A bartender explains:

Just like a priest, a bartender serves a congregation and, at their best, bartenders can create community. They welcome each guest into the bar and provide food, drink and conversation. They become a guide to the city or connector to other people within the bar. There have been more than a few times at my bar when strangers have become friends, seeing each other off at the end of the night as if they have known each other for years.

Each sees or is told the seamy side of life too, as the man explains . . . via Confessions of a Catholic Bartender | America Magazine

It’s about the book he co-authored with the pope emeritus defending the celibacy requirement in the face of the pope’s seeming publicly to think it’s an open question.

But then it segues into discussion of big changes coming as officials hand in the required resignations on their 75th birthdays. All termed “reform,” by the way. Alleged or intended reform maybe?

As for Sarah, one of the 75-year-olds, the writer leads with that (as grabber, of course) and makes an interesting point about what’s “typically” done and what isn’t.

Though unprecedented is perhaps the wrong word to describe the bizarre episode, it was certainly odd, as Sarah, an active sitting cardinal who heads the Vatican’s liturgy office, took to social media to defend his credibility, issuing several statements and publishing correspondence between himself and Benedict – things that heads of Vatican departments don’t typically do.

Indeed not. But in the reign of a pope who does things almost every day that popes don’t typically do, right?

via Sarah’s last hurrah? 2020 could see major Vatican shakeups