Feel free to breastfeed here, pope tells mothers in Sistine Chapel

[Hekate]

11. He must be the first Pope in generations who has experienced the real lives of women...

Francis is the first one who seems to have actually taken in the realities of female life when he was a parish priest, and never forgot.

John Paul II venerated women as the embodiment of the Virgin Mary. For him the mystical archetypal experience of Woman as Virgin Mother of Christ was everything.

Imagine any girl or woman trying to live up to that. In that mystical archetype there is no blood. Christ bleeds -- but his mother does not. She's "pure." The rest of us don't stand a chance.

I liked JP2; I think he was a great man in his own way, but this was a major blind spot for him.

And of course poor shriveled up scholarly Ratzinger just thought we were in the way, and responsible for all the Church's troubles. Because Eve, you know.

Pope Francis -- the more he says and does, the better I like him.