The most intractable and toxic problem for the new Pope, of course, is clerical child abuse, which still gives rise to scandal and has left an indelible stain on the Church. Pope Benedict did what could be done by way of apology and making amends. It is now for Pope Francis to turn this ecclesiastical and human catastrophe into an opportunity to right a historic wrong: the neglect of women in the modern Church. No sooner had St Francis founded his brotherhood of Franciscans in 1210 than he turned his attention to creating a similar order for women, the Poor Clares. It did not occur to him that women should be excluded from the new spiritual awakening that he had begun. Religious orders, especially for women, have fallen into terminal decline, but there are many other ways in which female energies can be mobilised. For more than 1,900 years, the Church was unrivalled in its ability to produce charismatic paragons of femininity who changed the course of history, from the Virgin Mary to Mother Teresa, from Hildegard of Bingen to Thérèse of Lisieux. Only in the last few decades did Catholicism and feminism become foes.

Both John Paul II, whose Theology of the Body addressed issues of sexuality, and Benedict XVI, whose encyclical Deus Caritas Est: De Christiano Amore focused on the various meanings of love, began a dialogue that Pope Francis needs to take much further. He will have to confront the fact that not only the priesthood and hierarchy, but the upper echelons of the Church in general, are exclusively male, and ostentatiously so. If, as we are told, this is a Pope who likes to listen, will he listen to the voices of women — and give them a voice in the councils of the Church? Are the men who have mismanaged the Vatican's finances, or who have botched its media presentation, really so indispensable? Might not a woman have been more loyal than the butler who betrayed Benedict — an incident that may have been the last straw in his resignation? Pope Francis tells us that he trusted his sister, rather than a Roman tailor, to make his scarlet cardinal's cassock. I hope that he will soon show, by his actions rather than words, that he trusts other women to take on real responsibilities in church governance.

Throwing open the windows of the Church, as John XXIII said, "so that we can see out and the people can see in", is very much in the spirit of Pope Francis. In his first Mass after being elected, he warned against the Catholic temptation to transform faith into politics, to make the institution he leads into a mere "charitable NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of Christ". On the other hand, he condemns "the spiritual sickness of a Church that is wrapped up in its own world". Pope Francis, in keeping with his Jesuit mission and his Franciscan vow of poverty, has dedicated his pontificate "to find new ways to bring evangelisation to the ends of the earth". He knows that the Church needs to look outwards, not inwards. 

Yet his emphasis on evangelisation does not imply a lack of respect and affection for non-Catholics. Last December, the man who would become Pope less than three months later celebrated Hannukah in Buenos Aires with his Jewish friends — a gesture that was much appreciated by the city's 200,000 Jews, who were the victims of two deadly terrorist attacks in 1992 and 1994. In his public pronouncements, Pope Francis seems to have a knack for finding the right tone: jovial, informal, but above all frank. After his election, he teased his fellow cardinals: "May God forgive you!" Perhaps he will come to be known as Pope Frank.