FaithWorld

Pope Francis leads the weekly general audience in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican March 27, 2013. Holy Week is celebrated in many Christian traditions during the week before Easter. REUTERS/Tony Gentile

Francis of Assisi began his saintly career following what he said was God’s command: “Rebuild my Church.” The new pope who took his name heard the same message from the cardinals who elected him.

The 13th-century Francis toured the Italian countryside repairing dilapidated chapels before realising his mission was to change the whole Roman Catholic Church.

At 76, Pope Francis does not have as much time to get to work.

What the first Jesuit pope has is management experience in his native Argentina as head of the Jesuit province and chairman of the national bishops conference. As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he dealt with everything from poverty to national politics.

“He’s been at the top of the organisation, but he’s not been tamed by that,” says Rev James Hanvey, a Jesuit theologian. “In management speak, he’s held to the core values. He wants us all to refocus on the core values.”

Wat Bang Phra, Thailand

By Damir Sagolj

A devotee with a small zoo of animals tattooed on his body speeds toward the large statue of the Big Master, jumping over others and making unusual sounds and gestures. A volunteer standing in his way is big but fortunately very quick to stop the frantic run before a man crashes into the stage. A tattooed man bounces off the volunteer’s huge body, wakes-up from the trance and calmly goes back into the crowd. The air-bag volunteer turns to his colleagues and, as if nothing special is happening, comments in the ultra-cool manner of Bud Spencer (remember the Banana Joe movie?) “It is hot today. Very hot.”

And it’s hot indeed. It's the beginning of the Thai summer. Only a few hours after the sunrise, the temperature is over 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). It is also abnormally humid. However, people who came to Wat Bang Phra today don’t really care for such banal things as heat and humidity – they are here for a higher cause.

Every year, on a special day in March thousands of devotees from all around Thailand (some from abroad, too) travel for the Magic Tattoo festival to Nakhon Prathom province, just over an hour drive from Bangkok. The festival takes place at a temple well known for "magically charged" tattoos.

(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)

The festival of Holi is easy on the pocket. All one needs is a packet of gulaal (coloured powder), buckets of water, friends and family; and perhaps some music and alcohol.

Holi, the festival of colours, is celebrated to mark the beginning of spring and harvest season. In places associated with the Hindu god Krishna, Holi is traditionally played over several days with revellers flinging coloured powder and water at each other.

A police officer holds his weapon as he secures the train running between provinces of Pattani and Yala, in Thailand’s troubled deep south March 9, 2013. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Rusnee Maeloh slept through the 30-minute gunfight that killed her husband, but her neighbors in the notoriously violent Bacho district of southern Thailand heard distant explosions and feared the worst.

Mahrosu Jantarawadee, 31, was Rusnee’s childhood sweetheart, the father of their two children, and part of a secretive Islamic insurgency fighting a brutal nine-year war with the Thai government that has killed more than 5,300 people.

People and officials attend funeral prayers for a senior pro-Syrian government Muslim cleric Mohammed al-Buti and his grandson Ahmad al-Buti, killed in a mosque explosion on Thursday, at Umayyad Mosque in Damascus March 23, 2013. REUTERS/Khaled al-Hariri

Syrian dignitaries have buried a divisive pro-government cleric at the capital’s ancient Ummayyad Mosque, choosing a site near the famous Muslim warrior Saladin and sparking outrage among Syrian opposition activists.

Mohammed al-Buti, the government-appointed imam of the ancient Ummayyed Mosque, died in a bomb attack last Thursday night on a neighborhood mosque that also killed at least 49 others.

Soldiers work to clean debris in Meikhtila March 24, 2013.
REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

Myanmar’s government is struggling to contain anti-Muslim violence that touched the outskirts of the capital, Naypyitaw, at the weekend and forced it to send troops to patrol the streets in the town where the recent trouble started.

Four houses and a small mosque in Tatkon township on the northern edges of Naypyitaw were set ablaze late on Sunday, a civil servant in the capital told Reuters on Monday.

Communal tension, stifled under half a century of army rule, has resurfaced since President Thein Sein’s reformist government took office in 2011.

Demonstrators shout on the Champs Elysees Avenue during a protest march over France’s planned legalisation of same-sex marriage, in Paris, March 24, 2013. REUTERS/Mal Langsdon

Hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets of central Paris on Sunday to protest against President Francois Hollande’s plan to legalise gay marriage and adoption by June.

Television footage showed some scuffles breaking out, with security forces firing tear gas on pink-clad marchers waving flags and chanting slogans against Hollande. In France, anti-gay protesters often wear pink.

Supporters of gay marriage rally outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco, California January 11, 2010. ntiffs hope to take all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and overturn bans throughout the nation. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

On a frosty December night last year, about two dozen guests slipped into the Alta Club, a century-old private retreat a block away from the temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that dominates Salt Lake City.

Two men, who didn’t know each other, were the reason for the dinner: church lobbyist Bill Evans and gay rights leader Rick Jacobs. Evans was a point man for the church’s successful effort to pass California’s gay marriage ban, known as Prop 8, in 2008. Jacobs, leader of Courage Campaign, produced a 2008 commercial against the ban showing Mormon missionaries ransacking the home of a lesbian couple.

By Maria Caspani

A veiled woman hails a cab late at night on a deserted road in Casablanca, Morocco. As the taxi takes off, the driver asks her what on earth she is doing out alone at such a late hour.

“I was working,” the woman responds as the disconcerted driver asks her whether her husband approves. “I’m divorced,” she says.

For a woman in Morocco, there are few situations that are worse than that of Khadija, the protagonist of “Camera/Woman”, a documentary about a divorced woman working as a camera operator who faces strong discrimination in her community and, ultimately, becomes estranged from her family.

(Combination picture shows Pope Francis (L) with his pectoral cross made of steel, waving as he arrives in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on March 16, 2013, and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI (R), wearing a golden cross as he greets the crowd outside his residence in the Vatican on April 21, 2005. REUTERS/Max Rossi/Kai Pfaffenbach)

With every day Pope Francis reigns, his style reveals more contrasts with his predecessor Benedict in ways that amount to an unspoken criticism of how the retired pontiff conducted his papacy.

The enthusiasm former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio has sparked among Catholics by approaching the job like a parish priest rather than a papal monarch points to a yearning for a leader the Church has not seen since the charismatic Pope John Paul II.