Could Pope Francis be in line for a Nobel Peace Prize? Eighteen months into what already looks like a momentous pontificate, there has been speculation this week that this year's prize, to be announced in Oslo today, might go to him.
Popes are not often candidates for awards such as this but, then, popes do not often finish up on the cover of Time magazine as the Person Of The Year, as Francis did last year.
In an era when the Catholic Church has generated unprecedented negative criticism, primarily for its handling of its clerical sex abuse crisis, the Francis pontificate has prompted a favourable response from Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
Talking about him in Rome this week, the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Tim Dolan, said: "He has a magnetic simplicity and sincerity . . . he is a simple, down-to-earth, spontaneous pastor and people sense that."
There is no denying the pope’s popularity, nor the force of his message, especially when he calls for “a church of the poor, and for the poor”. However, his specific contribution to peace this year remains much more difficult to assess.
For a start, his historic visit to the Holy Land last May was marked by symbolic moments of prayer, both at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and at the Israeli-built dividing wall between Israel and Palestine.
The pope followed that with an unprecedented joint prayer service days later in the Vatican attended by then president of Israel, Shimon Peres, and Palestine Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.
However, yesterday, the US-based lobby for clerical sex abuse victims, Snap, argued that Francis does “not merit a prize of this stature” because he has not done enough to “deter future child sex crimes”.