If that’s not news, I’ll eat my chapeau.

The archbishop welcomed it, saying it “might surprise some for its insistence on the need for mercy and compassion and its emphasis on the role of conscience.”

Oh? Who who are those surprised by mercy and compassion in an exhortation issued by the pope in a year of mercy which he himself proclaimed?

I do believe the archbishop is saying something without saying it, namely that the pope’s loosening restrictions that no other pope ever loosened was a surprise to people who thought he might do it but hoped he wouldn’t and are stunned that he did and are making clearly heard growling noises.

This in response to the supreme spokesman, who has people guessing.

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Later: On other hand, archbishop’s “might surprise some” can be read as “some shouldn’t have been surprised,” as in what did they expect? But that is to put too much of the ironic or even sarcastic into an archbishop’s statement, and we don’t expect that.