The State of the Catholic Church After Pope Francis

A guide for the perplexed, or at least the curious.

As I type this, it has been two days since the death of Francis, the Pope of Rome. At this time, the Cardinals are already holding their pre-conclave meetings, even as preparations are made for his funeral. I try to keep this newsletter clear of religious things (I have a podcast where I do that) but since the non-Catholic world seems interested in it, I am going to summarize the state of play in the Roman Church, for any of you who feel like you need a primer on all this. I am also posting this on my website, if you are inclined to check it out.

The Conclave Process

First things first.

The Vatican has summoned Cardinals from around the world to meet in "congregations," the first of which has already taken place. As more Cardinals stream in from around the world, they will continue to meet until the conclave begins, usually between 15 to 20 days after the announcement of the pope's death. These meetings are crucial, because they will be the first chance many of these Cardinals have to get to know one another, since they do not normally meet (more on this later).

When the conclave does meet, they will be locked into the Sistine Chapel until they agree on a new pope. This has normally been a shorter process in modern times, usually around two weeks, but there is no time limit. The Cardinals by law can take as long as they like. Despite the fact that it has not happened in many centuries, they are not obliged to choose another Cardinal but can choose any baptized adult male, though this likely will not happen.

The Franciscan Pontificate

May God rest his soul, the pontificate of Francis is over. He reigned for a dozen years, and for the most part, these were turbulent ones, with much of the turbulence due to Francis himself. He believed that the Church needed to be shocked into adapting to the norms of contemporary society, and he made every effort to do just that. First there were the Synods on the Family, which famously resulted in the document Amoris Laetitia that introduced the idea of communion for the divorced and remarried as a doctrine. These were followed by more Synods, ones on Youth (2018), on the Amazon in 2019, in which the idea of married clergy was broached but ultimately shelved. And then finally the still ongoing "Synod on Synodality," whose purpose appeared to that of moving the Church closer to altering its teachings without stating so explicitly. Finally, there is Fiducia Supplicans, which might be the most shocking document ever issued by a Roman pontiff. This effusion of the Vatican's doctrinal office (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued guidelines under which homosexual couples could be "blessed."

Needless to say, these efforts caused much division within the Catholic world, since they appeared aimed at overturning fundamental teachings of the faith on sexuality, among other things (not with married clergy, though celibate clergy is an ancient tradition of the Western Church). But much of the secular media cheered on Pope Francis, for obvious reasons; the secular media has an obvious agenda, and saw Francis as their ally. This is why the coverage of his death, like that of his pontificate, has been so favorable. They saw in him an ally against "reactionary" Catholics who favored its historic beliefs, and so promoted an image of the pontiff as a kindly, humble, reformer.

The reality is much different. By all accounts, Francis has a terrible temper, and there are myriad accounts of him berating curial staff and publicly denigrating people who disagreed with him. The secular media only noticed this when, on occasion, he attacked people they perceived as allies, such as his infamous remark on their being too much "faggotry" in the Church. Neither is his reputation as a reformer much deserved either. He attempted some financial reforms early in his pontificate, but soon thereafter his point man for this, the last Cardinal Pell, was undermined by opposition from curial institutions and later suspiciously accused of sexual abuse. Other outsiders brought in to fix Vatican finances were dismissed or even charged with crimes; some of this is still ongoing, but sufficed to say, no real reforms ever materialized.

Then there are the scandals. Financial scandals abounded, such as that of the Gemelli hospital in Rome, or more egregiously, the London real estate deals the Vatican made which lost a great amount of money and involved one of the prime candidates to be the next pope, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. These financial scandals also dovetail with another terrible aspect of Francis' governance, an almost complete contempt for the rule of law and due process. From early on in his pontificate, it has been known that those with influence with Francis could escape unfavorable canonical outcomes. I recall reading the Twitter account of a canon lawyer at CUA in 2016, who posted images of canonical documents with pope Francis' signature on them. Francis overturn these canonical decisions for “friends” who had lost their case. His account disappeared a few days later and only came back the next year, with no mention of those images. As the canon lawyer and journalist Christopher Altieri has put it, Francis turned the Vatican into the "Buenos Aires-on-the-Tiber" (this not a compliment, if you are wondering).

Which leads us to another devastating aspect of his pontificate. From the time he became pontiff, it was clear Francis was elected with the aid of "progressive" elements in the Church to further their agenda. But his actions suggest some elected him to protect themselves or other high ranking officials who engaged in scandalous conduct. It is known that Theodore McCarrick, the disgraced American Cardinal, pushed for his election and that they were friends. When the news broke about McCarrick's molestation of children in 2018, the pope refused to say anything about the matter and only issued a perfunctory report on the matter a year later, largely exonerating himself from any wrongdoing. But he protected or rehabilitated several figures who were known to have abused people or covered up such abuse, including Mauro Inzoli, Juan Barros, Gustavo Zanchetta, and most recently, Marko Rupnik, a Slovenian priest whose actions were allegedly so shocking the Jesuits (!) expelled him, and he was excommunicated, only to have the excommunication lifted (almost certainly with Francis' approval), for reasons no one has ever explained.

Needless to say, any one of such cases would have led to a firestorm had they occurred under Benedict XVI. But this highlights one of the important aspects of Francis' reign: his courting of the secular world and his cultivation of them as allies in his campaign to remake the Church. This is probably his greatest achievement. In actuality, not much has changed doctrinally, though he has made a great mess of everything by trying to reopen discussion about settled doctrines. But the papacy is the world's greatest bully pulpit; when the pope speaks, news media listen, and as a sort of narrative manager, trying to convince non-Catholic world that the Catholic Church is on the brink of altering its beliefs to suit them, he has succeeded.

A Divided Church During A Papal Interregnum

But things are much more complicated than this. Francis greatly exacerbated the divisions in the Church but did not create them. There is a great generational divide in the Church, amongst the clergy but also the laity. This division largely has to do with the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). On one side, there are those for whom this council represented a break with the past, the abandonment of historic doctrines and a chance to remake the Church for the modern world. On the other, there are those for whom the council was intended primarily to refresh the Church's image and make her beliefs more explicable and less forbidding to the non-Catholic world.

Francis' pontificate catered to older clergy ordained just after Vatican II and lay people of that generation who work in the Church's bureaucracy. Many of these, especially in Germany, have long wished to "update" Church teachings on a host of topics (mainly about sex and the Church's exclusive claims to authority). But it is well known that the younger generation of clergy are much more traditional in both doctrinal, liturgical and even political terms, than their predecessors. And there is evidence that this is the case among the laity, especially among younger Catholics. Francis was part of a Baby-Boomer generation whose numbers made them dominant in the Church since the late 60s, and who do not want a rising younger generation to undo what they take to be their achievements.

This explains much of the hostility of Francis and his advisors to what is called "traditionalism." Secular media has covered his attempts to ban the old Roman Rite (the "Latin Mass," the liturgy used by Catholics prior to the 1960s) but his drive went far beyond this. Early in his reign, allies of Francis conducted a campaign against religious orders, investigating them and shuttering some of them deemed too traditional. A few years ago, the Vatican ordered the ordination of a dozen seminarians in the French diocese of Toulon not to proceed. Those men were part of a traditionalist order invited into the diocese by its bishop, Dominique Rey, and they were to be ordained according to the old rite. The Vatican then opened an investigation into Rey's diocese and forced him to resign. He also sacked Bishop Robert Strickland of Tyler, Texas, who was a critic of many of his Francis' actions. Beyond these acts of raw power, on a regular basis, Francis verbally attacked clergy and laity attracted to older forms of devotion or doctrine as "backwardists," and scolded anyone who did not go along with his ideas about communion or gay blessings as being unmerciful, Pharisaical, and other insults.

The point of all this was not to get rid of "traditionalists" (those who attend the Latin Mass make up 1% of Catholics) so much as to warn everyone else that there would be no "going back" to anything that predates the 1960s. The obvious problem for these "progressives" (or whatever you want to call them) is that they produce virtually no vocations, attract almost no converts, do not bear children or raise families, and wherever they hold sway, those institutions wither and die, such as many women's religious orders since the 1960s. But these progressives still hold much of the institutional power in the Church, from the papal curia down to diocesan bureaucracies, and they are attempting to prevent the younger generation from reshaping the Church the way they did in the 60s.

The Conclave and its Outcomes

The choice facing the College of Cardinals at the next conclave flows from all this. Do they want to keep trying to use the power of the Church to prevent the younger, more "traditional" generation from making changes to the post-Vatican II settlement that would restore parts (not all) of pre-Vatican Catholicism? Or will the older generation call for peace and let a younger generation proceed into positions of authority? Because that does look like where that generation is headed, even if most never become Latin Mass Catholics.

Those most loyal to Francis and his vision clearly want to continue this campaign, and there have been rumblings that they will try to steer the conclave toward that end. Cardinal Zen of (formerly) Hong Kong has criticized the haste with which the Cardinal have been called to Rome, because it didn't give those living far from Rome time to get there. Reports have circulated that some of Francis' advisors want to alter the rules of the conclave to improve their chances of getting a candidate favorable to them elected. And Pope Francis has appointed 80% of voting members in the College of Cardinals, so there is reason to think they might do just that.

However, many of these Cardinals are not fully paid-up "Bergoglians" who shared all parts of Francis' agenda. Many are from "the peripheries," areas where Catholicism has been a minority presence historically. It is worth noting that many Churchmen who are considered "liberal" don't necessarily share Francis' vision of the Church. They might favor relaxing rules for communion but are otherwise tolerant of the Latin Mass, for example. Several such Cardinals are considered to be potential candidates in the conclave. Moreover, the "conservative" or traditional Cardinals, mostly appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, form a large enough minority to block candidates if they are united.

The chance that one of the favored "conservative" candidates, such as Cardinal Robert Sarah, is elected, are slim, however. The conventional wisdom is that there is usually a swing against the previous pontificate (Francis was seen as more "pastoral" and more of a reformer than Benedict XVI) but given the numbers it seems unlikely. Much depends on those Cardinals from the peripheries, whose views on questions that have roiled the Western Church since Vatican II are largely unknown. Many assume they have much different views of the Church and aren't as obsessed with sexual issues of as their Western counterparts, but this isn't certain. Sexual morality is important to Catholicism and Christianity, which is a universal faith and not merely a "Western" one. Some of those Cardinal might very well be persuaded that a change of course is necessary for the good of the whole Church.

And some have clearly been trying. A few years ago, a memo circulated in Rome under the pseudonym "Demos," which enumerated many of the ills of Francis' pontificate and appeared to be an agenda for what a future pope might need to do. The author of this memo was later revealed to be the late Cardinal George Pell, Francis' one time reformer of finance turned critic. The British journalist Gaven Ashenden wrote somewhere that in the year before he died (in 2023), he made a point of meeting with newly appointed Cardinals when they came to Rome and impressing upon them the necessity of changing course in a new pontificate. Cardinals Robert Sarah, Gerhardt Muller, and Raymond Burke, all "conservatives" sacked by Francis for their criticism of him have remained in Rome during the remainder of Francis' reign, and I think it logical to assume they have been doing something similar to Pell. The progressive group that engineered Francis' election badly outmaneuvered the traditional Cardinals in the last conclave, and one would think they would be better prepared than last time. But time will tell.

As to who will be elected, neither I nor anyone else has any idea. Cardinals whose names are being bandied about publicly are definitely possible candidates, but then their notoriety makes them easier to oppose. This is often why the man elected pope is often a surprise. Joseph Ratzinger was the leading candidate in 2005 and he became pope, but both John Paul II and Francis were definitely surprises. This is important, as it may not be clear what kind of pope we are getting until well after he is elected.

I mentioned at the beginning of the essay that the pre-conclave meetings will be crucial for Cardinals to get to know each other. During his reign, Francis only held one "extraordinary consistory" in Rome, a meeting of all the College of Cardinals. These meetings allow the Cardinals to get to know one another. The thought is that Francis stopped holding them precisely because he didn't want them to get to know each other, so that groups could not form in opposition to his legacy. A Catholic journalist (a conservative one) named Edward Pentin wrote a book on potential papal candidates a few years back and has created a website that lists all of the College of Cardinals and their backgrounds, views on controversial questions, etc. These were meant to help Cardinals get to know each other, but then traditional Catholics have reason to want to do this, because they were blindsided by Francis (as most were), who most Cardinals knew little about when they elected him. It is likely that if they had known what Francis was like in 2005, they would not have elected him.

I have no prediction for the conclave, but I think we can be certain of two things that will NOT happen in this conclave. Whatever his stance on doctrines, I think the Cardinals will seek to elect someone with a very different personality and governing style from pope Francis. Even some of his most vocal supporters have grown tired of his authoritarian governance, tirades against opponents, abuse of subordinates and tendency to concentrate power in papal hands. I think they will want someone who treats subordinates better, who possesses better manners and decorum befitting the throne of Peter, if nothing else. And I think it almost a certainty that no "conservative" prelate, who is opposed across the board to all of Francis' pontificate, will be elected. This means Burke, Muller, Sarah, for sure, though there are some other candidates that might fit that bill. I say this because the conservatives don't have the numbers but also because I do not think the College as a whole wants another pope who is willing to brazenly erase the legacy of his immediate predecessors the way Francis did. If they did elect someone like Sarah, however, it would definitely signal a clear repudiation of Francis, no matter what they might say.

Finally, though I have put the state of things in an either/or fashion, don't mistake my meaning. I do not think the "progressive" faction in the Church can prevent the return of some parts of pre-Vatican II Catholicism or make it go away. They can only delay it. Indeed, some have already returned, and besides which time and numbers simply are not on the progressives’ side. The only question now is whether they will keep fighting to the bitter end to keep their vision of the Church alive or will they concede that the younger generation has a right to reclaim the Church's older traditions. The upcoming conclave will do much to answer that question.