The battle over who will succeed Pope Francis began long before the pontiff entered Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where he is critically ill.
Arch conservatives have been fulminating against Francis for years, appalled at what they see as his ultra-liberal tendencies that are weakening the very structure of the Catholic Church. The desire to replace him with someone less radical and more orthodox has been discussed many times before.
But such has been the power, the dynamism and the mark left on the church by Francis that any successor is unlikely to be able to undo his legacy. To attempt to undo what Francis has done would be so radical, it would destabilize the institution itself.
“Popes are very important figures,” said Michael W. Higgins (no relation), author of the biography of Pope Francis, “The Jesuit Disruptor,” in an interview with the National Post. “One man can change the direction of the church.”
So it has been with Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who has dedicated himself to reforming the church, and has faced fierce criticism for it.
On Sunday, Francis, 88, remained in hospital with what appeared to be early kidney failure, pneumonia and a lung infection. He was described as alert and “well-oriented.” The Vatican said Francis hadn’t had any more respiratory crises since Saturday night.
But fears for the pontiff’s life were exacerbated when Cardinal Timothy Dolan said the Catholic faithful were united “at the bedside of a dying father.”
At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Dolan said that, “Our holy father, Pope Francis, is in very, very fragile health, and probably close to death.”
Such talk has heightened the debate over Francis’ successor. “There were already conversations, murmurations, discussions, conniving, plottings, all these kinds of things, which is not uncommon and very human,” said Higgins, an avid Vatican watcher and the Basilian distinguished fellow of contemporary Catholic thought at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto.
The increased dialogue over his successor is almost certainly due to how divisive Francis is in some circles. “For some of his more fringe critics, Francis is the Antichrist, sundering the church from within, playing with dogma, more pap and mush than rigorous orthodoxy, playing to his fans, weakening his authority, allowing the gates of hell to prevail against the church,” Higgins wrote in his book.
Critics of Francis have lambasted him for allowing blessings of same-sex couples, permitting divorced and remarried Catholics to receive holy communion, restricting the traditional Latin mass and not speaking up for persecuted Catholics in China. One of his most outspoken critics, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, accused him of “the most ruthless Vatican authoritarianism.”
And yet, what many people see is a Pope who shunned the luxury of the Vatican to live in a hostel and travelled by bus; a man of simplicity who favoured the pastoral over the philosophical; and a pontiff who, when asked about homosexuality in the clergy, replied, “Who am I to judge?”
Perhaps Francis’ biggest change, and the biggest threat to conservatives, is his focus on “synodality” — a desire to give the laity in the church more influence. But Francis’ critics would point out that the church is not a democracy and that it answers to a higher power.
“There are those who are completely committed to the Bergoglio legacy and despair of having anyone elected bishop of Rome who’s not going to continue that,” said Higgins. “And then there are those at the other end of the spectrum who feel that the last 13 years have greatly compromised the organic unity of the church and have changed the papacy, hopefully not inalterably, and want to revert back to an earlier time.”
What will be on the minds of many cardinals who will elect the new pope is finding someone who can modify Francis’ legacy without shattering it. “What can’t happen is any kind of radical discontinuity with the Bergoglio legacy. I think he has stamped the papacy with a particular seal and that is his natural pastoral openness, his commitment to synodality, things like that. I don’t think that can be reversed,” said Higgins.
“The cardinal electors, I think, will probably look for somebody who’ll be a bit of a stabilizer. That tends to be the pattern.”
That may rule out an African pope, since many of the contenders on that continent tend to be conservative. The same rationale might also rule out an American pope.
Serious contenders for the job will probably not come to the fore until after Francis has died and the cardinals assemble in Rome for talks, debates, discussions and to get to know each other. And those who are already being considered serious contenders probably wish their names were not out there.
As an Italian proverb says, “He who enters the conclave as pope, leaves it as a cardinal.”
National Post