During the virus crisis, Francis has become a 21st century “prisoner of the Vatican,” as one of his predecessors was once known, robbed of the crowds, foreign travel and visits to the peripheries that so defined and popularized his papacy. He will resume physical contact with his flock this week with revived Wednesday general audiences, but the meetings will be held in an internal Vatican courtyard before a limited crowd rather than the vast St. Peter’s Square.

When a pope can’t travel
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