The Pope's Revolution Panorama

Tomorrow Pope Francis meets the Queen at the Vatican.

One year on, he's confronting the financial and sexual scandals his

predecessor couldn't cope with. The Church was considered a sort of

global culprit for all these scandals.

The Pope's making enemies amongst the rich and the powerful. But

Francis is putting the poor at the heart of his mission.

The Pope clearly says to us do keep a special eye on the poor. This is

just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope. So can this Pope

bring a Revolution to the Catholic Church where others have failed?

But he's aware of the dangers? Yes, yes.

They call it the Francis effect. The Pope who's greeted like a rock star

whenever he appears. Tens of thousands of people pack St Peter's

Square in Rome at his weekly audience to catch a glimpse of him.

Francis is bringing disillusioned Catholics back to the church with

his common touch and his hard hitting words.

There's no doubt about the Pope's popularity. But who is Francis

really? And are the changes he's bringing to the Church for real, or

is it just style not substance? Above all, can Francis really

satisfy the enormous expectations that he's raised? He's becoming the

moral voice of the world. So people are listening to him. That's what

the religious leaders are supposed to be.

But in becoming the moral voice within the Church, Francis is

meeting resistence, making enemies. What we perceive is that the

honeymoon of the Pope is going to finish and in a short time we might

have those silent resistences coming out more loudly.

In his speeches the Pope's been spelling out why the Church needs a

revolution. A year ago the shock resignation of

the old Pope Benedict exposed the parlous state of the Catholic

Church. Benedict admitted he didn't have the stamina to carry on.

Scandals were rocking the Church. Corruption, sex abuse of children,

gay intrigues. Some of it even leaked by his own butler.

When the Cardinals met in conclave to choose a new leader they knew the

next Pope had to save the Church. One year ago the Church was

considered sort of a global culprit for these scandals.

Massimo Franco is one of Italy's foremost political commentators an

expert on the Vatican. The Church had arrived to such a

miserable condition that it had to behave as it did and the conclave

was a great surprise, a happy surprise.

When Francis was elected he stepped into the limelight not with the

usual formal words, but a simple Italian greeting.

Buena serra. And with that the first Latin

American Pope began to transform the style of the papacy.

The stuffy formality has gone out of the window. Pope Francis doesn't use

the Papal limousine. And he won't wear the special red Papal slippers.

The Pope tends to ring people up out of the blue. He left a jokey message

when some nuns weren't at home. The Pope's not a superman, he told a

paper. But he loves football and having his photo taken with his

fans. Francis has become a global phenomenon, with his Pope app and 17

million followers on Twitter. His wish is to show the world that

to be a Pope you are a leader, but at the same time you are one of

them. And this is his philosophy, this was and this is, and this will

continue being his philosophy of life.

An Argentinian priest who knew him back home experienced the Pope's

extraordinary personal touch in St Peter's Square.

He said, what are you doing here? What are we doing here! He was

laughing. He gestured for me to get in. The first thing I thought was,

nobody's going to believe this! I was struck by the Pope's serenity,

the way he looks at people. He's seeing each individual person.

Putting the individual back at the heart of the Church is what Francis

has been doing for years where he came from. The Pope is from one of

Latin America's great cities, Buenos Aires in Argentina. He was born

Jorge Bergoglio into a family of working class Italian immigrants.

Jorge was one of five children. This is his sister Maria Elena in a rare

interview filmed at home. TRANSLATION: Ever since I can

remember, he's always been very present in our lives. He's always

been very warm, and protective. In the Milonga clubs at night they

still dance the tango. Just as the young Bergoglio did with his

girlfriend. Until one day during confession he experienced a powerful

urge to dedicate his life to God. TRANSLATION: Our father was happy

with Jorge's decision to become a priest. It was a little harder for

our mother. He was her son and he was leaving. But she was happy. Mum

lived to see him ordained. Dad didn't, he died very young.

Jorge Bergoglio quickly became head of the Jesuits, then Archbishop of

the great Metropolitan cathedral in the Plaza de Mayo. But he never

forgot his humble origins. He always used the subway, not a

chauffeur. For 20 years Archbishop Bergoglio

came to this barber shop off the square to catch up on the gossip and

the football scores. He bought his paper from the stand on the corner.

Until the vendor got a call from Rome. It was the Pope, cancelling

his subscription. One of the Pope's closest friends in

Buenos Aires is a rabbi. They wrote a book together on religion.

He is a leader, a natural leader who knows how to combine humbleness and

leadership to be very close to the people. It's in the vilas here, the

slums, you see the social deprivation the Pope wants the

Church to focus on. In doing so he's pushing into controversial political

territory. Pope Francis has said the Church must be a field hospital,

treating the wounded. He's saying that based on his experiences of the

slums here. He's putting the poor at the heart of his mission to change

the Catholic Church. It's Sunday morning and Father Juan

Isasmendi is celebrating Holy Communion. Archbishop Bergoglio

ordained him and asked him to dedicate his life to the poor.

TRANSLATION: He made us certain that only by practising our pastoral

ministry as if we were missionaries and getting close to people would

Christ's message flower in their hearts.

As Archbishop, Bergoglio doubled the number of priests in the slums. They

deal with poverty, violence and drugs. Everyone here knows Father

Juan. Father Juan showed me the football

stadium of San Lorenzo. It's the team the Pope supports, but it lies

alongside streets which are no-go areas. The effects of "paco" - a

cocaine-based drug - can be seen everywhere. The church provides a

safety net for the street people, the addicts and the prostitutes.

They feed 120 of the poorest people every day at the church, help them

find jobs. Nahwel was abandoned on the street

as a baby. He's still homeless but the Church has been a lifeline for

him. To him the Pope isn't just a remote figure in Rome.

TRANSLATION: He does many things no other Pope did before. He is great,

a good guy. When I listen to him speak I say, "This man is big, he's

cool". Yeah, he's a genius. Francis is still the champion of the

poor. But now in the grandeur of the Vatican. When the Pope appointed his

first Cardinals he made it clear he was shifting power in the Church,

away from Europe to the developing world. Benedict appeared in public

for the first time since his resignation. People saw it as a sign

he backed Francis in tackling the Curia - the Church's governing body.

This Pope doesn't want to be led by the Curia, the other one was a

prisoner of the Curia. The Pope must change radically the Curia. If he

doesn't change radically the Curia, he can be popular, he can succeed at

world level, but he will not actually change the Church.

The Curia has been dominated by Italians for hundreds of years. But

most of Francis new cardinals were from Asia and Africa.

Vincent Nichols of Westminster was one of the exceptions.

I think he wants a college of cardinals that reflects the

distribution of Catholics around the world. I think he wants a college of

cardinals of people who live with and work alongside the poor. And I

think he wants leaders from the great big cities of the world like

Buenos Aires, Rio and Seoul and London.

Three quarters of the world 1.2 billion Catholics live in Latin

America, Asia and Africa. What do you think of Pope Francis?

Nice. More than half the Cardinals are

from Europe, most from Italy. Now they're losing ground as Francis

gathers new advisors around him. The Italians have done a marvellous

job so far in being able to help the Holy Father, to take decisions. But

now's the time for professionalism, now that today the world is moving

so fast, changing so fast. He's answering the needs of the times.

Oswald Gracias is from India. He is one of the so-called C8, eight

Cardinals from the four corners of the world. They are the new power in

the Vatican. And that is threatening the old guard.

His critics are not usually open critics, they are people of the old

Curia who say he is going too far with reforms .They are telling that

he is a prisoner of a sort of Gorbachev syndrome. He is reforming

too much and too much in depth, so that he risks to destroy the Church.

Every change is difficult. Every change has resistance. Every change

makes people uncomfortable, but change is inevitable, and it's

always important to make change before you're forced to make the

change. It's not just within the Church that

Francis is stirring things up. His new Cardinal Vincent Nichols

received congratulations from a visitor once at the heart of British

politics. But just days before, he had upset

David Cameron. Taking his cue from Francis, the Cardinal criticised

welfare cuts for removing the safety net for the poor.

The Pope clearly says to us, do keep a special eye on the poor, and what

I was saying was what I'd been told by the priests who work on the

ground, people who are there alongside the poor. Now, the causes

of poverty are very complex, but nevertheless, there's something

wrong when people are just left. And I think the Holy Father would

understand that and echo that directly himself.

In his keynote exhortation to the faithful, Francis launched a

blistering assault on the whole capitalist system.

This is pretty strong stuff. The Pope attacks what he calls the

'economy of exclusion', which deadens us, he says, 'to the misery

of the poor'. He is scathing about the current 'idolatry of money'.

Condemning debt, corruption and tax evasion. The Pope's words have

infuriated Conservatives. Particularly in the US. The

Republican Party's favourite radio 'shock jock' attacked Francis.

The Pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here and this is just

pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.

But Francis keeps on highlighting the world's most intractable social

problems. His first trip was to Lampedusa, the

Italian island where desperate migrants from Africa wash up. Many

drown on the way, victims of people trafficking.

The Church can't close her eyes or be insensitive to the sufferings of

people. That is not the Church which Jesus wants.

Pope Francis is reminding us of this. You are not just there to

correct people. You are there to help people. That is what you have

got to do. The Pope also wants to get to grips

with the most difficult international conflicts. One of his

first acts was to wash the feet of young offenders. Including,

controversially, two Muslim women. Both of us believe that dialogue is

the key to avoid conflicts. His Jewish friend is going with

Francis to the Middle East next month to try and bring warring

faiths together. How does Pope Francis think he can

achieve anything in the Middle East? It's so difficult. What is he able

to do? Special prayers, special moments of

spirituality, this is the diplomacy of the Pope. The idea is to feel

some deep sentiment of friendship to both of the sides.

Before solving the world's problems, the Pope must tackle the Vatican.

This city state within a state is used to running its own affairs. It

has its own diplomats, financial institutions, its Swiss Guard. This

was once the Renaissance court of the Borgias. The scene of plots and

murder. But Francis has refused to play the King.

In a clear break with tradition, Francis has chosen to live in Santa

Marta, a modest guest house. Not alone in the Papal apartment.

TRANSLATION: When the Pope says he lives here for

psychiatric reasons, he means for his sanity.

He is surrounded by more ordinary people, not isolated in a Papal

apartment under the influence of the Vatican's courtiers.

How Francis lives is a rebuke to the whole Vatican edifice of status and

power. He wants to say to all the Cardinals

and Bishops who fight to get all the best flats in the Vatican, listen,

times have changed. And this is a big challenge because I think in the

Vatican, his choice has been very much disputed,. And is still

disputed, although silently. The Pope invited his old friend from

Buenos Aires to lunch in the guesthouse.

He is surrounded in Santa Marta by very faithful, trustful people.

Has he talked to you about the difficulties he faces in Rome?

Of course, he is aware on that. Yes, he knows exactly what the problems

are. Francis has demoted some of his

predecessor's most powerful officials.

The new Pope keeps his own diary, makes his own phone calls. And he

has an authoritarian streak. He is a man who knows very well what

being a Pope means, so he is a man who knows what power is. He is a man

with sometimes a short temper. He gets angry if somebody doesn't do

what he has decided must be done. Francis quickly decided something

must be done to end the financial scandals which have tainted the

Curia. This medieval-looking tower is the

Institute for Religious Works. The so-called Vatican Bank. For years,

it was used as a conduit for dirty money, even involving criminal

organisations like the Mafia. Nello Rossi, an Italian Prosecutor

who has tried Mafia cases, has investigated the Vatican Bank.

TRANSLATION: The Vatican City State is an enclave within the Italian

state, therefore any financial institutions operating in it have no

boundaries. There are no financial controls.

For a long time, extreme secrecy prevailed and a lack of

co-operation. The Bank was established to give the

Church financial sovereignty, but some accounts were misused.

Some people were able to use the Vatican Bank for money-laundering

purposes. It was like wading across a river without leaving a trace.

They could send money into a secret account there and get it back

through another bank. When international financial

regulations were tightened up, the Vatican Bank was seen as toxic. In

2010, the police began to investigate. Italy's main banks

stopped dealing with the Vatican Bank. The last Pope, Benedict, tried

to clean it up, but was thwarted by powerful insiders in the Vatican.

Were there strong people within the Vatican perhaps who did not want

those reforms to succeed? TRANSLATION: I can't say anything

about this, but the bureaucratic structure, old habits and old ways

of operating surely represented a resistance, as far as I could see

from the outside. But after Francis arrived, he

increased co-operation with the authorities.

After a two-year investigation, a senior Vatican official was

arrested. Monsignor Scarano was charged with money laundering and

corruption. It is extraordinary that he could go

to the Vatican Bank and withdraw 600,000 Euros. As he admitted

himself, go out easily and come back to Italy without any checks.

Scarano lived in this extravagant 17-room apartment. All paid for,

allegedly, when he used false donations to move money from

offshore to the Vatican. He denies the charges.

Pope Francis has set up a new system directly challenging the old Curia.

Now Cardinals from different parts of the world and professional

advisors will manage the Church's finances.

The former Director-General of the Bank and his Deputy are awaiting

trial for violating money laundering laws. The Pope has even acknowledged

the Vatican Bank might have to be closed down. But whatever happens

from now on, he says the Church's finances must be based on

transparency and honesty. We can perceive very well there are

tensions. Tensions with the powers that are

within the Vatican and have been there historically for a long time?

Yes, there are very much tensions with all the powers which covered

the dirty manoeuvres of the Bank for years.

In Rome, the Pope is taking on powerful forces. But he too has been

under pressure for what he did back home many years ago.

Argentina is still scarred by the 'Dirty War' of the '70s, when the

Pope, then Jorge Bergoglio, was a rising star in the Catholic Church.

A right-wing military dictatorship ruled and thousands of young people

regarded as left-wing radicals disappeared. Many were tortured and

killed. Among them were some priests sympathetic to the class struggle.

But many in the Church hierarchy collaborated with the military.

It was a very, very terrible time. A dark time, a time of darkness.

Jorge Bergoglio was head of the Jesuits. He demanded his priests

stop working in a slum. It was risky politically. They refused.

A writer on a left-wing paper here accused the Pope of being complicit

in the arrest and torture of two priests. One has since died and the

other refutes the claims. The Pope himself has strongly denied the

accusation, saying he did what he could to save the priests.

A friend of the Pope's says she owes her life to him. Alicia Oliviera was

a lawyer, forced into hiding during the Dirty War.

Jorge Bergoglio used to drive her secretly in his car to see her young

son at school. TRANSLATION: He took a great risk because at the time,

Jorge was being followed and he was under surveillance.

It was also risky for me because they were looking for me. So we were

both in great danger. Alicia took me to the Jesuit school

where Bergoglio brought her so long ago. All this has been stirred up

since he became Pope. I'd say that Bergoglio's critics are

very vocal these days, they weren't quite so vocal at that time, because

no-one said anything, there were very few of us who dared speak out.

Jorge Bergoglio helped many people. Could he have done more?

I don't know. He did what he could. He did a lot. Maybe he could have

done more, but I'm very grateful for the huge amount he did.

He said, of course, that maybe we had to do much more in order to save

people, but when you are living in the middle of the drama, you do what

you can. Deciphering just what he did in

Argentina has become important to understand where the Pope is coming

from. Is he on the left or the right? And what does that means for

the Church? Those who know the Pope here say he's a more subtle figure,

not easily categorised. TRANSLATION: I think we're making a

mistake if we place him in a specific political category, because

he views reality according to the Gospels. I don't think those

parameters exist in his heart. I think he's a profoundly traditional,

but not at all conservative man. Frances has neatly sidestepped one

issue which has tripped up the Church many times - the gay issue.

The hypocrisy, as many see it, of condemning homosexual acts as a sin

while rumours of a gay lobby in the Vatican persist.

Francis gave a remarkable press conference in a plane soon after

becoming Pope. He made it clear when it came to sexuality it was the

individual that counted, not Church dogma.

It was perhaps surprising, given the position he took publicly as

Archbishop Bergoglio four years ago. When the Argentine government

legalised gay marriage he and the Church opposed it. A theologian and

gay rights activist, Marcello Marquez, wrote to Bergoglio to

protest. The Archbishop immediately rang him.

TRANSLATION: So he tells me he mostly agrees with my opinion. He

said he thinks Argentina is not ready for a same-sex marriage law,

but it is ready for people of sexual diversity to have rights. However he

was in favour of a civil partnership law, that's what he said to me.

So privately Bergoglio was more flexible and more liberal than his

public stance suggested. TRANSLATION: I think these gestures

and these symbols he's showed throughout this first year, reveal

that he is a strategist in evangelical terms and also political

terms. Gestures and symbols may not be

enough when it comes to tackling the biggest problem of all. The Pope has

acknowledged the sexual abuse of children by priests has stained the

Church's reputation and cost it millions in compensation.

TRANSLATION: But the sex abuse scandal is now about action not

words. And evidence from Argentina suggests the Pope's not always

tackled this problem head on. Sebastian Cuattromo was one of

thousands of children worldwide sexually abused by priests. It

happened at the Marianista college in Buenos Aires.

TRANSLATION: It was here I suffered sexual abuse. By the priests. You

were quite small at the time. 13? Yes, 13. Sebastian was brutally

abused for years by Father Picciochi, a teacher at the school.

TRANSLATION: I was really scared and kept silent, unfortunately. There

was a lot of abuse, violence and misuse of power. The priest was

eventually prosecuted and jailed. Sebastian won a legal battle to get

the school to accept responsibility. But they insisted he should keep

silent about it. Sebastian wasn't happy and took the issue to

Bergoglio's office. But he says the Church backed the school on the

confidentiality issue. TRANSLATION: My experience with the

then Cardinal Bergoglio as head of the Church in this city was very

bad, very negative. I had to face a position where they did not

acknowledge the seriousness of a crime such as the sexual abuse of

minors. They minimized and underestimated the scale of the

problem. We contacted the Archdiocese in

Buenos Aires but no one was available to speak to us about

Sebastian's case. In Rome Francis has set up a

commission on sexual abuse in the Church and his advisors insist

there's a new tough line. Zero tolerance is really the key

word of the policy. Certainly, whoever's made any mistake has got

to answer the law of the land, has got to be penalised. But now we also

have got to look ahead and make sure it doesn't happen again and also

make sure there are policies for child protection.

But campaigners say Francis's new Commission is just a talking shop.

The Church is still failing to get to grips with this scandal.

There has been for a long time a mentality, a culture of the secret

which prevented the church to confront this in the right way this

huge problem. So that the Church still now is subject to attacks by

people who say it is not doing enough.

Frances wants to move forward now. He's getting the Church to consult

Catholics everywhere on how to bring the teachings on the family into

line with modern life. Abortion, birth control and the rights of

divorcees to receive the sacraments. These are thorny issues.

For Pope Francis the real hard challenges are still to come. The

faithful love him, but he has yet to prove he can bring about lasting

change in the Catholic church. He is a very stubborn person. And he

will continue working and fighting very carefully through very clever

ways, intelligent ways. Francis may have sidelined some of

the church's most powerful officials. But they're still lurking

in the corridors of the Vatican. Yes, there are enemies. They have

gone underground because now he's very popular, but I'm sure that if

there are problems they will mushroom. They will come to the

surface and will point a blaming finger towards Francis.

There's a precedent for what could happen if Francis fails in his

Revolution. His predecessor resigned, worn out by the cares of

Papal office. If he doesn't succeed in bringing

about change, will he resign, do you think? What will he do? No, he's a

fighter, he's a fighter. He will not resign.

The Pope is still regularly in touch with his old friends back home.

They're all aware of the history of Papal Rome, the intrigues and

machinations, the mysterious end some papacies have come to.

TRANSLATION: I believe he has strong enemies in the Vatican, cardinals.

There's a lot of power, a lot of money. In fact, I tell him clearly.

I say, be careful, the Borgias are still there. But he's aware of the

dangers? Yes. Yes. But at the same time he believes that God will help

him. Pope Frances has millions of the

faithful urging him on. But the Church bureaucracy has hundreds of

years of experience in protecting its interests. The battle is far

from over.