The Pope’s brilliant PR

‘Show, don’t tell’ is the mantra of PR advisers when telling public figures how to communicate. Pope Francis’s technique does both at once. By confessing his sins to what the media call ‘an ordinary priest’ in St Peter’s basilica without entering the confessional box, he seemed almost to be boasting that he is, like everyone, a sinner. I hope he does not take it into his head to make public the content as well as the fact of his confession. That would be what the Twitter generation calls TMI. But the gesture of openness worked. It helped to remind people that confession, far from being — as suggested by John Cornwell’s new book The Dark Box — a weird rite designed to encourage paedophilia, is a way of lightening the heart. Sins are unloveable: sinners aren’t. So it is good to wipe away the first and forgive the second. Holy Week, of course, is the season when people are most inclined to confess.