Who is Pope Francis? A new RTÉ documentary profiles the pontiff

Pope Francis has been publicly criticised by Irish American and senior Vatican Cardinal Raymond Burke in a documentary to be broadcast on RTÉ One television Monday night.

A frequent visitor to Ireland Cardinal Burke tells the programme Pope Francis – The Sinner, which airs on Monday at 9.30pm, that since the accession of Pope Francis two years ago "there really just is growing confusion about what the Church teaches."

In November 2013 Cardinal Burke was dropped from the Vatican's Congregation of Bishops by Pope Francis, since when he has also been dropped as the Vatican's prefect of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature.

He regularly attends the annual Fota International Liturgy Conference in Cork, which he opened last July.

Last year, during debate on the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill, he said Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s description of himself as a taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but not a Catholic taoiseach, did not make any sense.

Catholicism

“One cannot, as a Catholic politician, excuse oneself from the question of abortion by claiming one should not bring one’s Catholicism into the political realm,” he said.

Also on the programme former president of Ireland Mary McAleese says that while she likes Pope Francis she feels he just doesn’t get women. “There’s a blind side here...that leaves good men...like Francis still carrying a residual element of misogyny that closes them off...,” she says.

The Pope's Argentinean biographer Elisabetta Pique tells the programme "he was almost hated by some Jesuits..." there, a view echoed by Fr Michael Petty who says "he provoked tremendous division" when he was (Jesuit) Provincial in Argentina.

The former Superior General of the Dominicans Fr Timothy Radcliffe however believes that the Pope trusts in the Holy Spirit: "A very important part of Pope Francis' spirituality is daring not to be in control," he said.