The Next Pope

With Pope Francis having been laid to rest, the Roman Catholic Church is now taking a breather known as an "interregnum" while the College of Cardinals assess each other and try to figure out who the next pope should be.  Then, a week from today, the conclave to select a new Holy Father begins in the Sistine Chapel (below). 

I'm not going to go through any potential candidates for the next pope, because there are too many of them and the next Holy Father might very well be someone no one's considered.   But there are obvious considerations among the cardinals as to what is required of the next pope at a time when Roman Catholicism is under immense pressure to adapt to modernity and at a time when Donald Trump, the most amoral world leader in eighty years (literally - Adolf Hitler committed suicide eighty years ago today), has unlimited power that threatens humanity.  Also, the Church must decide if it wants to continue along the trajectory that Francis set it on - now more likely given how Trump is happy to send migrants from predominantly Catholic countries to a torture chamber in a place ironically named for Jesus Christ Himself.

The cardinals believe that God chooses the the pope through divine guidance in their "scrutinies," or ballots, based on a two-thirds majority of those voting.  Because the pope, as the leader of the sovereign Vatican state, is a priest-king, he assumes monarchical trappings, from a title ("His Holiness") and a throne to regnal name, leaving his past name and identity behind.  Usually there's nothing in a name, but the new pope's choice of a name usually speaks volumes for how he envisions which path the Church should follow.  If the next pope chooses to be called Pius XIII or Gregory XVII, Catholics who yearn for reform in the Church will have to abandon all hope, as the last popes to take the names Pius and Gregory were doctrinaire reactionaries.  A pope who plans to continue Francis' reforms will likely either take his name or maybe become John XXIV or Leo XIV.  (Pope John XXIII began the last great reforms in the Church by calling the Second Vatican Council; Pope Leo XIII, the last pope of the nineteenth century, is best remembered for his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which advocated for workers' rights.)  And it would be a breath of fresh air if the next pope takes an unprecedented name like, say, Thomas, after the skeptical apostle who demanded that his doubts we satisfied. 

One other thing.  Many Catholics, particularly American Catholics, fear and dread the notion of an American being chosen as pope, which has become a distinct possibility, given the U.S. Church's virulent arch-conservatism and hostility to modernity.  Even if the next pope is an American, that's no reason to fear the absolute worst.  The Catholic Church, as its name suggests, is a universal church; it is not rooted in American exceptionalism.  That's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  

RIP Pope Francis

I was shocked to learn of Pope Francis's death after he appeared to be on the mend from an illness.  He was a pope as a pope should be, caring for the poor, speaking out for migrants, and being tolerant toward homosexuals as well as reconciling faith in the Savior to the need to preserve the environment.

Unfortunately, he did not change the trajectory of the Roman Catholic Church permanently, as the Church eventually drifts back to a more traditionalist ideology once a more modern pope leaves the scene.  There are some virulent critics of Francis in positions of power in both Europe and North America, and in the U.S., that goes double.  The American Church has too many cardinals and archbishops who bristle at reform and remain rooted in reactionism.  Many of them opposed Francis's efforts to modernize the Church, and some of them, like Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York - the closest the United States to a primate, or a national Church patriarch - has been friendly to Donald Trump.

It is the specter of Trump which the Church must fight back against in the same way Pope John Paul II led his energies in the fight against the leadership of the Soviet Union.  Trump has already compromised the global community with his intransigence, his bigotry, and his narcissism.  The Roman Catholic Church should be as strong a bulwark against the fascist tyranny of Trump as it was against Soviet Communism.  

While many of the faithful fear an emergence of an American-backed pontiff who will pursue a temporally arch-conservative agenda, we ought to just catch our collective breath and calm down once Francis' funeral is behind us and just sit back and take it easy through the interregnum.