The Yearly Benedict/Francis: The Audiences

benedict-francisThe pope’s weekly audiences offer a fascinating look at topics that often aren’t covered in the major papal documents.

Unfortunately, in recent years, the folks at the Vatican web site have not been giving titles to the audiences that indicate their content. All you get (normally) is a list of dates.

To help me navigate these in the future, here is an annotated version of Pope Francis’s 2013 audiences that indicates their content, as well as Pope Benedict’s final audiences.

Although these are found in reverse-chronological order on the Vatican web site (like a blog!), I’ve put them in chronological order here, since most of them form a walk though the Apostles’ Creed for the Year of Faith.

Incidentally, papal audiences like these seem to be pre-written, way in advance.

This means that Pope Francis was almost certainly delivering texts at his Wednesday audiences that were prepared for Pope Benedict.

He clearly took liberties with them. Many passages in Pope Francis’s audiences were expressed in his own voice, rather than Pope Benedict’s.

Now that the Year of Faith is concluded, we’re likely to get our first pure taste of Pope Francis’s style of audiences in 2014.

For now, here’s a review of 2013 . . .

 

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Francis

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."