John Allen on Francis and the Religious Freedom Signals

Here. It doesn't mean he necessarily supports Kim Davis in all her assertions, or even the Little Sisters of the Poor, but it is at least a symbolic statement in favor of a broad right of conscience, and perhaps meant to reassure conservatives more specifically on these issues.

To put the point in crudely political terms, Francis is a figure who utterly defies the usual left/right divides, equally capable of meeting Kim Davis and embracing poor immigrant children at a Harlem school – seeing both as part of a continuum of concern for human dignity.