Understanding Pope Francis analyzes the message, audience, and channel considerations in addresses, encyclicals, and media coverage related to Pope Francis. As a classic example of an "open text" subject to wildly divergent interpretations, the chapters advance communication theory and religious communication writ large.

Understanding Pope Francis: Message, Media, andAudienceoffers several chapters which illuminate the often misunderstood, but widely discussed, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis. With 1.3 billion baptized members living throughout every continent, communication by and about him is a subject deserving to be understood. As technology makes the “global village” predicted by Marshall McLuhan more apparent, the complexities of leading an organization across geographic boundaries with differing ideas about culture and governance present great need to be nuanced, indeed cautious, about messages communicated across diverse media platforms and consumed by divergent audiences. This book lays bare the messages Pope Francis produces, the way that varying platforms/media present those messages, and the complex ways in which audiences formulate their interpretations.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction : Pope Francis: An Open Book for Increasingly Closed Minds

Joseph R. Blaney

Part I: Message

Chapter 1: Navigating through Ecclesiastical Landmines: Pope Francis’ Rhetoric in a Church on the Verge of Civil War

Anthony M. Wachs

Chapter 2: ‘We Have Defaulted on a Promissory Note’: Pope Francis I’s Concatenate Circulation during His 2015 Visit to the United States

Sara A. Mehltretter Drury

Chapter 3: Building a Future of Freedom: Pope Francis’s Mobilization of Diverse Prophetic Rhetorical Traditions in His Address to Congress

Daniel P. Overton

Chapter 4:Pope Francis, Twitter, and Collective Identity: Religious Branding of Crisis

Alison N. Novak and M. Olguta Vilceanu

Chapter 5: Pope Francis’ Environmental Messaging and Moral Foundations of ‘Care/Harm’ in Environmental Crises

Mary Beth Deline

Chapter 6: Has Anyone Wept?’ Pope Francis at Lampedusa: Migration, Indifference, and Pastoral Pastiche as Equipment for Forgiving

Christopher J. Oldenburg

Chapter 7: The Crisis Leadership of Pope Francis in a Local-Global Pandemic

R. Tyler Spradley

Part II: Medium

Chapter 8: The Media’s Shaping of Pope Francis’ Interview in America, The National Catholic Weekly

N. Benton Parish

Chapter 9: Pope Francis and Spiritual Leadership: His Guidance Through Social Media in Times of Crisis

Juan Narbona

Chapter 10: Papal Copyright: Textual Authority and Media Distribution in Pope Francis' Pontificate

Andrew Ventimiglia

Part III: Audience

Chapter 11: The Dynamics of Moral Inclusion and Exclusion in Reactions to Pope Francis’ Messages

Eric D. Wesselmann., Joseph P. Zompetti, and Anna R. George

Conclusion: Re-Framing Pope Francis: The Scholarly Audience Has a Mind of Its Own

Joseph R. Blaney