I watched the 15-minute video of the pope's introduction and first address. It was entirely in Italian, except that he gave the papal blessing in Latin. It was appropriate that he speak in Latin, since he is first the bishop of Rome and secondly the leader of the Catholic Church. My Italian isn't very good, but it did seem that his accent was quite good for an Argentinian. He made the people laugh three times during his presentation, and there was a real sweetness to the tone of the event - not a tone of authority. It would be nice to have a pope whose reign would be characterized by sweetness. That's how it should be, I think.

No, you're not going to get a pope who's gung-ho in his support of contraception, homosexuals, and abortion. The best I can hope for is somebody who's tolerant and compassionate, even though he may have ideological differences from what I'd like to see.

No doubt, this pope will be very strict in handling the child molestation problem. There is no longer any room for tolerance of any sort of sexual misconduct by priests. There should never have been any tolerance of such conduct.

-Joe-