His simplicity and reforms have drastically transformed the image of the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis yesterday, March 13, 2014, marked his first year in office since taking over from Pope Benedict XVI who resigned. He is the first Latin American - and the first Jesuit - to lead the Roman Catholic Church.

As the Argentine-born Pontiff marked the anniversary in his characteristic simplicity, travelling by bus for a week-long spiritual retreat with cardinals and bishops in the Alban Hills near Rome, Italian opinion polls gave him the highest popularity rating of any recent Pope. According to the BBC, Pope Francis is uncomfortable with the superstar status he has been accorded by the world's media. However, pilgrims have been arriving in Rome in unprecedented numbers since he took office.

The Pope has denounced any personality cult: "Portraying the Pope as a kind of superman, a type of star, seems offensive," he recently told Corriere della Sera newspaper. He has electrified the world with his taste for the improbable: rejection of the lavish Papal residence for a three-room apartment and informal personal style. The golden cross and red carpets of his predecessor have been left unworn.

This attitude has helped to fuel his popularity around the world where he has more than 12 million Twitter followers reading his Tweets in nine languages. He is also popular with the Catholic grassroots and may be the most celebrated Pontiff ever in non-Catholic venues, and even some secular circles where criticism of the Papacy is much more common than praise.

Pope Francis has spent the first year of his pontificate pursuing two ambitious projects: revitalizing the church's efforts at evangelisation and reforming the Vatican's central administration, explained the Catholic News Service, CNS. It quoted the Pope as saying last November that “Catholics must go out into the world to share their faith with enthusiasm and vitality - not like people who have just come back from a funeral!"

The Pontiff has also launched investigations into the Vatican's accounting practices and the Vatican Bank, expanding the reach of Vatican City laws against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. He has established a new office to supervise Vatican finances under an oversight board that includes lay people; in addition to setting in motion a constitutional overhaul of the entire Curia.