The first rock and roll pope

As yet another sign of his growing pop status, Pope Francis has made the cover of Rolling Stone, one of America's most venerated chroniclers of youth culture and rock music.

On the cover beneath his name is the tag line, "the times they are a-changing," a reference to Bob Dylan's landmark 1964 song and album that marked the start of a youth counterculture that spread throughout the globe, including the Philippines.

Only time will tell if this pope signifies anything so momentous. But his first year on the job has certainly created waves.

Inside the magazine's latest issue, one will find a 7,700 word article by Mark Binelli on its cover subject. It is positively glowing.

“Up close, Pope Francis, the 266th vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth, a man whose obvious humility, empathy and, above all, devotion to the economically disenfranchised has come to feel perfectly suited to our times, looks stouter than on television,” reads Binelli's article.

The rest of it is peppered with anecdotes that cast the Pope in different lights and shadows, effectively rounding out his humanity.

One passage reads: “Since his election last March, Francis has consistently confounded expectations with the simplest of gestures: surprising desk clerks at the hotel where he'd been staying during the papal conclave by showing up to pay his own bill; panicking bodyguards by swigging from a cup of maté (the highly caffeinated tealike beverage popular throughout South America) handed to him by a stranger during a visit to Brazil; cracking up cardinals with jokes at his own expense hours after being elected (to those assembled at his first official dinner as pope, he deadpanned, 'May God forgive you for what you've done').” — Vida Cruz/BM/HS, GMA News