fairly theologically conservative and not likely to change a lot of the catholic church's particularly odious policies, but less conservative than pope palpatine (then again, it's not hard to be less theologically conservative than pope palpatine) and much more connected with the actual laity than most cardinals. not a liberation theologist, and mostly tends to steer away from the strong catholic latin american social justice tradition, but way more sympathetic than the european attitude on same.

basically: we're not gonna get the catholic church into even the 20th century on human rights issues, but at least we've gone from the 14th century to the 19th century or so :P

yeah, it's complicated. he's not going to (for instance) overturn church position on homosexuality or abortion, but i can definitely see him making serious efforts to deal with the sex abuse coverup and he has an established history of outreach to/working with other faiths that will help ease a lot of the tensions that benedict would regularly inflame. (many argentinian muslim community leaders, for instance, were thrilled at his election.) he's also got a long history of ministry to the poor and is clearly intending to continue that, from what i've seen of his first few days.

so, we can't really expect the church to reverse itself on many of its most conservative policies, but i think it's entirely realistic to hope that pope francis's reign will do a lot to clear out a lot of the entrenched, self-serving vatican bureaucracy, to actually deal with abusive priests instead of just shuffling them around and covering it up, and to take steps to address global poverty at least somewhat. i am cautiously pleased: he's probably one of the best choices that could reasonably be elected, given the circumstances.