Bringing a background in literary themes and devices with him to the papacy five years ago, the pope has shown himself to be a master of metaphor and allegory.

His cross-cultural and eclectic knowledge of literature and cinema has supplied him with numerous visual elements that he mixes and matches with a religious message, creating such compound concoctions as "the babysitter church" to describe a parish that doesn't encourage active evangelizers but only worries about keeping parishioners inside, out of trouble.

"Armchair Catholics," meanwhile, don't let the Holy Spirit lead their lives.

They would rather stay put, safely reciting a "cold morality" without letting the Spirit push them out of the house to bring Jesus to others.

The Ignatian spirituality that formed him as a Jesuit also comes through many of his turns of phrase.

Just as a Jesuit seeks to use all five senses to find and experience God, the pope does not hesitate to use language that involves sight, sound, taste, touch and smell.

And so he urges the world's priests to be "shepherds living with the smell of sheep" by living with and among the people in order to share Christ with them, and he tells his cardinals that all Catholic elders need to share with the young their insight and wisdom, which become like "fine wine that tastes better with age."

No chorus is as wonderful as the squeaks, squeals and banter of children, he once said before baptizing 32 babies in the Sistine Chapel, assuring the parents that the commotion and chaos of new life was not only welcome, but wonderful.

The pope's visual vocabulary dips into the everyday with sayings and scenarios from daily routines: like sin being more than a stain; it is a rebellious act against God that requires more than just a trip "to the laundromat and have it cleaned."

Even country living holds some lessons.

He once told parishioners to bother their priests like a calf would pester its mother for milk.

Always knock "on their door, on their heart so that they give you the milk of doctrine, the milk of grace and the milk of guidance."

Food and drink hold numerous lessons.

For example, to convey the corrosive atmosphere a bitter, angry priest can bring to his community, the pope said such priests make one think, "This man drinks vinegar for breakfast. Then, for lunch, pickled vegetables. And, in the evening, a nice glass of lemon juice."

Christians must not be boastful and shallow like a special sweet his Italian grandmother would prepare for Fat Tuesday, he has said.

Explaining how it is made from a very thin strip of pastry, the crunchy dessert bloats and swells in a pan of hot oil.

They are called "bugie" or "little lies," he said, because "they seem big, but they have nothing inside, there's no truth, no substance."

Francis' frequent focus on the evils of living a hypocritical or superficial life has meant employing descriptions such as showy as peacocks, frivolous as an over-primped star and fleeting as soap bubbles.

"A soap bubble is beautiful! It has so many colors! But it lasts one second and then what?" Continue reading

• Image: NCR

That humble empathy and the ease with which he walks in others' shoes have won Francis admirers around the globe and confirmed his place as a consummate champion of the poor and disenfranchised.

But as he marks the fifth anniversary of his election Tuesday and looks ahead to an already troubled 2018, Francis faces criticism for both the merciful causes he has embraced and the ones he has neglected.

With women and sex abuse topping the latter list, a consensus view is forming that history's first Latin American pope is perhaps a victim of unrealistic expectations and his own culture.

Nevertheless, Francis' first five years have been a dizzying introduction to a new kind of pope, one who prizes straight talk over theology and mercy over morals — all for the sake of making the Church a more welcoming place for those who have felt excluded.

"I think he's fantastic, very human, very simple," Marina Borges Martinez, a 77-year-old retiree, said as she headed into evening Mass at a church in Sao Paulo, Brazil. "I think he's managed to bring more people into the church with the way he is."

Many point to his now famous "Who am I to judge?" comment about a gay priest as the turning point that disaffected Catholics had longed for and were unsure they would ever see.

Others hold out Francis' cautious opening to allowing Catholics who remarry outside the church to receive Communion as his single most revolutionary step. It was contained in a footnote to his 2016 document "The Joy of Love."

"I have met people who told me they returned to the Catholic faith because of this pope," Ugandan Archbishop John Baptist Odama, who heads the local conference of Catholic bishops, said.

"Simple as he may be, he has passed a very powerful message about our God who loves everybody and who wants the salvation of everyone."

Another area in which Francis has sought change extends into global politics, with his demand for governments and individuals to treat migrants as brothers and sisters in need, not as threats to society's well-being and security.

After a visit to a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, Francis brought a dozen Syrian Muslim refugees home with him on the papal plane.

The Vatican has turned over three apartments to refugee families. Two African migrants recently joined the Vatican athletics team.

His call has gone largely unanswered in much of Europe and the United States, though, where opposing immigration has become a tool in political campaigns.

Italians in the pope's backyard voted overwhelmingly this month for parties that have promised to crack down on migration, including with forced expulsions. Continue reading

• Image: Xavier School

Many commentators around the world have sought to produce a balance sheet of his first five years as pope and have engaged in extended analyses.

Not a few in the Anglophone world have tended to use the question of how he is dealing with the sexual-abuse question as the unique measuring rod for judging whether his five years at the helm of the barque of Peter have been a success or not.

Of course this is an issue of the utmost importance for the life of the church and for his papal ministry, but a fair evaluation of Francis' leadership of the church cannot be reduced to this or, indeed, to any single issue.

There are many other issues of enormous importance for the preaching of the Gospel and the future of the Catholic Church that must not be overlooked in a comprehensive analysis.

Issues that may be of great concern in one part of the world may not be so in another.

Francis has been first and foremost "a missionary pope," who is determined to transform the church into "a missionary church."

He believes in preaching the Gospel by action and if necessary by words.

He is a man of faith who inspires faith and gives hope, bringing the Gospel to life before our eyes.

When Francis became pope, the church was in deep crisis in the United States and elsewhere in the Western world, and many people felt uneasy about identifying themselves as Catholics.

That is no longer the case today. Francis has energized the church not only in the southern hemisphere but all over the Catholic world.

He has done so especially by his focus on mercy, repeatedly telling people that "the name of our God is mercy," and that mercy and the poor are at the heart of the Gospel.

He moved the center of the Catholic Church to the periphery when, for the first time in history, he opened a jubilee, the Jubilee Year of Mercy, in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, in November 2015.

He continues his focus on mercy every Friday with different expressions of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Continue reading

• Image: iCatholic

There was a time in life when I wanted change and wanted it now.

I still want things done now, but over the course of the years, I discovered that, at least where the church is concerned, I was looking for action in the wrong places.

As Sean Freyne, the Irish theologian and Scripture scholar, put it, "It's a mistake to think that a pope has the power to do anything."

Translation: The right to reign as an autocrat, to take unilateral action about almost anything, does not come with the miter and crossed keys.

Nor, for that matter, does it come with the capes and crosses of bishops.