser, who greeted the cardinal by kneeling and kissing the gold ring on the ring finger of his hand, the traditional sign of respect given to a prince of the church. By contrast, when I have met Pope Francis - as a member of the Vatican press corps - we shake hands, and I can't help noticing that he looks slightly uncomfortable when people go down on one knee before him. The word in Rome is that the posters were the work of a right-wing group that dislikes the Pope's appeals for Europe to be more welcoming of immigrants.

Once again, Cardinal Burke appears to be on the other side of the argument - he recently met the leader of the anti-immigration Northern League - but there is no evidence that he lies behind the posters, or the spoof news story. There are many conservative Catholics who are uncomfortable with some of Pope Francis's changes. The Pope's decision to live in a Vatican guest house, carry his own brief case and be driven around in a Ford Focus has burst the balloon of papal pomp.

Some regard this freewheeling approach as "un-papal", and resent his description of those on the traditional wing of the church as "rigid". His way of dealing with the stress, he explained, is to jot down problems and place the notes under a figure of a sleeping St Joseph. St Joseph, the carpenter, is the figure Catholics turn to when facing practical difficulties. The trouble is that the Pope's job is to be the rock of church unity. Alarm bells start ringing when a papacy becomes divisive.

Why does it matter? Because Francis' shoes have become one of the small symbols of his style, so different from that of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, known in the Italian media as the "Prada Pope" who wore bright red leather loafers custom made for him by his personal cobbler.

On his plane dubbed Shepherd One headed to the U. Ever since he was elected in , Italian media coverage of the first Argentine pope has focused on how he has made plain living and frugality his hallmark: He eschews the elaborate papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, choosing to live in not-palatial rooms at the Vatican guesthouse instead. He sometimes gets around by bus or a compact car instead of the papal limousine.

After arrival at Andrews, he was whisked into Washington in a tiny Fiat surrounded by hulking American security vehicles. And three weeks ago, when he needed new eyeglasses, he slipped out of the Vatican and popped into an optician's shop in Rome, stunning tourists and passersby who crowded round, cheered and clamored for selfies once they realized he was there. It was another lesson from Francis in papal economics.