As usual, this upset a few Catholics who have been muttering that this upstart Argentine Jesuit is selling the family silver. Amongst some malcontents, you might even hear demands for his resignation, so exasperated are they with press reports in which he appears to contradict or weaken traditional Catholic teaching.

And this is just the latest controversy. The long list of surprises that the Pope has sprung on his faithful began in 2013 with his comment in an airborne press conference: "If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well, who am I to judge them?" Those words have been quoted so often that they have defined his Papacy.

Well, I'm a fan of Pope Francis and I don't think that there is anything to worry about. Perhaps he should get a new press secretary, but his Catholic critics shouldn't get their knickers in a knot. Here are seven reasons why.

1. THE POPE IS often badly misreported. Take his recent comment about gays.

We Christians have to apologize for so many things, not just for this [treatment of gays], but we must ask for forgiveness. … I think that the Church not only should apologize … to a gay person whom it offended, but it must also apologize to the poor as well, to the women who have been exploited, to children who have been exploited by [being forced to] work. It must apologize for having blessed so many weapons."

He clearly said "we Christians", meaning us individuals, not the Catholic Church as the teacher of truths revealed by Christ. Doesn't that make sense? If I have ever slighted a homosexual, I ought to apologise for my lack of charity. But what the Pope did not do and had no intention of doing was apologising for the Catholic view that homosexual acts (not persons) are "intrinsically disordered". Continue reading

• Michael Cook is the editor of BioEdge, a newsletter about bioethics, and MercatorNet.

Speaking at a meeting of the Iona Institute, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said much of the discussion on marriage and family in Ireland today is polemical.

The archbishop referred to some correspondence he has received in the build up to Ireland's referendum on same-sex marriage in May.

He said the language was "not just intemperate, but obnoxious, insulting and unchristian in regard to gay and lesbian people".

He warning the correspondents about using such language to support a position they felt was Christian.

"Then all I can say is that they have forgotten something essential about the Christian message."

The archbishop said that discussion on the definitions of marriage required time and frank and balanced discussion.

But he noted that an ethics of equality did not require uniformity.

"There can be an ethic of equality, which is an ethic of recognising and respecting difference," he said.

Dr Martin suggested that a pluralist society could be creative in finding ways in which people of same-sex orientation had their rights and their loving and caring relationships recognised and cherished in a culture of difference.

"I'm not saying that gay and lesbian people are unloving or that their love is somehow deficient compared to others," he said.

"I am talking about a uniqueness in the male-female relationship."

Archbishop Martin said there is something "irreplaceable in that relationship between a man and a woman who commit to one another in love and who remain open to the transmission and the nurturing of human life".

"We are all the children of a male and a female and this must have relevance to our understanding of the way children should be nurtured and educated," he added.

Sources

• Irish Independent
• Iona Institute
• Image: Sunday Times