There’s a reason why Pope Francis has not spoken out on those old chestnuts of Roman Catholic socio-political doctrine, Abortion, Gay Marriage, and Contraception:  He says the church had grown “obsessed” with those topics to the exclusion of more important work.

“We have to find a new balance,” Pope Francis told an interview for a Jesuit magazine, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”

It didn’t change any church policies.  But it sure changed the Vatican’s tone.  And those words were welcomed by Liberal Roman Catholics who have felt locked out in the cold during the 35 years of conservatives John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

“I see the church as a field hospital after battle,” Francis said, “It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars.  You have to heal his wounds.  Then we can talk about everything else.”

From the moment he became Pope, Francis has chosen the mandate of serving the poor and oppressed.  He has washed the feet of juvenile prisoners, visited a center for refugees and hugged disabled pilgrims at his audiences.  These actions have made Francis hugely popular among American Catholics, whose parishes are largely dominated by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, criticized by many as being shills for the conservative Republican Party, which hardly has the best interests of the poor and oppressed in mind.

Francis says some might have assumed he was “ultraconservative” because of the way he ran his office while Superior in a Jesuit province of Argentina.

“But I have never been a right-winger.  It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.”