Michael, if Pope Francis can turn Peronism into prosperity, half-liquefying a powder is nothing (for an alternative explanation of the latter phenomenon, go here (in Italian, but the miracle of Google Translate can help out).

Meanwhile, writing in the New York Times, Timothy Egan writes a mash note to Francis, who he describes as the anti-Trump. I don’t think much is achieved by comparing the Pope and Trump (although both men certainly know something about how to stir up a crowd), but this detail caught my eye:

Francis has never been on the Internet

If that’s true (and it may be; I doubt if @Pontifex actually inputs his own tweets) it goes some way to explaining some of Francis’s political and economic positions, positions that appear rooted in a kind of intellectual provincialism that reveals very little understanding of how much of the world outside Latin America actually works or, for that matter, the ideas – that whole ‘free markets’ thing for example — that sometimes inspire it.