Pope Francis: How much does the lack of a legal framework weigh?

Pope Francis has been back in the Domus Sanctae Marthae for two weeks now, after more than a month in Rome’s Gemelli hospital. Besides a brief apparition on Sunday, at the end of the Mass for the Jubilee of the Sick, the Pope has not been seen publicly after the surprise stop at Santa Maria Maggiore. Information about his health arrives twice weekly and tells of improvements and the Pope’s good mood.

Nevertheless, we cannot expect the Pope to show up every time, and even his brief participation to the liturgy yesterday was a sort of surprise. In short, we will increasingly have to deal with an invisible Pope.

The Pope’s invisibility is a new fact in the Church’s recent history. John Paul II, although ill and almost unable to speak, never gave up being seen by people. His illness was exhibited publicly and functioned as a great Christian testimony of acceptance of pain and of the path toward eternal life.

Pope Francis has a different approach. Even the use of the wheelchair was carefully considered. The Pope wants to appear strong, capable of withstanding significant fatigue and does not want to give up any contact with people.

On January 9, already suffering respiratory distress, he met with the diplomatic corps. He did not read the speech but greeted everyone individually without sparing himself. He did the same on February 9, when he presided over the Mass for the Jubilee of the military. He did not read the homily but remained cold for two hours and then greeted everyone he could.

Today, we know that effort contributed to the exacerbation of conditions that led to the crisis that put him in hospital for almost a month and a half. And we also know that at that time, the Pope was fighting with bilateral polymicrobial pneumonia.

But Pope Francis’s condition must also make us reflect on the government of the Church.

No decision can be taken without the Pope. In sede vacante, the cardinals meet in a general congregation and decide only on some practical and ordinary questions. But everything else concerns the Pope and only the Pope.

And yet, the life of the Church goes on.

With Pope Francis recovering, Cardinal Pietro Parolin has made it known that only the most urgent dossiers will be submitted to the Pope. Ironically, the Secretariat of State has returned to its centrality at what appears to be the end of his pontificate.

In twelve years, Pope Francis has never changed the leadership of the Secretariat of State but has increasingly eroded its powers. The Secretariat of State had been identified as a sort of deep state inside the Church’s central governing apparatus, and Pope Francis was wary of it as such from the outset. Pope Francis had not even included the Secretary of State in the Council of Cardinals, originally the C8. Parolin attended meetings and joined the kitchen cabinet in July of 2014, more than a year after it had been created.

And again, the Secretariat of State first lost the presidency of the Cardinalatial Commission of the Institute for the Works of Religion and was wholly ousted from the Commission in the last mandate, thus ending a tradition of collaboration between the Holy See’s central financial institution and its institutional body.

Even from the point of view of communication, the Secretariat of State has been sidelined.

Pope Francis created the Dicastery of Communication, which includes a direction of the Holy Press Office, which depended directly on the Apostolic Palace for years. Thus, we find ourselves with a structure that receives bulletins from the Secretariat of State, through which all appointments pass, but which no longer depends solely on the Secretariat of State in terms of communication.

Pope Francis, in short, has always governed without a Secretariat of State, using his personal channels for diplomatic matters and his connections for key decisions.

Today, the Secretariat of State has returned to being the body to which everyone refers. It is normal. In a confusion of powers and decisions, one looks to the institution. The point is that the government remains weak if the institution is weakened.

In these circumstances, we see the dramatic nature of Pope Francis’ pontificate explode with force.

For years, the Pope has worked on a reform of the Curia that was supposed to be a change of mentality. However, this reform, studied with the help of expensive external consultants, has not been so much concerned with the mindset of the structures. The idea, very functionalist, is that restructuring things would produce a new mentality. That a resounding division of powers would eradicate corruption. The opening to new forms of government, such as synodality or roles of responsibility for women, would lead to a new world.

But reforms are made by people, not by structures. Terrible structures can do some excellent work because of the quality of the people who work within them. It is also the case that excellent structures can enhance the work of mediocre people. Bad elements will always find a way to ruin the work of good and even excellent people, given world enough and time.

In Pope Francis’s view of things, it was the Church’s missionary élan that needed to be reinvigorated, and he sought that more than he did a reform of structures, many of which he simply destroyed and others of which he sidestepped or basically disabled. If there had to be a legal question, it concerned the Pope himself, his role, his power, the delegations he could give personally.

Benedict XVI’s resignation not only created the figure of Pope Emeritus, whom Pope Francis had never intervened in during nine years of cohabitation. It also highlighted the possibility of a Pope resigning and, therefore, the need to understand under what conditions the Pope should resign or who should govern in the case of a long-ill Pope.

Today, one can get sick and remain alive for a long time. Pius VI continued to as Pope even in exile. But what happens when the Pope is there, is lucid, but cannot, for objective reasons, verify everything?

This is the question of the impeded see and of the government of the Church in the case of a Pope who may be invisible for any number of reasons.

The question of the legitimacy of the stand-in government will remain so long as the absence of a clear law (or a clear expression of the will of the Pope) persists.

Nothing new under the sun.

It also happened with John Paul II. It is true. And Benedict XVI wanted to avoid a situation like that, so he gave up. But precisely because it has already happened, it would have been good to start giving a legal framework to the whole business.

Pope Francis has instead focused everything on himself, acting on the institutions and not on the tasks, emphasizing his leadership to the detriment of the government. Today, he finds himself managing a situation that was probably not what he had imagined simply because he did not think of providing an actual government structure.

Thus, the invisible pontificate does show us one thing: The Church cannot be without a leader, even if that leader is only present through law.

In the end, someone will take the role because unity is needed. Perhaps this phase of the pontificate is the end of the parenthesis of the Church as a “field hospital.”

Because, if we continue to live in an emergency, we do not plan for the future. A great paradox of this pontificate is that the outgoing Church now risks curling up on itself, and the Pope cannot help but stand by and watch.