Pope Francis says that despite his image as a revolutionary Roman Catholic leader, he is not changing core teachings of the church.  And the Pontiff is trying to refocus attention on goods deeds and off of his newfound international celebrity.

“Sigmund Freud said that in every idealization there is an aggression,” he said to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Wednesday. “To depict the Pope as a kind of superman or a star seems to me offensive.”

Francis was referring to his image replacing rock stars and actors on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine’s January edition.  And graffiti on a wall in Rome near the Vatican depicts the 77-year old Argentine flying like a comic book hero.

Despite uttering the most famous five words of his papacy last year – “Who am I to judge?” – the Pope says the Church is not changing its doctrine which doesn’t approve of Gay Marriage.  But some of his words are being interpreted as leaving the door open to civil unions, telling the newspaper that “the various cases need to be examined, and evaluated in their diversity.”

Some are interpreting this in the context of civil unions making it easier for same-sex couples to obtain healthcare and share in institutions to achieve economic equality, and as not about the civil unions themselves. 

He also for the first time addressed the scathing United Nations report accusing the Catholic Church of failing to stamp out child abuse by clergy and allowing systematic cover-ups.

“I want to say two things.  The cases of abuses are terrible because they leave extremely deep wounds.  Benedict XVI was very courageous, and he cleared a path.  The Church has done so much on this path, perhaps more than anyone. The statistics on the phenomenon of the violence against children are shocking, but they also show clearly that the great majority of abuses take place in the family environment and around it.  The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility.  No other has done more.  And the Church is the only one to be attacked.”

But the US based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said the pope's comments “reflect an archaic, defensive mindset that will not make kids safer.”

"He's done nothing – literally nothing – that protects a single child, exposes a single predator or prevents a single cover up.  He can claim his underlings are ‘transparent’, but history proves otherwise”, the US-based victim support and campaign group said in a statement.