What happens when pandemic locks down a globe-trotting pope?

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.After weeks during which Italy brought the virus under control, the country’s caseload is rebounding — now adding more than 1,000 new infections a day — so there’s no telling when or how more ambitious public gatherings and travel might return.What does all this mean for a 83-year-old globe-trotting pope and his ministry to the 1.2-billion-member Catholic Church?Alberto Melloni, a church historian usually sympathetic to Francis, declared that the pandemic marked the beginning of the end of Francis’ pontificate. But he disputed that Francis was isolated and said the crisis had offered him an unexpected opportunity to provide spiritual guidance to a world in need.The pandemic, he said in an interview, had given “a whole new impetus to the papacy” to double down on its core message, articulated most comprehensively in Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Praised Be.” In the document, Francis demanded political leaders correct the “perverse” structural inequalities of the global economy that had turned Earth into an “immense pile of filth.”“It is his conviction that this is a turning point, and that what the church can offer humanity could be very helpful,” Ivereigh said. in a crisis, and a major crisis like a war or a pandemic, you either come out better or you come out worse.” There are rumors Francis is writing a new encyclical for the post-COVID-19 world, but for now a key part of his message is embodied by a Vatican commission helping local church leaders ensure that the needs of the poorest are met now and after the emergency fades.