And the postulator of St. John Paul II's sainthood cause, Msgr. Slawomir Oder, in 2010 published the letters Pope John Paul prepared in 1989 and in 1994 offering the College of Cardinals his resignation in case of an incurable disease or other condition that would prevent him from fulfilling his ministry.

Gandhi’s Scant Garb Bars Audience with Pope.” So read the headline of a New York Times report, from December 13, 1931, that the Vatican had cancelled a meeting between Pius XI and “the Indian nationalist leader” because the Pope thought he might be criticized “if he received the visitor in his usual scanty clothing.

A scholar of global Catholicism writes how Francis has opened the church to the outside world in ways no pope had done before.