A couple of recent diaries have referred to Pope Francis as a progressive. He is, in fact, in the center of Catholic moral teaching going back several centuries. (I don't claim he is a political centrist; his teachings aren't political.)
As others have posted, nothing in the positive sense of his latest teaching is new to the church. The only new part is argument against claims that we should allow the untrammeled market to work its will. That is a moral claim, a new moral claim although it's champions assert roots in Adam Smith that aren't there. The only novelty in the Pope's recent teaching is to reject a novel argument, at basis an argument in morality, that stands in contradiction to the church's historical moral teaching.
Likewise, his previous -- much less formal -- statements on sexual morality didn't challenge any of the church's teachings on that. He merely suggested a change in tone. That is, again, a response to a quite-recent development -- this time within the church.
There are elements in the Catholic church, particularly in the US, which prioritize the moral teachings quite radically. The teachings about social behavior are something which are nice to say but not expected to be enacted. (It's like swearing; everybody knows that it's wrong, but everybody does it. It may even be less emphasized. If a Catholic politician swears, he should confess it later; I'm not sure that these guys even expect him to confess voting to restrict food stamps.)
On the other hand, Catholic teaching on sexual morality is something that they not only emphasize, they insist that it is a moral imperative that the state enforce those rules. Some take it to the point of insisting that good Catholics can't support any politician, even a Protestant politician, who votes against the state enforcing those rules.
Now you can see how radical a distortion that is of historic teaching. What the church has taught about what government should do is not something that politicians should have government doing; what the church has taught about what people should do is something that politicians should have government enforcing. Francis has said, has said quite mildly, that this is the wrong emphasis.
I've said that Pope Francis is a centrist. The word that most speakers of English through the last several centuries have used for what I've described is "Conservative." Recent usage, however, has applied that word to radical reactionaries.