Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). The end of a term of office in one of the oldest and largest human organisations is necessarily an event. But how does the Pope named Francis fare when the balance is drawn? To answer this question, we need to take a broader look at the world.
What remains most deeply etched in our memory is often random and the result of spontaneous interpretation rather than cool analysis. For me, in relation to the late Pope Francis, this is a single moment in January 2014, a few weeks before the Maidan coup in Ukraine: two white doves released from a window of the Vatican as a sign of peace, immediately attacked by a crow and a seagull.
Yet the symbolic perception persists. The eerie feeling remains even when closer examination reveals that there is not a single continuous video showing the release and attack in sequence, only the moment of release and then photographs of the attack. The whole story could therefore be a hoax, and its symbolism is also undermined by the fact that the previous year, when the previous Pope Benedict XVI released doves on the same occasion, a traditional peace march by Italian young people, there was an attack by a seagull.
The fact that such images appear has a lot to do with the mixture of rationality and irrationality that characterises the papacy. For it is often overlooked that there is a deeply rational side to it; it is the most important task of every office holder to keep the organisation he heads alive and, if possible, to strengthen it. He is, so to speak, the CEO of Catholicism Ltd – incidentally, the legal model for legal entities, and like any such large human organisation, the scene of bitter internal struggles.
Francis, whose real name is Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was born on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires, the son of an Italian immigrant who fled fascism. He was the first non-European pope since the Syrian Gregory III (731–741). This fact points to the first problem he faced and had to deal with: that there are far more Catholics outside the West than within it. Of the total 1.39 billion members of the Catholic Church worldwide, 285.6 million lived in Europe, 74.3 million in the United States and 10.8 million in Canada as of 2023. Together, that is 370 million, or less than 27 per cent of the world’s believers. And the number of followers in the West is declining.
This means, of course, that such a large organisation cannot remain aloof from geopolitical issues and, out of pure self-interest, must move away from European Rome and towards the countries of the Global South. This was already evident in the election of Francis, but he himself reinforced it by appointing 163 cardinals, 107 of whom are younger than 80 and therefore eligible to vote in the next conclave. This represents a clear majority in an assembly that will consist of 140 members. Seventy of these cardinals come from countries in the Global South; however, since Benedict XVI also appointed a number of cardinals who are still eligible to vote and come from countries such as the Philippines, Nigeria and Brazil, it would be very unlikely that a successor would question this global orientation.
As is usual in such large structures, this shift will only take effect with some delay. But if one superimposes the current geopolitical fault lines on the distribution of Catholic believers, it is clear that in future the BRICS countries will dominate, and no longer the collective West. So if one regards the change that Francis has brought about in this area as the task of the CEO of Catholicism Inc., he has done a good job.
But of course, there is more. Financial scandals, for example, which emerged in the 1980s in connection with the notorious P2 secret lodge in Italy, but were never really resolved. Among other things, financial links between the Vatican and the Mafia were discovered, and in connection with the very short pontificate of John Paul I in 1978, there are persistent rumours that he fell victim to these very entanglements, or rather to his efforts to clear them up.
Now, the Vatican’s financial policy is anything but transparent, but there are at least signs that Francis tried to bring some clarity to the matter. The same applies to the paedophilia scandals that have plagued the Church for over 20 years, beginning in 2001 in Boston in the United States, which are directly linked to the debate on celibacy, which Francis has not touched, but only downgraded in dogmatic rank.
However, even the rational part is more complicated than it appears at first glance. By choosing the papal name Francis, the Jesuit Bergoglio signalled that he saw the rival Franciscan order as an ally; but both have been bitter enemies for decades of another order that had previously ruled the Vatican in the form of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Opus Dei. Founded by a friend of Franco, this order made pacts with all the notorious dictators in Latin America and was, in a sense, the CIA’s partner within the Church (which woke ideology may have made more difficult in recent years). In any case, the suppression of Opus Dei was one of the main focuses of Francis’s reign, even if this was only fragmentarily visible to the outside world.
In many respects, it will be noted that Francis sat between two stools, although he often strictly adhered to the official narrative, as in the case of ‘climate change’ or Corona. With regard to Ukraine and Gaza, he sided with peace in his statements, but in one way or another, everyone will be dissatisfied with him. Liberals accused him of defining homosexuality as a sin and of being against abortion, while conservatives considered him too lenient on homosexuality and condemned his attempts at reconciliation with other world religions.
This often reveals a purely Western-centric view and the expectation that a person in such a position should clearly follow their own views. And in Europe in particular, the Catholic Church is widely rejected because it has strayed too far from the beliefs of society, especially with regard to sexuality.
This ignores the fact that, in the long term, the faithful in the slums of Manila are no less important than those in Cologne, and that the task of the supreme shepherd is to keep the shop together, for which it would not really be useful to make the people of Cologne happy, but instead lose a great deal of prestige in Africa or Asia.
Even the fact that the richest dioceses in the world are in Germany (currently Paderborn) does not change this if the decisive requirement is to ensure the survival of the entire organisation. That is a structural fact.
But there is another point that makes it understandable why Francis has made one or two compromises with the Western mainstream but has never taken them up – and that is the social function that institutions such as the churches are supposed to fulfil. A deterrent counterexample is the German Ethics Council, which does nothing but find a seemingly moral justification for everything that is done anyway.
If there is complete agreement, there is no point in disagreeing. It may well be that there are people who find satisfaction in a religion that merely confirms that what they already do and believe is right and good. However, television advertising also satisfies such needs, and for more complicated cases there are willing henchmen such as the Ethics Council. But regardless of the decision one personally arrives at on a specific issue, such a decision is only possible if there is more than just the mainstream of television advertising.
What’s more, we need to strengthen our moral muscle, we need a challenge, a view of humanity that expects more than the simple satisfaction of the ego. Given how human thinking works, it is not even of central importance whether every argument is modern or true. Nothing is more unproductive than conversations with people who think the same way, and nothing is more fruitful than a counterpart who contradicts you with good arguments. Even if one does not subscribe to claims of transcendence, a church that only justifies the status quo is useless. This is why the entire history of the Church is a constant struggle between adaptation and challenge, in which, incidentally, Francis of Assisi stands for challenge, as does Ignatius of Loyola, both of whom came within a hair’s breadth of ending up at the stake.
No, you wouldn’t want to have that job, keeping more than a billion people, thirteen male, fifty-three female and eight mixed-gender orders together at a time of political and economic upheaval. And when you see how much power the CEO of Catholicism Ltd. has in relation to possible ideological change or even the space to follow personal political convictions, you definitely don’t want it. One is already delighted by little gems such as those in a short quote from the encyclical Dilexit nos: ‘Instead of seeking superficial satisfaction and pretending to be something we are not, it is better to ask important questions: Who am I really, what am I looking for, what meaning do I want to give to my life, my decisions or my actions; why and for what purpose am I in this world, how do I want to evaluate my life when it comes to an end, what meaning do I want to give to everything I experience, who do I want to be in front of others, who am I before God? These questions lead me to my heart.’
No, considering all the circumstances, he did a good job. Even with all the compromises he made with the Western mainstream, he never abandoned social issues and slowly and persistently steered the whole big ship towards the Global South. This is also a form of decolonisation and a subtle form of democracy in a centuries-old, undemocratic apparatus. These are the first steps towards surviving a much greater change – something that was only achieved with great difficulty during the last major transition to capitalism. He has upheld the mission of peace, which is not easy when the entire collective West is hungry for war. Perhaps the crow and the seagull betrayed him back then, telling him how difficult it would be.
Can we expect more? Not in a time of such uncertainty. And the fact that he has opened the door to a kind of BRICS in cassocks may prove enough to earn him a place on the list of wiser popes, with a positive balance sheet not only for Catholicism Inc. but also for humanity.
