Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, is facing increasingly strong opposition inside the Vatican. The conservative clan of the Roman Curia – the powerful governing body of the Holy See – accuses him of a laxist vision of Catholic doctrine, particularly regarding the status of homosexual couples and divorced people in the Church. Our Rome correspondent Natalia Mendoza reports from the Vatican’s corridors of power on this growing conflict between tradition and modernity.
After more than a decade as pontiff, Pope Francis finds himself facing a major challenge: maintaining the unity of the Catholic Church's 1.3 billion faithful worldwide. This task is made even more complex by hefty criticism of Francis's governance from conservative circles. The pope is critiqued in particular for an overly laxist doctrinal vision and a certain authoritarianism in Church management.
