On New Year’s Day, the Pope veered off script during his address to a packed St Peter’s Square to apologise for his behaviour the previous night. Unsurprisingly, this did not involve the traditional end-of-December misdemeanour of drinking excessively and vomiting on a host’s sofa. Instead, while greeting pilgrims at the Vatican on Tuesday evening, he slapped a woman’s hand away after she grabbed him and yanked him towards her. He may have labelled the slap a “bad example” but, appropriately for a spiritual leader, the apology itself provided an immaculate blueprint for saying sorry.

Why was it so laudable? First, it came swiftly. Less than 24 hours after the incident. There was no whiff of hoping the fuss (inevitably, the slap had sparked criticism on social media) would blow over, nor of waiting for advisers to conjure a glib, legally watertight statement. Second, it was unequivocal. “So many times we lose patience – even me, and I apologise for yesterday’s bad example,” were his words in full. They contained no attempt to excuse or diminish the wrongdoing. He merely acknowledged his human fallibility, which may have chimed with those who have recently watched Netflix’s The Two Popes: the show offers an unsentimental portrait of how, in becoming pontiff, one is expected to have miraculously morphed from flawed human to spotless martyr.