Read an excerpt from BASEBALL AS A ROAD TO GOD: SEEING BEYOND THE GAME by John Sexton

BOB FAW, correspondent: New York University president John Sexton oversees more than 40 thousand students and a $2.5 billion budget. He’s expanding the university at home and abroad while contending with some faculty members who oppose his high-powered management style.

JOHN SEXTON (President, NYU): (speaking to students) We’re going to do just a little bit of a wrap up.

FAW: And yet, like few university presidents, Sexton also finds time to teach four classes. He is famous for greeting his students and anyone else, for that matter, with a hearty hug, and demanding nothing less than their absolute best.

SEXTON: (speaking to students) Eugene O’Neill famously said he who stops at mere success and does not press on to glorious failure is a spiritual middle-classer. I don’t want you stopping at the easy. None of you.

FAW: Now the former law school dean and distinguished legal scholar has written a most unusual book: “Baseball as a Road to God.” That’s right, baseball.

SEXTON: The similarities between baseball and religion abound. The ballpark as cathedral; saints and sinners; the curses and blessings. But then what I’m arguing is beyond that surface level, there’s a fundamental similarity between baseball and religion which goes to the capacity of baseball to cause human beings, in a context they don’t think of as religious, to break the plane of ordinary existence into the plane of extraordinary existence.

FAW: John Sexton says that what happens here is more than just a game—that it reveals a dimension beyond the eyes and mind letting us, in his words, “see through to another, sacred space”—what John Sexton calls “the ineffable.”

SEXTON: “Ineffable” is the word we use for things we can’t capture in our language. The ineffable is the character of this religious dimension, sometimes labeled God. We’re talking about this place where the depth of being is.

FAW: And baseball can be an avenue to that?

SEXTON: Baseball is an avenue to that in the sense that there is this dimension that we experience in baseball of that which can’t be put into words.

FAW: In baseball, as in religion, says Sexton, the seemingly impossible is part of the game:

In 1956, when hard-drinking journeyman pitcher Don Larsen went from sinner to saint by hurling the only perfect game in World Series history; when Willie Mays made that seemingly impossible catch and throw in the 1954 World Series; and in 1955, when Sexton’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, after decades of coming oh-so-close, won their first and only World Series with an extraordinary catch made by Sandy Amaros. Those moments in baseball, like religion, says John Sexton, give a glimpse of something beyond.

SEXTON: The beauty and the experience in the intensified heightened sensitivity of the moment that comes with the Amaros catch, that comes with the Mays catch and pivot. The ecstasy of those moments can for some transport one to this transcendent plane.

FAW: The excellence of Brooklyn Dodger great Jackie Robinson, now celebrated in a major motion picture “42,” sparked Sexton’s infatuation with baseball. Now he’s had Robinson’s number 42 sewn into his academic gown, and in his old office there’s one of Robinson’s original jerseys and a battered glove Jackie Robinson might have used, although true-believer Sexton isn’t about to check to see if Robinson actually did.

SEXTON: I chose to live in ignorance. This was the equivalent of saying, “Don’t tell me that the world’s not flat,” because I would rather… my stories, my feelings are much more comfortable in this world of heaven above, earth in the middle, flat as it is, and hell below.

FAW: You gotta believe?

SEXTON: Yeah, you gotta. There’s faith, and there’s ignorance, and in this case I chose ignorance.

FAW: Sexton says he chooses baseball over other sports because, like religion, it has its own sacred relics, prophets, and rituals. And like religion there is a kind of timelessness.

SEXTON: (reading from book) Baseball encourages, almost requires in its most meaningful moments, an appreciation of living slowly and in the moment—the kind of differentiated experience that separates the sacred in life from the profane. This experience is where religion begins.

FAW: It’s an insight, and an avenue to religion, which he imparts every week to a small class of undergraduates.

SEXTON (speaking to students): This is the essence of this religious experience, the phenomena that we are going to study.

FAW: Initially, some of the students, most of them juniors, were skeptical that baseball was the avenue to anything.

JAKE HANSEN (Student, NYU): To be completely honest, when I read the title of the course I thought, well, this sounds a little hokey, but, you know, I took one course with him. It was great. I’ll give this one a shot, but, you know, he really does make his argument well.

FAW: The students are personally approved by Sexton. They are assigned a long list of books and essays, some about religion, some about baseball.

SCOTT COHEN (Student, NYU): I feel I have a more open mind as to what religion can be. I no longer see it as something that needs a deity. It can be something that helps someone better themselves, something that gives them a reason to be moral or ethical.

HANSEN: He uses baseball as an example, but a point he’s been hitting again and again is that baseball is just one possible road to God. The fact that it’s not academic and not typically thought of as religious is what makes the point so effective, is that there is a way to find God and the ineffable, you know, the divine, in everyday life, and it can really be anything that takes you there.

FAW: What this devout Catholic is trying to do here is fuse lessons from the diamond to the underpinnings of faith.

SEXTON: The objective of the class was to get students to think about religion differently. So by using the study of religion and getting them to see it in the context of baseball caused them to go back to their thinking about religion in a different way, that maybe made it less dependent on dogma and more liturgical. Leading some of the students to the fact that they touched the transcendent plane in ways they hadn’t before, or at least understood it was possible to do it in unexpected places.

FAW: When he’s not running a major university, this is what John Sexton teaches: that this quintessential American game, just like Van Gogh or Beethoven, can sometimes give a glimpse of what matters most.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Bob Faw in New York.

DR. JOSEPH DUTKOWSKY (Orthopedic Surgeon): This is a young person who has a genetic missing piece of I think genetic 6 chromosome.

BOB FAW, correspondent: In a busy clinic in rural upstate New York, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Joseph Dutkowsky sees hundreds of children and adults disabled by disorders which leave them crippled or deformed. Or in the case of 19 year old Omer King Jr., blind and deaf from a metabolic dysfunction.

DUTKOWSKY: (speaking to patient) And we are going to pull. One, two, three.

FAW: As a doctor, everything Dutkowsky does is informed by his deep Catholic faith.

DUTKOWSKY: (speaking to nurse) Let’s get Jr. out here.

Was it St. Francis who said, “To preach the Gospel at all times, use words if necessary.” And so, you do it with your actions. People don’t need for me to preach at them. People don’t need for me to lecture them. They need, they need for me to care. They need for me to walk in with the love of God and to try and share it in any way that I can.

FAW: Whether treating Jr. or two married cerebral palsy patients, Josie and Chris Rosa.

DUTKOWSKY: (to Chris Rosa) You look like you should be bringing in an aircraft with that on it or something.

(to Josie Rosa): What you up to? You’re looking well today.

JOSIE ROSA: Yeah. We got to talk.

DUTKOWSKY: We got to talk. We can talk. That’s for sure.

FAW: Dr. Dutkowsky is unfailingly patient, willing to listen no matter how long it takes.

JOSIE: I know this might sound strange but can you test me for osteoarthritis?

DUTKOWSKY: (to Josie) Yeah. I’m happy to do that.

Patients like this, they need me to listen to them. They need somebody who cares enough to listen to their story, because they all have a story, they all have a need.

FAW: 57 year old Dutkowsky was an engineer when he says he got the calling to become a doctor.

DUTKOWSKY: I applied to medical school and I wrote my essay. I wrote that I wanted to take some of this technology and figure out a way to help people with disabilities. Now there’s nobody disabled in my family. There was nobody that I knew of who had a disability that I was thinking about when I did it. So I, I would take that as a Holy Spirit moment.

(to Jeremiah): Run, run, run back.

FAW: Most days here, Dutkowsky sees 25 to 30 patients like 8 year old Jeremiah Harrington, born with a club foot. For each patient, Dutkowsky uses an old-fashioned, leisurely approach rarely encountered in modern medical practice today.

DUTKOWSKY: (to Jeremiah) Can I look at your feet? Can I look at your feet? Thank you.

From a spiritual standpoint what I try and do as a physician is that even if I can’t cure the situation, even if I can’t cure the condition, if even I can’t make it all go away, if they’re being overburdened with that cross, if I can just hold up a corner sometimes, it might make it light enough for them to be able to carry it and move on.

FAW: Here in the country, he does more than just listen, give injections and comfort to anxious parents. Every Monday at the Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, he operates on severely disabled children and before each surgery, he prays.

DUTKOWSKY: It’s an overwhelming responsibility. And if I try and go in there on my own I run so many risks of failure. But if I come in and I and ask God to be with me and help me, that even in those cases where it might not work out perfectly, I’m with him and I can be in peace.

(while driving): I was born and raised in the country. I love being out here.

FAW: Dutkowsky isn’t anchored to the country though. Every week, crucifix nearby, he drives into New York City to see patients, three hours plus on the road often spent in prayer.

DUTKOWSKY: It’s a prayer to the Holy Spirit. It’s “Holy Spirit, soul of my soul, I adore thee. Enlighten, guide, strengthen and console me. Tell me what to do and command me to do it.”

FAW: Here, anywhere for that matter, Joseph Dutkowsky is not reluctant to display his faith.

DUTKOWSKY: Good morning, good day. Hello, God bless you. How you doing?

EMILY: Good.

FAW: But he never imposes his beliefs on anyone.

DUTKOWSKY: I’m not out there to tell them what to believe. But if I make that opening, and it’s important to them, then it can be part of their care.

FAW: It is a ministry he takes each week to New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital where at the Cerebral Palsy Center he sees patients like 10 year old Devon Ramsaram.

HARICHARD RAMSARAM (Devon’s father): After this shot, can we send him to school tomorrow?

FAW: Dutkowsky hopes the medical community will learn, from treatments pioneered here, how to treat cerebral palsy patients not just when they’re young but also as they grow older.

DUTKOWSKY: Country doctor, coming down to wonderful, you know, one of the finest medical centers in the world. I was way out of my comfort zone. But what’s the risk? If I fail, yeah, I got a little egg on my face. Big deal. But if we succeed, we can move the world.

JENNIFER SNYDER: (to Dr. Dutkowsky) He can’t get comfortable.

FAW: Two year old Nathan has a rare congenital disorder. His mother Jennifer feels about the same as most parents do when it comes to Dr. D as he is affectionately called.

SNYDER: He listens, yes. He’s a listener. He understands. He takes the time to educate a person such as myself.

CHRIS ROSA: A lot of doctors don’t listen. They just want to do what they gotta do for you and go away. Just because we may look funny doesn’t mean you should talk over us or through us.

FAW: It’s not like that with Dr. D though is it.

JOSIE ROSA: No, No. Because Dr. Dutkowsky would never treat us any different. He treats us with respect and decency.

FAW: And knowing that Dutkowsky is a man of faith reassures many, even non-Christians like Devon’s father Harichard Ramsaram.

HARICHARD RAMSARAM: Well it does, it does make me feel comfortable because it means that he has some sense of responsibility in what he does. You know what I’m saying? Because whoever believes in God does have a sense of caring, guidance. You know what I’m saying?

FAW: Treating so many young disabled patients might shake a person’s faith in a merciful God.

(to Dr. Dutkowsky): Do ever ask yourself why did God let that happen?

DUTKOWSKY: No, I don’t, because what I see when I see Omer, I go in that room and I feel love. It’s an energy from outside that draws me in.

FAW: There are bodies that are, forgive me, misshapen, malformed, twisted, crippled, and you see in that the likeness of God?

DUTKOWSKY: Yes, I do. I see the image and likeness of God in every one of those individuals.

FAW: For Dr. Dutkowsky then, faith and medicine intersect, complement one another. Seeing affliction, he also finds something meaningful.

DUTKOWSKY: There are days I go home with tears in my eyes because suffering is real. But sharing suffering is a gift. The depth of that love, the depth of that commitment, the depth of working with individuals like that, that’s the privilege.

FAW: Dutkowsky says he doesn’t heal, that only God can do that. In the meantime, this old-fashioned man of faith and modern man of science continues a ministry to both body and soul.

DUTKOWSKY: All right, God love you.

FAW: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Bob Faw in Delphi, New York.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Now we have a conversation with Jim Wallis about his new book. It is called “On God’s Side,” and it’s an appeal to overcome the country’s problems by serving the common good. Wallis is a religious activist, preacher, and editor of Sojourners magazine. He joins us from New York. And our managing editor, Kim Lawton, is here with me in the studio. Jim, welcome.

JIM WALLIS (Sojourners): Welcome, Bob. Thank you.

ABERNETHY: What is your definition of the common good?

WALLIS: You know, people are asking me what the common good is and what it means to be on God’s side, and neither has certain answers, but I think they’re the right questions. Let me give you my favorite from the book. This is from Catholic social teaching. I’ll read it right from them: “The common good is the whole network of social conditions which enable humans and groups to flourish. All are responsible for all.” So I was taking a sabbatical to write this book and watching the news at night and saw we had forgot this idea of the common good, and yet that’s what our traditions tell us.

ABERNETHY: Jim, who says what the common good is?

WALLIS: Well, the common good is found in all of our faith traditions—definitions like the Catholic one there, the black churches. I found it back to John Chrysostom in the fourth century. So it’s deeply in all our traditions, and the moral foundation of it is to love your neighbor as yourself. Now, in secular democratic traditions, it’s also there in the Golden Rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. So it’s a fundamental principle of how you treat your neighbor, and then who your neighbor is.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: Jim, one thing I’ve noticed is that different people will say they have different ways of reaching the common good. So, for example, in some of the budget debates that I know you were involved in, you had some people saying the common good is served this way, and other people still using that language but coming up with a very different policy position. How do you reconcile that?

WALLIS: Mike Gerson, who’s a Washington Post columnist and was a George Bush speech writer, has a comment on the book. He says, “Jim and I might disagree on some policy decisions, but his call for an active consideration of the common good is more timely and urgent than ever.” I’m saying let’s have that debate. On the principle of the budget that you raise, the principle from all our traditions is you have to protect the poor and vulnerable, so you can’t reduce a deficit by increasing poverty. People on both sides could make that pledge, and then we could find a way to reform the public sector and the private sector in ways that protect the poor and vulnerable.

ABERNETHY: Jim, within many of the churches there has been a kind of a split between those who emphasize salvation and, on the other hand, those who emphasize trying to build the kingdom on Earth now. Where are you on this? On both sides?

WALLIS: Well, I’m an evangelical, which means I want to take what the Bible says seriously. And then you look at the early chapters of Matthew, you see a kingdom breaking in that’s supposed to change the world and us with it. So in the book I’ve got a long conversation about your question. It says the kind of Jesus we believe in will determine the kind of Christians we’re going to be. So I’m critical of what I call the atonement-only Gospel, where there’s no kingdom, there’s no teaching, there’s no change of anything but ourselves. That’s not what the scriptures teach, but that’s certainly in the church I grew up in. So a balanced—the change as individuals, I want to be changed in my life, but also we’re supposed to change the world. Jesus came to change the world and us with it.

LAWTON: And Jim, along those lines, in your book you do talk a lot about that the common good is served not just through policies and politics, but also in individual decisions people make in their families, their lives. How does that—how does how I live my life, in my personal life, affect the common good?

WALLIS: I’m so glad you asked that question, because a lot of people say I can’t change Washington or Wall Street. I’m saying the choices we make about how we treat our neighbors, those around us, our poor neighbors, those we may have to reach out to, our immigrant neighbors, our Muslim neighbors, our gay neighbors—those choices will change the culture. We’re seeing the one place Washington’s getting it right is around immigration reform, and why? Because from the outside they’re hearing the faith community say this, for us, is a moral issue, it’s a Gospel issue, and it’s changing our politics. We’re going to get that. All we’re going to get this year, I think, is that, but it’s going to happen because of the common good being practiced outside of Washington. It comes last to Washington.

ABERNETHY: But is it a movement, Jim, that you’re trying to put together, a movement that essentially is a national lobby, or is it, as Kim was talking about, what people do in their own lives?

WALLIS: No, it’s what people do in their own lives. Like William Wilberforce led the abolishment movement, but it wasn’t the parliamentarians. It was the movement that swept the country. So what we do in our own lives, and so I mean households. I got whole chapters on being dads and moms and parents, and I’m a little league baseball coach. Those kind of life choices are what build social movements, and that’s the only thing that ever changes politics. What we do in our own lives is what the book is about, and how that can change politics and culture, and just the first sentence of the book says, “Our life together can be better,” and that’s the hunger I think people are feeling now.

LAWTON: And Jim, just very briefly, you’ve been talking about some of these ideas for a long time. Other people have been talking about the common good. What makes you think things are different now, that’s there a new receptivity now?

WALLIS: Well, first of all, watching the political narrative at night after being all day on the sabbatical I took—quiet and reflection and study and writing—the more I watched it at night, I wasn’t engaging it, the depressing—it was polarized, paralyzed, hate, fear, anger, and I saw we’ve lost something very fundamental. So I think this can take us back to this ancient idea that can bring us together and find common ground for the common good, and especially a new generation wants to give their lives for the common good. Our audiences are half under thirty everywhere I go, and they want to give their lives for this, and that’s what I think’s going to make a difference long term.

ABERNETHY: Jim, thank you very much.

WALLIS: My pleasure.

ABERNETHY: Jim Wallis. The book is “On God’s Side. “

Read an excerpt from FRANCIS OF ASSISI: THE LIFE AND AFTERLIFE OF A MEDIEVAL SAINT by Andre Vauchez

FR. LARRY DUNHAM, OFM (Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America): This is our first Sunday to gather as a Catholic community to pray for our new pope, Pope Francis. The name he chose after St. Francis of Assisi certainly gladdens the hearts of all Franciscans.

One reason why everyone takes Francis to their heart is because he is not perceived specifically as a Catholic Saint, he’s not perceived as specifically belonging to Christian people but he seems to be someone that appeals to all men and women regardless of their religious background or lack thereof.

Francis considers himself to be a brother to everyone. He found God’s life not only in every man or women but in all creation so every living thing. And so he could preach to the birds and he could preach to the forest. He even found God in inanimate creation, the rocks and the fields, everything contained God therefore all of the environment is worthy of respect.

He had his own very special vision that kind of launched him. He’s praying in front of this icon, this icon cross in the chapel, in Italian San Damiano, but St. Damians and suddenly says the icon, the figure of Jesus speaks to him “Francis, go and repair my church.”

Francis left the city of Assisi, goes out and put on the garb of the peasants. This wasn’t a fancy habit this is what the poor wore. It had a hood for the elements. He had a rope just to hold it together so he simply clothed himself in the garb of the poor.

Our new Pope Francis has a reputation for service and love of the poor in Argentina, in Buenos Aires and taking the name St. Francis reminds the church of the poor who shall always be with us as scripture says, and the poor whom Jesus specifically lived among, reached out to, reached out to all people, but the poor were his special charges.

Francis who wanted to imitate Christ so perfectly, who wanted to walk in his very footsteps in everything he did, in everything he said of course would write a rule saying that’s what we are to do follow in the footsteps of Jesus as perfectly as is possible.

St. Francis, when he wanted to go on crusades and come to hopefully meet the Sultan, he did it again out of his conviction that the Sultan would be his brother and that he could cross the divides that separated them and he was able to do so. That interfaith dialogue made them really brothers. I really have hope that the Pope Francis taking the name of Francis of Assisi will re-invigorate the interfaith dialogue of our church, give it new spirit and a renewed purpose.

I do hope that Francis, Pope Francis can lead us to a simpler vision of following Jesus that we can focus less on the trappings and more on the poor themselves. That we can look to the way Francis did of pulling people into the church, that we’d be known for including and not excluding. That’s my biggest hope.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: There were jubilant shouts in an array of languages as Catholics from around the globe gathered in St. Peter’s Square to meet their new pope. Many here say electing Pope Francis has brought Catholics together.

KIM DANIELS (Catholic Voices USA): We all operate in different countries, we all operate in different idioms and different ways but we come together for our faith and this is a real moment of unity.

LAWTON: The fact that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio—Pope Francis—hails from Argentina has generated much excitement.

CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN (Archdiocese of New York): You talk about a booster shot to the Church in the Americas, this is going to be a real blessing.

LAWTON: But it’s more than where he comes from that’s unique. David Gibson of Religion News Service says Pope Francis’s simple lifestyle is something new to the papacy.

DAVID GIBSON (Religion News Service): He also has spoken against the clerical privileges in the Church, and the kind of puffery that can often infect the hierarchy and the cardinals themselves—he’s spoken really powerfully against this. If he puts into action the words that he’s spoken against this kind of clerical and ecclesiastical privilege, he could be a revolutionary figure for the church.

LAWTON: Many Americans came to Rome to be part of the momentous occasion of electing a new pope. Kim Daniels and Ashley McGuire say they wanted to support the Church in prayer. Before the conclave started, they worshiped at a Mass led by Washington cardinal Donald Wuerl in his titular church. Every cardinal is assigned a congregation in Rome, which in effect gives him the right to vote for the next Bishop of Rome, the pope. Wuerl’s church is San Pietro in Vincoli, which claims to have ancient chains that held St. Peter captive. Daniels and McGuire went to St. Peter’s Square every time the white smoke might appear.

ASHLEY MCGUIRE (The Catholic Association): The election of a new pope has only taken place a few hundred times over the past 2,000 years, so even to be alive during this event is something, to actually be here is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And I think, you know, for many Catholics, it’s a sort of spiritual pilgrimage to be here and to receive the first blessing from the pope.

LAWTON: Daniels says she couldn’t be more excited about the selection of Pope Francis. She is confident he will work to renew the church.

DANIELS: To have a pope, to have a leader means that we speak in a clear voice, and I think that’s one of the great attractions of Catholicism is that we speak in a clear voice.

LAWTON: Matthew Niggemeyer and Michael Dion are both studying theology at the prestigious Pontifical North American College here in hopes of being ordained as priests. They too say they’re thrilled with the election of the new pope.

MICHAEL DION (Seminarian): What he does is gives us an overall vision to say, to lead us to see who Jesus Christ is, and obviously every pope is going to do that in a different way. And so that will be his gift to the church is how does he help us at the ground level see who Jesus is?

MATTHEW NIGGEMEYER (Seminarian): I think it’s both an historical moment for the church but also a beautiful moment. With every papacy, there’s a new opportunity and a new chapter unfolds in the life of the church. What that chapter holds I don’t really know and I don’t really want to speculate, but I’m excited to see what will come.

LAWTON: For some, a new pope means an opportunity for new directions in the church.

DAVID CLOHESSY (Executive Director, SNAP): (at press conference) In a monarchy, the monarch has extraordinary power.

LAWTON: Representatives of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, were in Rome to push for stronger measures to prevent clergy sex abuse of children. The group released a list of 20 suggested actions for the first 100 days of the papacy. They said this is an opportunity for significant change.

CLOHESSY: We’re a single issue group, this sounds probably dreadfully self-serving to say, but we really do believe that there’s nothing on the next pope’s plate that’s more pressing than the safety of the most vulnerable members of his flock.

LAWTON: They said without new action, the abuse crisis will continue to widen around the world.

CLOHESSY: Because this is essentially like a cancer that’s eating away at the very soul of the church, we believe, and unless the pope really takes quick strong moves to turn things around, the future, especially for children in the church looks very grim.

LAWTON: Other advocates hope for breakthroughs on their issues as well. As pilgrims were awaiting the sight of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel, a coalition of women’s groups raised some pink smoke above the Vatican. They called for an expansion of female leadership roles in the Church, including ordination into the priesthood.

ERIN SAIZ HANNA (Women’s Ordination Conference): We would like to see some dialogue. Pope John Paul II closed dialogue on women’s ordination, so we’re hoping that the new pope will reopen that dialogue, simply talk with us. People are ready for women priests, people are ready for women’s ordination. We know the polls show that the majority of Catholics want women priests so we’re here to lift up those voices.

LAWTON: Experts don’t expect major doctrinal changes under Pope Francis.

GIBSON: He’s a man who maintains the traditional Catholic line on sexual morality, abortion, gay marriage, contraception. Nobody expected any pope was going to change those teachings or say anything different, but a new pope has a new style and if he stresses the social justice teachings of the church, the very counter-cultural message of simplicity and poverty, that could really change things without technically changing any teachings.

LAWTON: For many Catholics, a top priority for the new pope will be addressing the Curia, the Vatican’s scandal-plagued bureaucracy in Rome.

DANIELS: I think that everybody knows that there is reform needed in the Vatican bureaucracy and I know that we’ll see some effort towards that end, because reform is something that is necessary so that we can move forward and kindle the faith in places where it’s become something that’s lukewarm.

GIBSON: Pope Francis, Cardinal Borgolio had no real experience in the Roman Curia. He speaks Italian pretty well but is he somebody who can actually come in here and clean house the way some of the cardinals want? That’s a real big question.

LAWTON: McGuire is hopeful the new pope will prioritize communicating the church’s message in the modern world, especially to young people. She hopes Francis, like his predecessor, will use social media to do that.

MCGUIRE: When Pope Benedict joined Twitter, for example, he got over a million followers I think within 24 hours. And so I think you know that’s one way that he can signal to the young generation, you know, here I am, I’m going to be talking with you, I’ll meet you where you’re at and be a part of your world.

LAWTON: Among all the priority hopes and agenda setting, some are asking if the 76-year-old new pope will be able to live up to it all.

GIBSON: How much can a pope do? He’s not a pastor to 1.2 billion Catholics. So much is going to depend on the men he appoints, both in the Vatican and also in the dioceses around the world. What kind of bishops are we going to see coming out of the Vatican in the next few years? That’s really going to chart the course of the Catholic Church over the coming years.

LAWTON: The installation Mass is Tuesday here at St. Peter’s basilica. Then Pope Francis gets to work, amid all the high expectations already surrounding him. I’m Kim Lawton at the Vatican.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Now for more on Pope Francis, we turn to Rev. James Martin. He’s a Jesuit priest, contributing editor at America, a national Catholic magazine, and author of several books including The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything. Father Jim, welcome, and congratulations to you and all Jesuits on having one of your own become pope. Does it make any difference to the Jesuit order, I mean, aside from being proud, will it make any difference, as you see it, to how life goes for you?

REV. JAMES MARTIN, S.J. (America Magazine): I think it will. We’re all very excited and very joyful to have one of our own as pope. I think it will help a lot in terms of Jesuit vocations. There have more articles on the web and in print about what’s a Jesuit in the last few days than I think in the last five years so it’s a great shot in the arm in terms of Jesuit vocations, I think.

ABERNETHY: Vocations meaning people wanting, young men wanting to become Jesuits.

MARTIN: That’s right. You know, more interest in the Jesuits means more young men will consider joining.

ABERNETHY: What about the Pope himself? What can we say about how being a Jesuit might affect him as pope?

MARTIN: Well I think it’s very important. Jesuit training, the formation program is very long. He’s had a lot of different kinds of experiences in terms of working with the poor for example, living the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, living in community and we can see that by his simple lifestyle and the way that so much of his ministry already as pope has been by focusing on the poor by for example taking the name of Francis, you know, recalling Francis of Assisi so I think the Jesuit spirituality and also his Jesuit experience will really help inform what he does as pope.

ABERNETHY: And what does it mean for American Catholics as a whole? Many of them have left the church. What can the pope do to help bring them back?

MARTIN: Well I think the most important thing that the pope can do is really just preach the Gospel clearly and boldly. I think, rescinding from some of the hot button topics, what brings more people back to the church is inviting them into a relationship with God and a relationship with Jesus Christ and so the better he can do that, the more people will come back.

ABERNETHY: But there’s no possibility as you see it of any change on those hot button issues, like priestly celibacy and women priests, that kind of thing.

MARTIN: Yeah, I don’t think so. Not from Pope Francis. He is very much along the lines of Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict in adhering to all of those church traditions.

ABERNETHY: What about giving more authority to local bishops? Might that make possible, if, if he could do that, or if that were done, might that make possible certain things being OK in one place but not necessarily in another?

MARTIN: Well it could. I think there have been some early signs by the way he’s worked with the bishops and treated the cardinals. You know, when he was coming back after his election, he got in the same bus that all of the other cardinals got in. So he’s very much a man of the people and that may mean a little more, what Catholics call, collegiality, giving more authority to local bishops. So, it could. I think time will tell.

ABERNETHY: And what about his relationship with the Vatican bureaucracy? Many people think the curia, the bureaucracy, needs a lot of change and a lot of reform. Is he tough enough to bring that about?

MARTIN: I can say as a Jesuit and, having heard from my Jesuit brothers what he was like as the provincial or regional superior of Argentina, he is certainly a man who can make tough decisions. He is definitely not afraid to ruffle feathers. And so, for those people who are asking does he have a backbone, the answer is yes. So he may be the very guy to come in and reform a lot of the problems that are going on in the Vatican curia right now. And that may be one thing that the cardinals saw that led to his election.

ABERNETHY: And, very quickly, the sex abuse scandal and cover–ups seem to continue indefinitely. Do you think there’s something that a new pope, this pope, can do to kind of get over that?

MARTIN: Well, I think that’s the number one problem facing the church, frankly. We can’t preach the Gospel if people see us as not addressing those problems. So one of the things he can do is follow the pattern of the US bishops in terms of putting in safe environment programs and really trying to just change the church, removing anyone who is credibly accused with a crime so I really think he needs to focus on this, laser like, in the first few months, if not days, of his papacy. So, I’m hoping that he really focuses on that really important issue.

ABERNETHY: Father James Martin. Many thanks.

MARTIN: My pleasure.