In the days after the death of Pope Francis, cardinals began meeting each morning at the Vatican to make decisions on the governance of the Church (in the absence of a pontiff) and to discuss the challenges facing the Church in the world, and what kind of Holy Father would be needed to meet them.
While some, like Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, retired archbishop of Vienna, believe that papacy is “too much of a challenge for anyone,” it’s inevitable that one of the men now dressed in red will leave the conclave dressed in white — most probably either May 8 or 9.
The challenge of leading a Catholic flock of 1.4 billion, from that moment on, will be on his shoulders. From theologians to Vatican insiders, there’s agreement that the next pontiff must balance deep faith with sharp governance.
Starting point: Be a disciple of Christ
“The first challenge for the next pope, as for any pope, is to be a vital, credible, compelling witness to Jesus Christ in his own person,” George Weigel told OSV News.
The author of “Witness to Hope,” the bestselling biography of St. John Paul II, and distinguished senior fellow at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, Weigel recalled that John Paul started his inaugural Mass with words: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” making a “firm Christological confession of faith.” This attitude, Weigel said, is much needed in the Catholic world today.
In a similar vein, Benedictine Father Donato Ogliari, abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, offered a first of two meditations for cardinals on April 29 starting precisely with a Christocentric vision of the new pontificate: “At the heart of the wisdom the Church has accumulated over the centuries; at the center of the norms it needs in order to deal compactly with the vicissitudes of history … there is always the person of Jesus, the Son of God made flesh, who died and rose again for our salvation!”
Inspire a passion for mission
Father Ogliari said April 29 that “the Church rooted in Christ is an open, courageous and prophetic Church that abhors violent words and gestures, which knows how to be a voice for the voiceless and which, if necessary, also knows how to be a voice outside the chorus while pointing stubbornly the paths of justice, fraternity and peace.”
Echoing those words, the second virtue of the new pope would be, for Weigel, “the capacity to inspire throughout the world church a passion for mission.”
He said that Pope Francis, in his last Easter Vigil homily, “had a beautiful passage about the resurrection of the Lord who is the source of our fearlessness, and a pope with the capacity to inspire that kind of fearlessness … that Resurrection-based fearlessness — in an increasingly divided and dangerous world — would be helpful.”
For Austen Ivereigh, biographer of Pope Francis and author of “The Great Reformer” and “Wounded Shepherd,” the question of the missionary Church also touches on “what is the Church’s role in an era of me-first nationalism and empires competing to carve up the world? When countries not at the table are on the menu?”
In a written statement sent to OSV News, he said that “this might lead the cardinals to consider an experienced diplomat or negotiator. But equally to think about focusing on the church’s internal life, developing the internal culture which can help rebuild society — in other words, deepening synodality.”
Weigel pointed out, however, that regarding the Church’s diplomatic mission, it “would be helpful if the pope became again a vigorous supporter of religious freedom around the world, particularly in countries where Catholics are persecuted — like Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua,” and the “China policy of the past pontificate should be quietly buried under the (new) pope.”
For his part, Greg Erlandson, a veteran American Catholic journalist, said that the area of diplomacy is “not an area that people think about: ‘Oh, the Vatican’s going to make the decisive move in that way.’ But it’s one of the only neutral powers that actually has a voice that is listened to, especially in the (Global) South.”
Keep Catholics together
For Ivereigh, a “big dividing line within the cardinals” is “over how the Church evangelizes.”
“On the one hand are those who saw the Francis pontificate as showing how to evangelize the contemporary world — not primarily through handing down doctrines from above, but performing God’s mercy in direct, personal ways,” Ivereigh told OSV News. “On the other are those who want to return to a more reassuring (to them) style of Church: centralized, Western, clerical, and focused on doctrinal clarity. That’s where I see the tension.”
Given these and other challenges, Erlandson, who is the former editor-in-chief for Catholic News Service, said that “someone’s going to have to find a way” to keep Catholics together.
“Francis threw a lot of balls in the air, but he hasn’t resolved everything,” Erlandson told OSV News. He pointed out that issues such as divorce and remarriage, synodality or matters concerning LGBTQ Catholics “were in many ways unresolved in some really definitive ecclesial sense.”
Pope Francis “created an opening that ‘the Church is for everyone,’ the door is always open. That’s true. And yet, what does that really mean in terms of the doctrine? … I think that’s going to be critical to resolve, and it’s going to be very dangerous for the church because there are many expectations on one hand, and there are certainly legitimate concerns about where we stand in terms of doctrine,” Erlandson said.
For Weigel, “The unity worth pursuing in the Church is unity in truth.”
“Popes may have personal opinions on lots of things,” he said, “but those are personal opinions, and it’s best to keep them to himself. So I would say concentrate on the large issues: pro-life, religious freedom. Find ways to make a peace that is truly a peace because it’s based on justice,” and not having “an opinion on every contested issue of international politics.”
Reform on sexual abuse
Despite some advancements made by Pope Francis — and amid some setbacks — the Church still needs to have a full reckoning with the clergy sexual abuse crisis globally.
“Investment in procedures for handling abuse claims that establish clear norms and enable greater transparency and accountability, to show that the Church is acting and justice is being done,” is needed under the new pope, Ivereigh said.
For Weigel, “the problem of clerical sexual abuse has not even begun to be dealt with seriously in parts of the world other than North America. And that needs to be addressed.”
“At the same time, not every accusation is a legitimate accusation. People have a right to their good name, and they have a right to due process. So finding that balance is an important thing,” Weigel pointed out.
Weigel affirmed that for whoever is chosen to be the next pope, he “has to have good judgment in people” as “you can’t do this by yourself.”
“You have to build a team of people who share your vision and who have the competence to execute it,” he added.
