Perhaps predictably, Catholics who have come to view Pope Francis as a threat to the clarity of church teaching could only see the worst in the pope’s angry reaction to the grasping pilgrim.
Pope Francis had slapped a pilgrim's hand in an incident that quickly went viral on Twitter. Departing from his prepared text the next day, he said that "love makes us patient. We often lose our patience; me, too, and I apologize for my bad example last night."