It’s all that fox said, and the pope is pretty much the ultimate authority when it comes to doctrine (what to believe, and how to interpret scripture and so on), but he’s also the head of a massive bureaucracy with hundreds of years of legal codes and institutions that work together to run the catholic church.

If Francis said “from now on all priests have to wear silly hats”, his aids would have to translate that into “what is a hat”, “what counts as silly”, “who’s gonna provide the hats”, “who’s gonna make sure everyone wears the hats” and “what happens if they don’t wear the hat”. This new guy seems to be much more in tune with the legal part of the job, and that makes him a much more conservative option than the guy before him in my opinion, because he will try to operate using the tools the church already has.

The pope is an absolute monarch, but he’s like the captain of a large ship: he can’t run the thing all by himself, and in order for the church to do what he says, he has to play the game.