Pope Francis elicited so much passion during his papacy and even more so after his death that it is true to say that the map of Catholicism has dramatically shifted. In the privacy of our homes, on the streets, at the airports, train stations, and literally everywhere two or more people are gathered, the word now is Conclave. I will not be surprised if many babies born these few days will be named Conclave or Conclavina. For the next few days, the world will hold its breathe, keep vigil, as it awaits a waft of smoke, determined by two colours of black or white.
Everyone seems to be invested in the outcome of this conclave and almost every tongue has a view about the next Pope. I imagine that between betting shops and stock exchanges, so many deals are being traded. In a manner of speaking, everyone has become catholic as all eyes and ears are focused on what happens in the Vatican in the next few days or weeks.
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Arising from this has been the issue of appropriation of the losers and winners. So, the questions we hear are: who might the next pope be, where should he come from, what interests or views should he represent, will he be conservative or progressive, will he uphold or discard the dreams and visions and legacy of Pope Francis?
On paper, these questions are important and it is a great thing that the world is focused on the outcome of the conclave. By whatever standards, coming at a time of great upheavals around the world, Pope Francis rode the crest of public events and made a rich harvest out of the media. Through his person, his messages, and his interactions, including posing for a selfie now and again with young people, he warmed his way into the hearts of so many people of all ages, including people of all faiths and of none. He changed the way the world saw the Catholic Church. During the twelve years of his papacy he took on themes that would set the tone for evangelization well beyond his tenure.
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Early in his papacy, precisely in 2014, he asked the Religious, Men and Women living in both apostolic communities and contemplative monasteries, to Wake up the World. He sent out a clear message calling on a morally wounded world to look at itself through a mirror. His key themes were: Mission, Evangelization, Migration, Structural and Climate Justice, Peace, Dialogue, Inclusion, Friendship, Joy, Loneliness, Women, Youth, Human Fraternity and Environment. He forced a world ravaged by greed to become more humane. He used the notion of Synodality as a Tent to hold together his dreams of the Church and the world he visualized, a human community of God’s children walking together, listening to one another beyond the walls erected by the powerful. He called for care for one another and for our common home with mutual love and respect.
In openly confronting contemporary issues, Pope Francis set himself up against the power structures of the world. Thus, for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, for a broad spectrum of humanity, Pope Francis disturbed the waters, as indeed did Jesus whose message Pope Francis sought always to courageously proclaim in fidelity and in truth. Against this backdrop, the world is alert, asking what will happen. There are those who want a Pope who will continue where Pope Francis left off, who will continue to uphold the things that Pope Francis stood for. Then of course, there are those who want a pope who will dismantle what they consider the heretical route of Pope Francis.
There are those who believe that a pope from Africa, where the Church is growing and where they claim to see signs of great moral clarity, would address their issues. This is a view held by those who believe that the response of the Bishops of Africa to the debate on LGBT and their muscular defense of the family, captured in their response to the 2023 Vatican Document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Fiducia Supplicans (Supplicating Trust), offered a kind of clarity that the Church badly needed. There are also those who believe that a pope from Asia is long overdue. However, the Catholic Church does not simply allocate positions based on geography or quotas.
So, what should we expect from this conclave? Whatever kind of Pope we want, determined by our ideological or theological or emotional expectations, it is important that we remember that the Church will only get a leader after God’s heart. God is and has always been a God of surprises. God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Is. 55:8). He calls whom He wants. We remember David and how God made him King: the poor boy was the last born, sent to tend his father’s flock, totally oblivious of what was unfolding behind him. Samuel the prophet focused on human qualities of his more senior and matured brothers but God had other ideas (I Sam 16ff). Gideon was the weakest person from the weakest family from the weakest tribe (Judg 6:15). Nehemiah was called to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem(Neh. 2: 1ff). Peter, Andrew, James and John, were called while fishing. Imagine Paul, persecutor of Christians called to be Apostle to the Gentiles(Acts 9).
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In the 16th century, both Philip Neri (1515- 1595) and Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) are said to have rejected to sit on the chair of Peter. In 1978, after 15 years of Pope Paul V1, Pope John Paul I was elected. Known as the smiling pope, his brief reign marked the end of papal grandeur and his smile opened a new phase. Imagine what the world would have been like if Pope John Paul 11 had not emerged to mark the end of history. It is understandable that the world has its bets and expectations about the next pope. But, we must deliberately escape allowing the world to define the Church by its ideological straightjackets of left, right, conservatives, progressives or liberals as the case may be. The task of every pope is to uphold the teachings of Jesus Christ as successor of St. Peter. Popes will be seen differently largely because of the moral authority they wield, and it is natural that various interests will constellate around the pope as a person and the Church as an institution.
At the end of it all, God will choose a pope after His own heart to do His will on earth. It is not a contest for popularity. There are hardly any expert guesses because only He knows whom He wants at the particular time. He does not call the qualified, rather, he qualifies those he calls (1 Cor. 1: 27). The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof (Ps. 24: 1). He is Lord of time and history. He has the world in the palm of His hands. He calls every star by its name (Ps. 147: 4). The Lord is not subject to either arm-twisting or influence. To hang the future elections of a new pope or his legitimacy on the legacy of Pope Francis is to mistake the messenger for the Message.
Pope Francis was indeed a great pope. He listened to the command of Christ to cast his net into the deep; he did and has brought fish of different shapes and sizes (Lk. 5: 2). We do not want a black, white or yellow pope. The Lord will give us a pope using the human instruments that He has used since he handed those keys to Peter. In the end, we will all look back and be glad that while we hedged our bets, God was doing what He does best, appoint through humans someone after His heart. After the white smoke, we will continue to walk and talk together. The journey is long, but we will march on in faith. Our new pope will not be a successor of Francis but of Peter. The Catholic Church is One, Holy and Apostolic.
