but he IS ticking off a lot of its more narrow and smarmy minded members, including clergy and laity. And that is, I think, what he intended. No condescension to atheists intended. Quite the contrary.

But he's not a new Pope or a revolutionary Pope. He's maintaining a severe stance vis a vis homosexuality. Ditto, females as priests. And he is not about to change his or the Church's feelings about either issue.

So the RC Church is still anathema (to use one of its favorite words) to me.

But if he dies suddenly, from some ill-defined cause, it will be a fair guess that he pissed off the wrong members of the Curia -- just like JPI.

As for humanity: I don't think homo sapiens is evil or good. Just horribly incompetent. The proper study of man reveals millenia of warfare, distrust, slaughter, mayhem, horror -- offset by millions of unacknowledged and unheralded acts of love end kindness. We're not bad enough to be Klingons, and not good enough to be angels. Another Pope (a Catholic, BTW) said it very eloquently. Man is:

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast . . .