Pope Francis and the Government of the Church

Pope Francis has been back in the Vatican for just over a week, with at least seven more of recovery to go, all during which his doctors have ordered him to keep a loose schedule and a very much lightened work load.

The question, then, becomes: How will things work, with Francis not working (at least not that much)?

The Cardinal-Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, has given the press to understand that the curial machine is already gearing up to compensate for the Pope’s absence from the daily grind.

Other old curial hands have said much the same.

Cardinal Fernando Filoni, currently serving as Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre but better known to Vatican types as the talented senior diplomat and olim Substitute—basically papal Chief-of-Staff—of the Secretariat of State, compared the government of the Church today to that of a family whose father is in difficulty and in which the children must provide for the most urgent needs.

There is precious little without precedent in the Church, which is after all a two thousand-year-old institution, and in this case one need not look any further back than the pontificate of Pope St. John Paul II.

The last years of that sainted pontiff saw a weakened and fragile man who once had been an absolute dynamo, and a curial machine that continued to make decisions and carry on with the daily grind. In fact, after the death of John Paul II, his last choices were even questioned, and the episcopal appointments published in the bulletin of April 2, 2005, the day of his death, were cloaked in suspicion: Were they even papal decisions at all?.

Benedict XVI solved the problem by reconfirming almost everything almost immediately.

Later, he would obviate the problem of absentee leadership by abdicating the office when he realized his strength was failing him.

Drawing a parallel with those days is inevitable, but there is no perfect symmetry in nature and in any case there are several important differences between then and now.

The first difference concerns the method of governance.

Pope Francis has centralized all decisions. He has often acted instinctively, quickly, and against consultations. In others, he has been more cautious. Indeed, the fact that he has governed with more than 70 motu proprio, that is, documents that came directly from the papal will, shows that the Pope not only did not need his choices to be shared but did not even seek to share.

John Paul II, on the other hand, governed in a collegial manner.

Not all of his openness and intuitions were loved and approved by his collaborators. Intense discussions happened. They involved John Paul II’s best friends and staunchest supporters, but—and this is crucially important—those friends and allies were real counselors and advisors who often did not share the pope’s view of things and were not afraid to say so.

. For example, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was never a big fan of the peace meetings in Assisi, not because of the theme or the dialogue between religions but rather because of the religious syncretism that one risked breathing. When John Paul II decided to request forgiveness during the Jubilee—another example—that decision was also discussed and contested.

However, those debates led to explanations rather than closures or exclusions.

For example, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a booklet on requests for forgiveness, contextualizing and explaining them. In the end, the discussion was not about the Pope. It was about the Church. And every one of the pope’s decisions had to be explained in order to maintain the unity of the Church, not to oppose those who opposed them.

Pope Francis has made radical inclusion one of the banners of his pontificate. His “who am I to judge,” pronounced upon returning from Rio de Janeiro, where he had been for the World Youth Day, represented the guidelines of the pontificate. Inclusive radicality for divorced and remarried people – on whom there has not been a clear doctrinal line – but also on blessings for irregular couples, always on the border between doctrine and practice, but always, in the end, leaving outside the fence those who pointed out the difficulties of the choices.

Thus, inclusive radicality for all becomes radical exclusion when one turns to look inside the Church herself. Pope Francis did not fail to brand as “backslider” those who did not share his vision, sometimes without bothering to go and see the deep reasons for their positions but attributing to these decisions a significance more socio-political than religious.

This radical exclusion, combined with strong centralization, becomes a significant limitation of this last part of the pontificate of Pope Francis.

The Pope is almost invisible; he no longer governs except for the most urgent matters, and indeed, if he recovers, he will apply his priorities to the agenda of the Church. But no one can say they can help him govern because any possible help could one day be considered a betrayal of the sovereign’s will.

For a pontificate that in recent years has been based on the question of the “papal will,” even to make controversial decisions, we now find ourselves in a situation where the papal will cannot be fully defined. The Pope, who never wanted gatekeepers, now finds himself having to accept that those who monitor his health at Santa Marta can decide who enters his room and who does not.

In the meantime, there are various open questions, all to be resolved.

There are stories of letters asking to speed up transitions with sudden choices, to appoint new heads of commissions, and to provide new points of reference in this difficult transition. These letters follow initial inputs from the Pope. However, to what extent these inputs have now been accelerated by the Pope himself is not known.

Compared to the time of John Paul II, there is uncertainty in the government because nothing can be attributed to the Pope. This does not mean that the Pope should be considered incapacitated, and it is certainly not the time to discuss a possible resignation of the Pope.

Pope Francis is there, he is lucid, and among other things, a possible resignation today would be subjected to the scrutiny of history: is it a voluntary resignation or a resignation dictated by the circumstances? If it were the second case, it would not be valid.

To what extent can we live in this suspended situation?

To what extent will the cardinals, unaware of the real Pope’s conditions of which no timely information is given, feel free to make decisions involving the universal Church? And to what extent will the following decisions be the Pope’s?

The issue of the Church’s governance in these times is crucial. The cardinals will also scrutinize the way in which the Church has been governed when they meet one day to decide on Peter’s 266th successor.