This document summarizes media coverage of Pope Francis and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby on issues related to poverty, women, homosexuality, and child abuse. It finds that both religious leaders receive significant press on their focus on poverty, but conservative views on women and homosexuality also receive coverage. Coverage of Welby's changing views on homosexuality over time is also documented. Criticism of both leaders for not going far enough in advancing social issues like women's rights and gay marriage is also presented.

1. Ruth A. Deller
@ruthdeller
Good news for the poor?
British newspaper responses to the new Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury

2. Nexis searches (UK national newspapers)
Nov 2012-Aug 2013
• Justin Welby and poverty: 131 / poor: 187
• Pope Francis and poverty: 140 / poor: 315
• Justin Welby and gay: 449
• Pope Francis and gay: 245
• Justin Welby and women: 506
• Pope Francis and women: 196
• Justin Welby and child abuse: 54
• Pope Francis and child abuse: 91

3. First day front pages

4. Pope without pomp... Francis begins his reign with a
pledge to the poor and weak (Daily Telegraph, March 20)
A plea for the poor from People's Pope (Daily Express,
March 20)
A humble man facing a mighty challenge; He loves tango,
pays his own bills and promises a 'church for the poor'.
Philip Sherwell on the outsider chosen to save the Church
from scandal (Sunday Telegraph, March 20)
'I would like to see a church that is poor and is for the
poor,' declares Pope Francis: Cracking jokes and ad-
libbing, the new pontiff addresses the world's media and
explains why he chose to name himself after St Francis of
Assisi. (The Observer, March 17)

5. Daily Mirror editorial (Coleman 2013)
CARDINAL Jorge Mario Bergoglio was last night hailed as a man of great
humility who understands the suffering of ordinary people… The
progressive Pontiff is likely to encourage the Church's 400,000 priests to hit
the streets to interact with members of society and modernise the Church at
a time when its reputation is at an all-time low. The son of an Italian railway
worker, the warm-hearted Argentinian is known for his compassion and
charity… he spoke out in defence of those less fortunate, contrasting "poor
people persecuted for demanding work, and rich people who are applauded
for fleeing from justice". The open-minded Pontiff also believes condoms
"can be permissible" to prevent infection…
Despite Pope Francis' great compassion and modernism, he is no pushover
on the thorny issues that face the Catholic Church. In 2010 he lobbied
publicly against the Italian government's decision to legalise same-sex
marriage before claiming it was the work of the devil and a "destructive
attack on God's plan". He also described adoption by homosexuals as a form
of discrimination against children.

6. Daily Telegraph editorial (Thompson 2013)
Pope Francis I, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, is a
priest of tremendous holiness and modesty of manner - a man who, until
now, has taken the bus to work… The new Pope's challenge is clear. He needs
to learn from Benedict XVI's greatest success - and his greatest failure…
Benedict's inability to reform the corrupt structures of the Roman curia,
which should be recognised as the rotten core of the abuse crisis… In many
parts of the world, Roman Catholicism has become almost synonymous with
sexual abuse and its concealment… Pope Benedict was determined to
"purify" the Church of its priestly abusers and their allies. But his civil servants
in the Vatican dicasteries were lazy and secretive in their half-hearted pursuit
of the truth…… To put it bluntly, a Church associated in the public mind with
child abuse isn't likely to be good at any sort of evangelisation, new or
otherwise. Nor can it face down its angry, condescending and well-informed
enemies. It must be led by a man of gentle spirit who is utterly determined
to cleanse the Church - as was St Francis of Assisi, renouncing a lavish lifestyle
in order to follow a path of radical poverty that was intended as a reproach to
worldly bishops.

8. First day front pages
22 March 2013
9 Nov 2012

9. Not long a bishop? Perfectly qualified then; Justin Welby
has had success in non-churchy experience, so the real
world is not alien to him (The Times, Nov 9)
WAGERS OF SIN; MPs call for probe into 'scam' over bets
on new Archbishop. Old Etonian, 56, is for ethics in City
but against gay marriage (Daily Mirror, Nov 9)
It's a miracle! Hacks bow heads as new man starts with a
prayer (The Times, Nov 10)
Can he keep everyone happy? (i, Nov 12)
New Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby reaffirms his
opposition to gay marriage as he takes office; Election
comes at a time of huge divisions within the Anglican
Church, Independent Feb 5

10. The Guardian leader (Nov 9)
It was not through a puff of white smoke but through the suspension of
booking at Ladbrokes that providence made itself known. For the identity of
the new archbishop of Canterbury to emerge in this way is embarrassing, but
then embarrassment is nothing new for the Church of England… The divisive
preoccupation with gay clergy and gay marriage crowds out much other
discussion, and at times prevents the church being heard on anything else at
all. And, all the while, the relentless withering of the congregations continues.
Easy as it is to deride the church, the country as a whole, and not just its
believing elements, ought to wish the new man at Canterbury, Justin Welby,
the very best. The networks that blossom out of the pews are a kind of
bulwark for wider community life, bolstering civic engagement as well as
good neighbourliness, as sociologists are documenting. In addition to filling a
social gap, the church at its best fills an ideas gap too. These are times that
cry out for searching moral questions, not least about our economy, and
public intellectuals are not exactly thick on the ground…

11. The Guardian leader (Nov 9)
He is instinctively pragmatic in temporal matters. Thus his reading of the scripture
inclines him against gay marriage, and yet he allowed the bells of Liverpool Cathedral
to ring out Lennon's atheistic Imagine after he grasped this would be a popular thing
to do. He has a knack for persuading bickering elements to rub along, and without
flinching from uncomfortable facts. Sometimes, as in relation to gay clergy, this might
be a question of having the tact to change the subject; sometimes it is a question of
being relaxed about the coexistence of incompatible points of view. Asked by the
Guardian how he'd square the circle on women bishops, he said that the trick was to
"look at the circle and say it's a circle with sharp bits on it… One promising place to
pitch up is moral capitalism, an agenda that sits on the left side of the political aisle,
but one which can unite spiritual liberals and "conservatives". Mr Welby has already
damned top pay as "obscene". Also at the top of the inbox is a messy compromise
over women bishops, which the church establishment needs to get through next
week's general synod… If, and it is a big if, Mr Welby can call time on the church's
insular rows, the next step will be facing the future.

12. Our zombie church has a new leader – so what?
(Smith, Independent on Sunday, Nov 11)
As events go, it's not exactly earth-shaking. A couple of days ago, a pressure
group announced the name of its new boss, a white bloke in his 50s who used
to work in the oil industry. Admittedly the job couldn't have gone to a woman
- this particular pressure group isn't up to speed with equality - but did they
have to pick an Old Etonian? Even more puzzling has been the reaction, with
lots of people rushing around and using words like "daring" and
"unexpected". I even heard a woman on Radio 4 saying she was
"excited”…Whatever Welby's qualities, however, the truth is that he's taking
charge of an organisation which doesn't matter to most of the population…
It's hard to see why I should care what the new Archbishop thinks about gay
marriage, and even harder to see why he should be able to vote on it if and
when legislation comes before the second chamber.

13. Our zombie church has a new leader – so what?
(Smith, Independent on Sunday, Nov 11)
One of the reasons church leaders are so touchy, I suspect, is that they know
that these are extraordinary and indefensible privileges… I'm perfectly happy
for clerics to lobby on any subject, but they should get in line with all the
other organisations that would like the Government to listen to them…When
he was Dean of Liverpool, Welby once gave his blessing to a Halloween
service entitled Night of the Living Dead, in which a man in Gothic costume
leapt from a coffin. The zombie church? It's a great metaphor for an
institution that steadfastly refuses to modernise.

14. Brave new papacy means same old story
for women (McCarthy, Sunday Times, March 17)
So far, Pope Francis is a popular choice, despite being chosen by a dodgy
electorate that included shelterers of child sex abusers. So far, too, the
assessment of him has been all about style and nothing about
substance… Different he may be but, unless he is radically or even
subversively different, his own successor will not be married or divorced
or gay. Most certain of all, he will not be a she and yet more females will
have drifted away from the church, along with many more men who
respect women. The outstanding trademark of Pope Francis's track
record is his work with the poor of Argentina. And yet everyone agrees
he is doctrinely [sic] conservative. Those depicting him as a paragon of
fairness who thirsts for social justice do not recognise the contradiction -
for it is untenable to advocate social justice while, at the same time,
espousing institutionalised discrimination against half the population of
the world: women.

15. POPE FRANCIS: TRADITIONAL TO HIS CORE - BUT HE
DEFENDS DIVORCEES AND SINGLE MOTHERS (Daily Mail;
13 Mar 2013)
Pope's strongman blasts old guard aside;
Francis is to give more women top jobs and break the grip
of Italian cardinals (Sunday Times, April 21)
Washing a girl's feet... what next? Pope's gesture raises
fear of women's ordination... The Pope's decision to
wash the feet of female offenders has shocked some
traditionalists, who fear that it could open the door to the
ordination of women. Francis washed and kissed the feet
of a group that included two young women, one of them
a Muslim, at a juvenile detention centre in Rome on
Maundy Thursday, provoking criticism from conservative
theologians. (Gledhill, The Times, 2013: 4)

16. It is hard to estimate the scale of the disaster of Tuesday's
decision against female bishops in the Church of
England… For thousands of churchgoers and their priests,
many of them women, it is a bewildering catastrophe. For
the outgoing archbishop it is a personal humiliation, a
devastating summation of a troubled tenure. For his
successor, Justin Welby, it means the long negotiations
with the diehards that have dogged the past 10 years
have gone back to the start. (The Guardian, Nov 22)
Welby faces up to defeat on women bishops (Daily
Telegraph, July 9)
Twitter ban at women bishop talk (Daily Mirror, July 7)
The first big test for the archbishop; Women bishops,
(Independent, July 5)

17. Archbishop hails 'stunning quality' of gay relationships (The
Times, March 22)
Gay marriage will weaken and confuse society, says
Archbishop (The Times, June 4)
ACCEPT GAY RIGHTS, WELBY TELLS SYNOD, (Daily Mail, July 6)
Archbishop: Repent over treatment of gays (The Express, Aug
29)
Archbishop: young people see Church as 'wicked’ (i, Aug 29)
Welby: my gay marriage view can be seen as 'akin to racism‘
(The Independent, Aug 29)
Young people see us as wicked over gays, says Welby (The
Times, Aug 29)
Justin Welby gets real on homophobia (The Guardian, Aug 29)

18. A LOUDMOUTH priest has been blasted for calling the
Archbishop of Canterbury a "w***er". The Rev Marcus
Ramshaw was angered by Archbishop Justin Welby’s comment
about gay marriage and took to Facebook. But the priest was
forced to delete his comments after being confronted by the
Church of England's communications director. Mr Welby told
the House of Lords that gay weddings would "diminish"
Christian marriage and damage the fabric of society. Mr
Ramshaw was so upset by the comments he wrote on the
social networking site: "What really upsets me is nasty people
such as Justin Welby robbing me of my faith in the church.
"He does not speak in my name and I think he is a w***er, but
im not going to stop being a christian or a priest.” (Daily Star,
June 8)

19. The Church’s grey men are out of touch (Street-
Porter, Independent on Sunday, Sep 1)
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby (below), is
a verbose fellow who likes to air his thoughts on a daily basis. He's
not a neat and tidy spiritual leader, more an unfocused work in
progress. Should a beleaguered church with a declining membership
in the UK be led by a chap who publicly says he's thinking through
divisive issues like same-sex marriage? Or should he man up, be
brave, and offer unequivocal spiritual guidance even though it risks
losing traditional members? Last week, Dr Welby (who belonged to
the evangelical wing of the Church) told an audience of born-again
Christians that they must "repent" over the way the church has
treated gay people….

20. The Church’s grey men are out of touch (Street-
Porter, Independent on Sunday, Sep 1)
Welby voted against same-sex marriage in the Lords, and when
younger, opposed homosexuals being allowed to adopt children. He
says his mind is "not yet clear" on the issue of gay marriage, and he
struggles with conflicting thoughts… The Church is run by a bunch of
grey men in fancy costumes: look at any picture of the Synod and
weep. They fail to represent modern Britain in any meaningful way.
Welby says he wants Christians to focus less on what they are against,
but sometimes in life I find that really useful. I am profoundly against
inequality in any shape or form - so I find a Christian leader's refusal
to accept gay marriage repugnant. The Church must adapt to a
changing society. This is not a sign of weakness, but of strength,
otherwise it is shrinking its horizons, focusing on a literal
interpretation of the Bible and refusing access to men and women
because of their sexual orientation. Jesus would have been appalled.

21. Tue 30 July

22. Il Papa: Don't preach; POPE SAYS HE WON'T
JUDGE GAYS AND WORLD SHOULD ACCEPT
THEM (Daily Mirror, July 30, p19)
Elton John Believes in Pope Francis; (Daily
Mirror, July 13)
POPE FRANCIS: GAYS ARE OKAY; But Pontiff still
against women priests. POPE Francis gave gays
the thumbs-up yesterday - but backed the
Church's ban on women priests. (The Sun, July
30)

23. Don't be fooled. Pope by name, pope by
nature (Cohen, The Observer, August 11)
The relief when the latest pope said that he did not want to judge gays
was as palpable as it was pitiable. Conventional liberals do not want to
overthrow or even reform oppressive institutions. They want to "respect"
religion while blocking out the darkness within. I often think religious
leaders can treat them as PR men treat gullible consumers. All they need
to do is look cuddly and speak in soft voices. Or, in the case of the pope,
mouth contemporary pieties about avoiding "judgmental" prejudices. We
once assumed that being judgmental was what popes did. Not this one,
apparently…. Meanwhile, the behaviour of the church under his
leadership has remained as disgraceful as ever. Buried by the praise for
the pope's humility was the news that Irish Catholic orders were refusing
to compensate "fallen" women, who toiled in their Magdalene
laundries….

24. Don't be fooled. Pope by name, pope by
nature (Cohen, The Observer, August 11)
They kept women working for nothing behind locked doors in sweltering
laundries … The people the religious fool do not depress me. All of us can
be tricked. It is the people who want to be fooled I can't abide. If you
forget what liberal Catholics and the liberal media think the pope said on
the papal plane last month, and take the trouble to read what he actually
said, the happy story of a reforming, tolerant pontiff disintegrates before
your eyes… Before the gormless acclaim him as a liberal, they should
expect him to meet minimum standards. His church opposes civil gay
marriage and maintains that homosexual sex is a sin. If he were serious
about stopping discrimination, he would reverse both those dogmas. He
might also welcome the use of condoms because they
emancipate women and protect against Aids, and co-operate with police
investigations into the rape of children by clerics and compensate their
victims. To date, there is no sign of him doing any of the above. For
despite all you have read, the pope remains what he has always been: a
Catholic.

25. ABUSE GIRLS TO SUE NEW ARCHBISHOP (The People, Nov
11)
Sex abuse victims reject Church's apology; Man arrested
after disruption at Synod service (The Times, July 8)
CHURCH INTRUDER'S PUNCH-UP IN FRONT OF WELBY
(Daily Mail, July 8)
THE Church of England's official apology for child
abuse by its clerics doesn't make everything all right for
the many victims. But at least they've admitted publicly
that "for far too long the Church either disbelieved the
stories, believed them but tried to hide the truth away or
hoped that by removing an offender the problem would
go away". Now, we wait for other faiths to follow suit,
hopefully with Pope Francis I leading the way. Too many
innocents have suffered to let the excuses continue.
(Leckie, The Sun, July 7)

26. Pope tightens laws on child sex abuse (The Times, July 12)
UN inquiry to question Vatican on child abuse: Catholic
church told to show internal documents. Committee to
ask officials about extent of cover-up (The Guardian, July
10)
POPE: GET TOUGH ON PERVERTS; Victims want 'actions‘
(Daily Mirror, April 6)
Pope hit by paedo 'ill' storm (Daily Star Sunday, March 7)

29. Welby criticises Tories for calling poor
'scroungers' (i, July 10)
Archbishop promotes payday loan alternatives
(The Guardian, July 1)
Welby: bankers need to live in fear of hell (Daily
Telegraph, June 15)
Archbishop joins stars tackling world hunger
(Sunday Sun, June 9)
Using inflation to reduce debt would hit poor,
Welby warns (The Times, July 11)

30. POPE BACKS WELBY ON GAY MARRIAGE (Daily Mail)
Pope supports archbishop over stance on gay marriage (Daily
Telegraph)
Pope and Welby 'share common goals‘ (i)
Leaders united in support of poor (Independent)
Pope and Welby tell of their shared hopes for social justice (Yorkshire
Post)
Church leaders bond over prayers followed by five-course lunch (The
Times)
Welby and the Pope are cut from the same (frayed) cloth (The Times)
In unity we trust: when Francis met Justin: Archbishop of Canterbury
and Pope stress importance of co-operation for churches (The
Guardian)
D'ya fancy watching my 1986 World Cup DVD? (The Sun) [all June 15]

31. In unity we trust: when Francis met Justin: Archbishop of
Canterbury and Pope stress importance of co-operation for
churches (Davies, The Guardian)
On the menu - a five-course affair, surprisingly plentiful perhaps for
the era of the "poor church" - were sliced swordfish, pasta with
prawns, tuna steak, semifreddo, fresh fruit and coffee. But, as the
pope met the archbishop of Canterbury for the first time yesterday -
a meeting of two pragmatists creaking under the weight of centuries
of fraught history - the real order of the day, at least in theory, was
unity… On gay marriage, Welby declared he and Francis had proved
to be "absolutely at one on the issues". In a press briefing at the
Venerable English College of Rome, Welby added that the pair were
"equally at one on our condemnation of homophobic behaviour".
The pope said in an address that he wanted to co-operate on the
"importance of the institution of the family built on marriage".

32. In unity we trust: when Francis met Justin: Archbishop of
Canterbury and Pope stress importance of co-operation for
churches (Davies, The Guardian)
On ethical reforms of the financial system, too, the men were
onside. Welby, a former oil executive citing the influences of Catholic
social teaching and the need for the banking system to find "new
values", said the church's leaders had "got to find a way to make that
happen". Francis, earlier, had spoken of efforts to achieve social
justice, "to build an economic system that . . . promotes the common
good“… The ordination of women was mentioned "in passing" but
not dwelled on, said the archbishop, an ardent advocate for female
bishops.

33. Churches bank on getting job done (McKeown,
Daily Mirror, Aug 5)
THE Blessed Richard Dawkins - he of The God Delusion - must be twisting and turning
in his scientifically designed bed. For years, instead of concentrating on his "vocation"
as a populist pioneer in genetics, he has been railing against religion… But all of a
sudden he has been upstaged by two of the most unlikely characters -
Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Firstly, the pontiff - and not just
because his is the largest ecclesiastical constituency in the world - takes on the Vatican
bureaucrats and cancels all their bonuses… Next Francis announces an inquiry into the
Vatican Bank and includes among his open-ended options the possibility of closing the
thing down… Not to be outdone, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby declares
war on the loan-shark companies and vows to expand the Church's credit union
involvement. Within hours it transpires to his huge embarrassment that the Church's
bean-counters have been quietly investing in Wonga, a company notoriously involved
in the exploitative pay-day loan business… Like his Rome counterpart, the Archbishop
immediately demanded to know exactly where the Church's money was and why. So
two of the world's most prominent clergymen take on what politicians seem impotent
to do.

34. Churches bank on getting job done (McKeown, Daily
Mirror, Aug 5)
As if taking on the banks were not enough on his papal honeymoon, so to
speak, Pope Francis radically altered the Church's solidly homophobic attitude to gays. Mind you,
in the same breath, he appeared to reiterate the Vatican's horrible tradition of
regarding women as less human than men. I use the word "appeared" because I detected a wide
chink in the papal armour of this very smart man. On the plane home from his indisputably
triumphant Latin American trip, he not only blew away his predecessors' attitude to
homosexuality, but he used the phrase, "Who am I to judge?". That is even more explosive than
simply repositioning the Vatican on gays. As I've exclaimed elsewhere, "Frankie, sweetheart,
you're the Pope for heaven's sake: if you can't judge, who can?" Suddenly, the myth of papal
infallibility is no more. First defined as dogma in 1870, it has been dying quietly for a long
time. Pope Francis buried it from 37,000ft over the Atlantic. In the next breath, questioned
about women's role in the Church, he opened the door a little more widely and then put up the
papal hand on a question about women priests saying the Church closed that door some years
ago. Doors. I remember when the door was closed on meat on Friday, on the Mass being in
anything other than Latin, on painkillers for the dying... not to mention anything but excoriation
for gays. I have a feeling this Pope is going to open more doors than any in my longish lifetime.

35. Trendy vicars, your time has come at last
(Jones, The Independent, 30 July)
In case you haven't read the fashion pull-out in the latest parish newsletter, let
me be the first to pass on the good news: Trendy vicars are bang on trend. The
energetic young clergyman in a colourful woolly jumper was once a BBC sit-com
trope or a bogeyman for conservative churchgoers. Now, apparently, he's running
the show. True, Justin Welby is yet to deliver a sermon in rap form, but in the
months since he was installed as Archbishop, he's rarely been off the ball. He's
offered opinions on every hot topic, from welfare reform to City culture, and now
he's taken a stand on payday lenders. This week Pope Francis, leader of 1.2
billion Catholics worldwide, took his own baby-steps into the 21st century when
he told an informal press conference: "You should not discriminate against or
marginalise [gay] people, and the Catechism says this as well.“ To many, Pope
Francis's words will be a maddeningly overdue statement of the obvious. Is it
bad to discriminate against gay people? Is the Pope a Catholic? Gay rights
campaigner Peter Tatchell was unimpressed. He dismissed the statement as "a
change of tone but not a change in substance.“ It's to be hoped a change in tone
might signal a change in substance, but still, Tatchell's cynicism is not unfounded.
Most religious organisations keep time with an internal clock about four
centuries behind GMT.

36. Trendy vicars, your time has come at last
(Jones, The Independent, 30 July)
This slow pace of modernisation goes a long way to explaining why 64 per
cent of British 18 to 24-year-olds are not affiliated to any religion. It also
suggests why it would be unfair to dismiss the views of church leaders as
a merely superficial attempt to seem 'with it'. Any decent comms
manager would consider this too little, too late. And, anyway, they didn't
have comms managers in the Middle Ages. Politicians may consider a
Church that comments on the welfare of the poor or City culture an
unwelcome interference, but that's not because the comments
themselves are radical. Jesus's thoughts on rich men, camels and needles
are well-known… The trendy vicar might fancy himself down with the
kids, but his strength isn't radicalism; it's a determination to connect the
Church, and all its members, with the outside world… Why should
Britain's non-churchgoers care what religious leaders say on social and
political matters? Because when no mainstream political party is willing to
stick up for the poor and disenfranchised, here are a few major
organisations that can step into the breach.