There are some very odd videos of the Pope online (see this one, in which he responds with anger when some overexcited Mexican pilgrims pull him into the crowd.

But his latest weird, gone-viral video shows Francis pulling his hand away as a long line of Italian worshippers try to kiss his ring after a religious service earlier this week in the town of Loreto. Apparently, he doesn’t want to lord it over his flock in a way reminiscent of emperors and absolute monarchs of yore: but in that case, why hasn’t he simply made an announcement to the effect that ring-kissers aren’t welcome, and that he doesn’t want that kind of no-holds-barred adulation, which seems to belong to another century (and, like so much of what’s outdated at the Vatican, not even the last one). He has, after all, been pope for six years now: long enough, one might have thought, to lay down some guidelines about how he expects to be treated.

In fact, Francis has changed the landscape in several ways: unlike his predecessors he doesn’t live in the grandeur of the Apostolic palace but instead occupies a suite of rooms at the Vatican’s hotel, the Casa Santa Marta. He carries his own bags into meetings; he travels around in the back of a small Fiat rather than the limousines used by his predecessors.

The ring thing looks like a no-brainier: if he wants to be seen as the servant of the people, as he’s said he does, rather than the other way round, it’s an obvious practice to do away with. But, as so often with Francis, the messages are mixed: according to the Vatican, he sometimes doesn’t mind his ring (the so-called “fisherman’s ring”, which recalls St Peter, who Catholics believe was the first pope), and at other times he doesn’t like it at all. Which makes it a bit tricky for people like those gathered in Loreto the other day: to kiss or not to kiss? It seemed like some sort of strange parlour game, with some people seemingly allowed to touch his hand with their lips, while others had it snatched away.

Play Video 0:57 Pope Francis rebuffs worshippers trying to kiss his ring – video

As so often in life, the small details throw light on the big issues. In Francis, the Catholic church has a pope who isn’t entirely clear what he wants: or at least, who frequently signals in very different directions. So on the one hand we have his avowed determination to root out the ghastly abuse issues that have become the hallmark of his papacy: but then he spouts off, as he did in Chile, about a bishop he thought wasn’t to blame, who later turned out to be culpable. Or he calls a meeting to tackle abuse, as he did in February, and then puts his foot into it with a summing-up speech that seems to suggest he thinks things are no worse in the Catholic church than they are in any other big institution.

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Or there’s the women question: the Vatican line is that Francis welcomes the idea of more women in positions of power, and goodness knows they deserve to be there: more than half of all Catholics across the world are women, and you can count on one hand the number of senior curial figures who are female. So why doesn’t he do something about it, if that’s how he feels? It really wouldn’t be that difficult to decree that every Vatican department had to have a specific number of women among its leaders.

The sad truth is that much of what emanates from the Vatican seems suspiciously like window-dressing, and the clues are in these conflicting messages we get from Francis. Is he really a force for change? And beyond him, is it ever going to be possible that an organisation run by a small minority of its members – popes are invariably later-life men – will have the flow of ideas and experience, courage and knowhow to ever devise the fundamental rethink that the organisation so desperately needs?

• Joanna Moorhead writes about religion and family life for the Guardian