During the years of his pontificate, Pope Francis has issued many amendments to the Code of Canon Law as well as other disciplinary norms. Even his magisterial documents, which are not sources of law in themselves, address legal issues. For example, teaching on human rights was complemented in Francis’s Laudato si’ in its reference to the right to drinking water which should be freely available to everybody. Nevertheless, in terms of the obedience of the faithful to the Magisterium, the question is whether this papal document on environmental protection binds the conscience of those faithful who are not convinced of the unquestionable validity of the theory of human-induced global warming. According to Francis’s encyclical Fratelli tutti, the stark social inequalities in the world cause discrimination in people’s access to basic human rights. Thus, the Pope advocates for completely unrestricted admission of migrants coming from poor countries to those ones which have, as the Pope suggests, gained undeserved and rather accidentally achieved prosperity. The death penalty, according to the Pope, should be abolished completely: the planet should be shared with convicted criminals, since they too have inalienable human dignity. Various aspects of interior church law can then be found in the post-synodal exhortations Evangelii gaudium and Amoris laetitia. In the exhortation Querida Amazonia, the Pope resisted the pressure for a partial relaxation of the celibate discipline of priests and for the ordination of women as deacons. According to the Pope, it is necessary to acknowledge that the structures of the Church do not live their own closeted life: above all, they all serve the common goal of evangelization.
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