BELFAST — As Pope Francis takes over the global church, many church-watchers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland ascribe Catholicism’s current troubles to secularization. In 1946, Pope Paul VI called Ireland “the most Catholic country,” but starting in the mid-1960s, a growing number of the Irish began questioning the authority of religious institutions.

CARACAS — The 266th pope, and the first ever from Latin America, has one lung, rides the subway, reads Dostoevsky and has been described as both a moral compass and a sellout to Argentina’s former Dirty War leaders.