vatican cardinal, a guy who s been around since the dawn of time who usually likes to go around in his ecclesiastical finding, but he was wearing a set of clothes and i asked him what was up with that, he said, hey, under pope francis simple is the new chic. so that s where we are. good example there. i understand now we re getting oral arguments out of the supreme court wrapping up there today. it s just finished this of course the defense of marriage act or doma defining marriage between a man and woman. i want to go to our legal analy analyst je analyst jeffrey toobin. let s go to joe first though. the first thing i thought of when i listened to these arguments is that the court appears to be moving toward an out if it wants it on procedural grounds to not fully hit this case. that s the first thing.
get all those passengers out. unbelievable. what a hero. pope francis rapidly becoming known as the people s pope. yeah. he takes the bus, as we reported here. he pays his own bills. stops for newspapers and he wears shoes that are from mexico. his old shoes. so he s breaking quite a bit of tradition. doesn t even stop there. the vatican announced today that the pope will not move into the papal apartment for now. we are joined by senior vatican analyst john allen. john, this is pretty cool. i mean, right? he s in an apartment and he s not going to move to the big palatial place. he s going to stay in a two-bedroom apartment, is that right? that is right. the first thing we should say this is not some grand scheme hatched by pr advisors about how to get the world to fall in love with you. this is the man s personality. when he was the arch bishop in argentina, he refused to live in the fairly lavish archbishop s
residence and stayed in a spartan apartment around the corner. so spartan that the story goes he had to leave his stove on over the weekend to keep the place warm because the building turned off the heat over the weekend. but listen, there are a couple of strategic dimensions to this that are worth unpacking. one, pope francis wants to be a pope of the poor. and i think he understands that you can t preach concern for the poor to the world if you are perceived yourself as living in opulence. the other thing is that this decision to live at the hotel rather than the palace means he s going to continue to be in regular contact with a whole river of people that wash through rome because that s where people coming to visit the vatican stay. so i also think this is a way of fighting being placed in a bubble and making sure that he doesn t become isolated. yeah. which was a fear, wasn t it, that this was a man who needs to effect change and he can t do that with the old guard surrounding h
there are opponents of same sex marriage out here protesting, but certainly not as many. they seem to be outnumbered by those that are in favor of, suzanne. all right. shannon, we re going to get back to you in a little bit once they come out of the supreme court for those arguments. we also want to note as well what could be the biggest case of these two. you ve got two former rivals teaming up to take on same sex marriage fight to the supreme court. and our own gloria borger got exclusive access to this power team as they prepared their case. that is the special the marriage warriors, showdown at the supreme court. it is saturday night 7:30 eastern on cnn. pretty cool. that will be worth watching. here s more of what we re working on this hour for around the world. simple living, that seems to be the motto of this new pope. yeah. he s actually giving up the vatican s penthouse apartment with more than a dozen rooms, views of rome for simple two bedroom flat. exactly. he s
you say. many of us know this is a holy week, easter weekend coming up. normally the pope would celebrate holy thursday mass at the vatican, but he s chosen to do this differently as well. yeah, that s right. pope francis is going to be visiting a youth prison where juvenile offenders are housed in rome. it s about a couple of miles away from the vatican. i don t think, michael and suzanne, he s going to be taking the bus to that particular appointment because it would mean the thousands of romans suddenly can t get on a bus. but he ll be driven. he s going to do the holy thursday liturgy there that includes this moment based upon the example of christ and gospel of washing the feet of people around him. he s going to wash the feet of 12 young offenders, both men and women, as a symbol once again of the church s concern for the poor, the forgotten, the marginalized in the world. all about to set a new tone for the papacy.