Francis & Political Illusion

Francis & Political Illusion | Maureen Mullarkey | First Things:
"It comes as no surprise.
Handwriting has been on the wall along the Viale Vaticano from the get-go.
At the beginning of his pontificate, Francis revealed himself to be fastidiously attuned to image.
He refused to give communion in public ceremonies lest he be photographed giving the sacrament to the wrong kind of sinner.
So, when he agreed to pose between two well-known environmental activists and brandish an anti-fracking T-shirt, we believed what we saw.
It was a portentous image.
Press toads hopped to their keyboards to correct the evidence of our lying eyes. 
Francis was neither for nor against fracking, you see. 
Nothing of the sort. 
He was simply using a photo-op to assert blameless solidarity with the victims of ecological injustice. 
(Both a decisive definition of such injustice and its particular victims went unspecified.)
If that restyling were true, then the more fool Francis.
But Francis is not a fool. 
He is an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist..."