When the cardinal electors file into the Sistine Chapel tomorrow to elect the successor to Pope Francis, they face the most consequential decision of their lives. The man who emerges to greet the crowds on St Peter’s Square will, they hope, be an inspiring pastor, a competent chief executive and a subtle politician who can navigate the tensions within contemporary Catholicism.
While they will no doubt seek strength in prayer, the decision will be theirs alone to make in a process that can be highly political. This particular conclave throws up some particularly intriguing aspects which may make the outcome even harder than usual to foretell.
Some observers point to the fact that 80 per cent of the electorate of 133 were elevated by Francis and suggest that makes it likely his successor will be in the same mould. But Francis’s own election in 2013 in a conclave dominated by appointees of the conservative John Paul II and Benedict XVI shows that continuity is not necessarily a given. The fact that so many of the current cardinal electors do not know each other adds to the sense of unpredictability.
The Roman saying that “he who enters a conclave as pope exits as a cardinal” augurs badly for the prospects of supposed frontrunners such as Antonio Tagle from the Philippines or current Vatican secretary of state Pietro Parolin (one of three Italian contenders). Both men have been the subject of negative news reports in recent days, proving that dirty tricks are not confined to party politics.
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Through western eyes (including Irish ones), the contest is often framed within the Catholic Church‘s sometimes tortuous struggle to come to an accommodation with liberal modernity in all its forms, from secular democracy and ecumenism to women’s rights and questions of sexuality. Among other Europeans, Hungarian cardinal Peter Erdo will be favoured by conservatives, with his Maltese counterpart Mario Grech preferred by liberals. But regardless of the outcome, much work is still required to repair the damage to the church‘s authority wrought by the legacy of clerical abuse and institutional cover-ups.
Others will wish to see a pope who embodies the changing demographic profile of modern Catholicism, which is stagnant in Europe but growing rapidly in Africa and Asia. If that trajectory towards the global South, which was central to the last papacy, is sustained, that could lead to archbishop of Kinshasa Fridolin Ambongo becoming the first African pope since the fifth century.
“How many divisions has the pope?” Joseph Stalin asked sardonically. Stalinism withered and died decades ago but the papacy in all its contradictions endures as a reminder of the deeply held faith of hundreds of millions, to be renewed once more this week in Rome.
