On the Eve of a Conclave of
Great Consequence:
Some Reflections
by George Weigel
While some of the cardinal-electors have been living in
various venues around Rome, the entire electorate will have moved into the
Vatican by Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Thanks to the
unprecedented number of electors, and to Pope Francis’s idiosyncratic decision
to live in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guest house (a decision
that cost the Vatican money in lost rental income and intensified the security
problems of the Vatican police and the Swiss Guard), the electors cannot all
fit into the Domus; much of the second floor, which the late pope
gradually took over, has been sealed off, as mandated by the apostolic
constitution governing the interregnum and conclave. So the majority of
electors will be housed in the Domus, with a smaller group housed
in an older Vatican facility. This is not a good situation, and its recurrence
could be prevented by the next pope returning to the papal apartment in the
Apostolic Palace—and then inviting the international press in for a visit, in
order to show the world that it’s a middle-class Italian home, not some opulent
Xanadu.
During the past week of General Congregations, there have
been a few examples of what some regarded as subtle campaign speeches. No one
seems to understand why certain cardinals (typically voluble) are allowed three
interventions while others struggle to get five minutes to say their piece.
After one brave new cardinal asked Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the Dean of
the College who chairs these sessions, “Have you ever heard of name tags?”,
the cardinals, many of whom admitted at the outset that they didn’t know each
other, finally got a form of identification that would allow them to engage
each other by name. At least one cardinal was misidentified on a screen while
making his remarks.
Those problems notwithstanding, there have been many serious
interventions during the General Congregations. Those addresses, and the
tsunami of commentary that has followed the death of Pope Francis, have raised
some questions on which I’d like to comment briefly.
⇒ In the General Congregations, some cardinals have
urged their brethren not to rush to judgment in the conclave; others want to
reach a quick decision and leave. It’s
understandable that men of a certain age, who have just had a rigorous Holy
Week and Easter in their dioceses, are not eager to remain away from the
comforts of home for an extended period. Still, it might be remembered that as
recently as 1978, during the elections of John Paul I and John Paul II, the
cardinal-electors lived in truly miserable conditions, especially during
Conclave I of 1978.
Then, they were housed in makeshift “rooms” jury-rigged
throughout the Apostolic Palace; some were sleeping on cots; sanitary
facilities were inadequate and chamber pots were in use; it was infernally hot
(two future popes, Karol Wojtyła and Joseph Ratzinger, took a walk one night in
the Cortile San Damaso to escape the heat—and began a conversation of great
consequence, thus proving that temporary discomfort can give birth to long-term
good results). It was to avoid such situations of eminent misery that John Paul
II built the Domus Sanctae Marthae, which is perfectly comfortable,
if not the Four Seasons Vatican suggested in parts of the film Conclave.
The newer cardinals seem to welcome the idea of a conclave
that takes its time. Their voices should be heeded. In many cases, the veteran,
more elderly cardinals have this one great service left to do for the Church. I
pray that they take the time to savor it, while letting the Holy Spirit dictate
the pace of their deliberations.
⇒ The idea that criticism of the Vatican’s China policy under
Pope Francis is essentially an American concern has been circulating, and some
observations on that are in order.
First, the current policy, which allows the Chinese
Communist party the leading role in proposing bishops, violates Canon 377.5 of
the Code of Canon Law, which put into legal form the teaching of the Second
Vatican Council in its Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church:
Governments are not to be involved in the appointment of bishops. De facto
canonical illegality (which undercuts the rule of law throughout the Church)
should be of concern to everyone.
Second, critics of the policy fully understand that the Holy
See must often deal with unsavory governments. The challenge is to deal with
those governments in a strategically prudent way that does not make the
situation of a hard-pressed local Church more difficult. The present China
policy does not meet that challenge.
Xi Jinping’s policy of the “sinicization” of all religions
in China is a recipe for the slow-motion destruction of religions: hence, in
the Catholic case, the mandated replacement of religious images (like the
Stations of the Cross) in churches with portraits of Xi and displays of his
sayings.
Moreover, the Chinese regime has blatantly broken the
agreement it first made with the Vatican in 2018, most recently by arranging
the “election” and installation of a new bishop during this papal
interregnum—during which no bishops can be appointed, since an episcopal
mandate must come from the pope and at that moment there isn’t one. (There was
only one candidate on the “ballot,” to boot.) It should not be of concern to
Americans only that a great power consistently reneges on its agreements with
the Holy See, while seeking to subordinate all religious practice to a
totalitarian state with an atheistic ideology.
Third, thoughtful critics of the current China policy have
made clear that their concerns are essentially evangelical: that is, the policy
is not aiding the evangelization of China today, and is likely going to be an
impediment to evangelization in the future. When the Chinese communist regime
goes into the dustbin of history, as all communist regimes eventually do, China
will be the greatest field of Christian mission since the Europeans came to the
western hemisphere in the sixteenth century. Comparative advantage in that vast
missionary field will not lie with those identified with the previous regime,
but with those who did not kowtow to it—thus demonstrating the firmness of
their conviction that Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord.
⇒ Interventions in the General Congregations have
generally focused on internal Church matters, such as the imperative of
financial reform; the need to return to less autocratic papal governance;
different understandings of “synodality” and its relationship to the authority
of bishops in the Church; and so forth. This is entirely reasonable. Still, one
hopes that, in private conversations and group meetings “off-Broadway,” so to
speak, the cardinals are coming to recognize that they are choosing a pope
amidst a great cultural crisis: a crisis that threatens civilization itself.
And that is the crisis in the very idea of the human person.
This “anthropological crisis,” in which chromosomes make no
difference and personal willfulness is all, has already caused untold
suffering. It has led to a widespread deterioration in mental health. It has
made it difficult to form lasting friendships, including the unique form of
friendship that is marriage. It has corrupted medicine, science, law, and
education. It has set loose the totalitarian temptation in old democracies, as
when homeowners in the United Kingdom are told that they may be criminals if
they pray in their homes for women in crisis pregnancies, if their homes are
too close to an abortion clinic. (I am not making that up.) And as more than
one of my fellow-authors in these pages has noted, the anthropological crisis
has had a devastating effect on Catholic moral theology, as theologians of the
Church of Perhaps eviscerate classic Catholic understandings of what makes for
happiness and human flourishing, by conceding vast amounts of moral ground to
woke sexual and gender agendas.
The Catholic Church is one of the few institutions in the
world with both the intellectual vigor and organizational capacity to challenge
wokery’s rejection of the biblical concept of human dignity and destiny, and to
help heal the many victims of the life-distorting notion that everything in the
human condition is subject to alteration by our wills—no matter how disoriented
our wills may be. The next leader of the Church must be a man who can speak,
with conviction and compassion, the biblical truths about who we are
(creations, not accidents); where we came from (a loving Creator); how we form
authentic community (of which the Church is a “sacrament,” according to Vatican
II); how we live worthily (by self-gift, not self-assertion); and what our
ultimate destiny is (eternal life, not oblivion).
Reflection on Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel
during the conclave may help focus attention on all this.
⇒ Fr. James Martin, S.J., perhaps the Church’s premier advocate for
what he calls “LGBTQ
Catholics,”
recently wrote about the “fears” that many of those with whom he is in contact
have about the conclave and its possible outcome. No Catholic should want any
other Catholic to live in fear of, or fear about, the Church. Christ, after
all, promised that he would be with us always, and it is an essential work of
charity and Christian solidarity to remind each other of that.
It is good, however, to recognize that there are other fears
abroad in the Church—and they deserve consideration from the cardinal-electors.
There is the fear that a lack of clarity about Catholic
doctrine, moral teaching, and pastoral practice will lead Catholicism down the
road to oblivion paved by Liberal Protestantism over the last two
centuries.
There is the fear that mercy and truth, charity and truth,
will continue to be falsely juxtaposed in some Catholic circles, with tacit
approbation from some Church leaders.
There is the fear that some will continue to misconstrue the
Second Vatican Council as the moment in which the Catholic Church was called by
John XXIII to reinvent itself: which was the last thing on John XXIII’s
mind.
There is the fear that Church unity will be misunderstood as
the unity of an ongoing conversation in which all opinions are considered equal
and nothing is ever settled, rather than the unity in truth that Christ
bequeathed the Church.
There is the fear that the Vatican’s voice will continue to
be muted, as it has too often been in the past twelve years, in situations
where the Catholic community is being brutally persecuted.
There is the fear that the plague of clerical sexual abuse,
especially in Latin America, will not be taken as seriously as it should be by
the cardinal-electors, and that the records of potential papal candidates in
handling these grim matters—in which souls have been gravely wounded and
evangelization seriously impeded—will not have been sufficiently vetted.
There is a fear that serious Roman reflection on the urgent
life issues will be further jeopardized, if the John Paul II Institute on
Marriage and the Family at the Pontifical Lateran University continues to
engage faculty who challenge or dissent from settled Church teaching and the
Pontifical Academy of Life continues to appoint members who claim that
the Dobbs decision of the United States Supreme Court (which
rejected the claim that there is a constitutional right to abortion) was
morally flawed because it did not take into account a woman’s right to
“autonomy.”
So there are many fears abroad in the Church.
The Yugoslavian dissident Marxist Milovan Djilas, a brave
man who challenged the Tito dictatorship, once said that Pope John Paul II was
the only man he had ever met who was entirely without fear. It was a moving
tribute, but the formulation may have been a bit off. John Paul II did not so
much live without fear as beyond fear. And he could do that because he was
completely convinced that the Lord Jesus had taken all human fear upon himself
when he mounted the wood of the Cross, where he immolated that fear in the fire
of divine love—thus enabling all who adhere to him and his cause to live beyond
fear. Cruciform, Christocentric faith was the source of John Paul II’s
fearlessness.
The answer to fear about the Church or in the Church is to
turn to Jesus Christ, who offers everyone the gift of friendship with the
incarnate Son of God, salvation, and eternal life—on his terms, not ours. And
his terms were stated succinctly at the beginning of his public ministry:
“Repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). If the Catholic Church does not
proclaim and live that conversion of mind and heart, it is just another
international non-governmental organization. If the Church makes that
proclamation and lives that conversion, it will set the world ablaze.
Prayer for the Election of the Roman Pontiff
O God, Father Almighty, who at the beginning of creation
calmed the primordial waters by the hovering of the Holy Spirit, swiftly send
that same Spirit upon your Church for the purpose of electing the Successor of
the Holy Apostle Peter.
Lord Jesus, whose Body is the Church founded by you on the
Apostle Peter, grant, we beg you, to defend with angelic protection and
strengthen with many graces the cardinals whose task it is to elect Peter’s
Successor.
O Holy Spirit, Paraclete, flow through all the locales and
dwellings of the cardinal-electors, to repel diabolical schemes, to crush
external forces, to bring clarity and serenity to Your Church.
Most Holy Trinity, in your infinite mercy and according to
our ineffable providence for the Church, inspire, guide, and gently urge the
cardinals in conclave to give us a good and wise pope, a kindly but strong
shepherd, a faithful and reverent Vicar of Christ, a praying and prudent
Successor of Peter, a Roman pontiff who loves and preserves the customs of our
forebears, a steadfast, pious, virile, and holy man. Amen.
George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of
Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of The
Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (Ignatius
Press).
https://firstthings.com/letters-from-rome-2025-the-papal-interregnum-no-7/
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