On this episode, Paul Vallely, a columnist for the Church Times, talks about the papacy of Pope Francis and what his legacy might be.

Pope Francis adopted “a pastoral approach”, he says, “not a dogmatic approach.

“He thought that people, were the centre of the gospel, and he thought that mercy was more important than dogma. He didn’t really change a lot of Catholic teaching, in the sense that he saw dogma as the kind of ideal to which we all aspire. He knew we weren’t perfect or ideal: we were all on a journey and starting very often in a difficult place. He wanted to be there at the start of the journey to accompany people. He wasn’t a liberal: he was a pastor.”

Paul Vallely has also written in the Church Times this week about Pope Francis, after news of his death on Easter Monday, aged 88. Read the article here.

Paul Vallely’s book, Untying the Knots: The struggle for the soul of Catholicism, is published by Bloomsbury. 

Click the play button above to listen to this podcast. You can also listen to the Church Times Podcast on the Church Times app for iPhone and iPad, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most other podcast platforms.