It’s Wednesday, March 7, the day the conclave to select the successor to Pope Francis commences. At 10:00 a.m. (4:00 a.m. EST), Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, led a public Mass “Pro Eligendo Pontifice” (“For the Election of the Pontiff”) in St. Peter’s Basilica.
He concluded his homily with prayers “that the Holy Spirit … will give us a new pope according to God’s heart for the good of the Church and of humanity” and “will enlighten the minds of the Cardinal electors and help them agree on the Pope that our time needs.”
Today at 4 p.m., the cardinals will gather for prayer in the Pauline Chapel near the Sistine Chapel. At 4:30 p.m., they will process into the Sistine Chapel and take an oath of secrecy.
Next, the declaration “Extra omnes” (“everybody out!”) will direct everyone who isn’t a cardinal elector (cardinals under the age of 80) or essential staff to leave. Then, the chapel and everyone within it will be sealed off from the outside world.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, as the most senior member of the College of Cardinals under 80, will preside over a single initial round of voting. Assuming they have not elected a pope by a two-thirds majority in the first round, they will retire to the secure conclave living quarters at the adjacent Domus Sanctae Marthae (“House of Saint Martha”) for the night.
Up to four rounds of voting will be held on each subsequent day until they succeed in electing a pope.
“Papability”
Who might become pope? Over the past few days, many have quoted John L. Allen Jr.’s observation from his National Catholic Reporter list of 20 possible candidates for succeeding Pope John Paul II in the 2005 conclave: “The trash heaps of church history are littered with the carcasses of journalists who have tried to predict the next pope.”
I won’t volunteer my own carcass by making a prediction. I won’t even make a short list of possible candidates. There are already plenty of those lists circulating on the internet.
But I do have some thoughts about how we might think about the “papabile” (an Italian term popularly applied to cardinals thought to be viable candidates to become pope) and about whom the eventual new pope might be. It is hard to resist the temptation to map possible successors to Pope Francis onto the polarizations of American Christianity and its civil context. We may regard them as conservative or liberal, traditionalist or progressive.
In terms of those categories, many might consider Benedict XVI to have been a conservative or traditionalist pope and Francis to have been a liberal or progressive pope. Thus, the question many American Christians may have going into the conclave might be framed as: Will the new pope be more conservative like Benedict or more liberal like Francis?
A more helpful set of categories for thinking about potential popes and where they might be positioned on a theological spectrum is rooted in two emphases that marked the work of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It’s common to think of Vatican II as a liberalizing council compared to the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), which is typically understood as a more conservative articulation of Catholic faith and practice. There’s truth in this comparison.
Vatican I was, in many ways, a conservative reaction against Western modernity in the late 19th century. This was similar to how the conservative North American Protestantism that would become evangelicalism reacted against the same developments.
Papal infallibility was one of the conservative Catholic reactions. Biblical infallibility was one of the conservative Protestant reactions.
Vatican II, then, did represent a more positive constructive engagement with the modern world, in contrast to Vatican I’s conservative reaction against it. However, this difference from the dynamics of Vatican I resulted from two interrelated emphases that yielded something different from the earlier council.
One emphasis of Vatican II has been described by the Italian word “aggiornamento,” which means something like “updating.” Vatican II represents an update of the Catholic tradition and brings it into more constructive dialogue with the modern world. This is why Vatican II has been regarded as a liberalizing council. But this “updating” was not the only thing that Vatican II sought to accomplish.
Aggiornamento went hand in hand with an emphasis that has been described with the French word “ressourcement” (two s’s), which looks like it might mean “resourcing” (one s). It suggests something like a return to or retrieval of earlier sources of the Christian tradition (re-sourcing) that may have been neglected or forgotten but that are needed by the church for constructive engagement with the contemporary world.
(A French term is employed in this case because it was early to mid-20th-century French Catholic theologians such as Jean Danielou, Yves Congar, and Henri de Lubac who shaped this aspect of the work of Vatican II.)
Ressourcement does retrieve resources from earlier expressions of the Christian tradition, which may seem like a conservative endeavor. But it does so critically, which is not what a reactionary traditionalism does.
It can be argued that every pope since the start of the Second Vatican Council has maintained continuity with both of the council’s interconnected emphases: aggiornamento, the progressive engagement with the modern world, and ressourcement, the critical recovery of the riches of the Christian tradition to restore—and in some ways conserve—their relevance for the Church’s mission today. Each of the popes of Vatican II and beyond embodied both ressourcement and aggiornamento in their exercise of the papal office, but with varying weight behind each of the interrelated emphases.
Most recently, Pope Benedict XVI, who was a theological advisor at the Second Vatican Council, leaned heavily into the ressourcement dimension of that council’s legacy. Pope Francis embodied its aggiornamento trajectory.
But for both, the two emphases remained intertwined. So neither can be neatly categorized as conservative or liberal.
In this connection, it’s interesting to read John L Allen Jr.’s paragraph on then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in his overview of twenty “papabile” ahead of the 2005 conclave that elected instead Pope Benedict:
“Bergoglio, a Jesuit, was a trained chemist before deciding to become a priest. He is seen as an accomplished intellectual, having studied theology in Germany. His leading role during the Argentinean economic crisis in 2002 has burnished his reputation as a voice of conscience, and has also made him a potent symbol of the costs globalization can impose on the Third World. Within the Jesuits, Bergoglio’s reputation is mixed. He was appointed provincial in Buenos Aires in 1973, and at a time when many Latin American Jesuits were moving into the social apostolate, he insisted on a more traditional, spiritual approach. Bergoglio is today close to the Comunione e Liberazione movement. He comes across as traditional theologically, but open and compassionate.”
Bergoglio’s theologically traditional reputation contributed to his perception as a candidate acceptable to more conservative cardinals in the 2013 conclave. However, as Pope Francis, he became known for being “open and compassionate.”
In many ways, Francis conserved traditional theological commitments yet applied them in ways that pushed in new directions of openness, surprising some of the cardinals who elected him. Will the majority of the cardinal electors seek someone who will continue Pope Francis’ warm, open engagement? Will they prefer a pope who may offer doctrinal and moral clarity?
Or, given today’s violent conflicts in many places around the world and a growing attraction to populist authoritarian movements, might they opt for someone with more diplomatic qualities and skills?
Possibilities
Again, I will not make yet another short list of papabile, but I will mention three possibilities identified by many accounts. Ahead of the conclave, Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Parolin has received much press as a frontrunner. He was appointed to this role by Pope Francis and has extensive diplomatic experience.
This might be appealing to electors in light of current global circumstances. But here’s an oft-repeated adage about conclaves: “he who goes in as pope comes out a cardinal.”
Some observers of the pre-conclave congregations of the cardinals believe that Parolin’s place at the top of lists of papabile may already have been torpedoed by a speech made by Cardinal Beniamino Stella. Many see Stella, who is 83 and not eligible to vote, as a campaigner behind the scenes for Parolin’s candidacy.
During a daily congregation on April 30, Stella explicitly attacked Francis for bypassing the church’s tradition of linking governance to ordination by opening positions of governance in the Vatican to laypersons, including lay women. It is reported that many cardinals were shocked by this break with Francis by someone linked closely with Parolin.
It has been suggested that Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, the Archbishop of Bologna, is an alternative to Parolin. Zuppi has worked closely with the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay-led community that engages in ecumenical work with the poor and migrants and is involved extensively in peacemaking initiatives. Zuppi was instrumental in negotiating peace agreements in conflicts in Africa.
Another candidate perceived as representing continuity with Francis is Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle of the Philippines. He’s been nicknamed “the Asian Francis.” German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is 92 years old and cannot vote, said he was sure the electors would choose someone to pursue Francis’ progressive agenda.
Several other names are repeated in journalists’ lists of papabile. One that appears in just a few is South Korean Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung-sik. I mention him because, as the father of a Korean son, I’m personally intrigued by the possibility.
I’m also encouraged by reading that You Heung-sik has been actively involved in the Focolare movement, a lay-led Catholic ecumenical movement founded by Catholic laywoman Chiara Lubich. The movement requires its leader to be a layperson. Among its ventures is New City Press, the publisher of my book “Baptists, Catholics, and the Whole Church: Partners in the Pilgrimage to Unity.”
A Catholic friend has suggested that a pope from Asia might resist the polarizations of the Western church in ways that would benefit the whole church. He notes Asian Catholicism has, in some ways, more deeply received Vatican II in a way that transcends divided Western responses to it.
German Cardinal Walter Kasper, retired Secretary of what is now the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, was instrumental in making possible Phase II of the Baptist-Catholic ecumenical dialogue that met from 2006 to 2010. During our 2009 meeting in Rome, he joined our joint commission for a memorable session to informally share his candid perspectives on ecumenism.
Now 92 years old, he cannot vote in the conclave, but earlier this week he shared with an Italian newspaper his similarly candid thoughts about the conclave:
“I believe that there is a very clear expectation [that] people want a pope to follow Francis—a pastor who knows the language of the heart, who does not close himself in palaces….Of course, there are also cardinals who hope for a change of direction with respect to Francis. But my impression…is that the majority of cardinals are in favor of continuity [with Francis].”
As a non-Catholic observer of Catholicism who believes that the selection of the next pope has significant implications for all Christians and the whole world, I would personally be thrilled if Kasper proves to be right.
But whoever becomes pope, it will be helpful to resist categorizing him as liberal, conservative, progressive or traditionalist. The next pope will surely embody the interrelationship of ressourcement (retrieval of the tradition for the needs of the present) and aggiornamento (updating the church’s engagement with the world) in ways that may be more like Francis or more like Benedict.
But like Francis in particular, he is likely to surprise us with the manner in which his papacy relates the two emphases to one another.
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Professor of Historical Theology at Gardner-Webb University. Harmon is serving as a GFM correspondent for the papal conclave in Rome.
