Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. John Paul II, on ‘Emigration in Search of Work’)

“[T]he person working away from his native land, whether as a permanent emigrant or as a seasonal worker, should not be placed at a disadvantage in comparison with the other workers in that society in the matter of working rights. Emigration in search of work must in no way become an opportunity for financial or social exploitation. As regards the work relationship, the same criteria should be applied to immigrant workers as to all other workers in the society concerned. The value of work should be measured by the same standard and not according to the difference in nationality, religion or race. For even greater reason the situation of constraint in which the emigrant may find himself should not be exploited. All these circumstances should categorically give way, after special qualifications have of course been taken into consideration, to the fundamental value of work, which is bound up with the dignity of the human person. Once more the fundamental principle must be repeated: the hierarchy of values and the profound meaning of work itself require that capital should be at the service of labor and not labor at the service of capital.”—Polish-born pope St. John Paul II (1920-2005), in the encyclical Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”), issued Sept. 14, 1981

Photo of the Day: Saint Anthony Chapel, Pittsburgh PA

I took the image accompanying this post three weeks ago, on a short visit to Pittsburgh.

While touring the Troy Hill neighborhood on the city’s North Side, a close relative and I had hoped to see the venerable shrine. Unfortunately it was closed when we came around noon on a Friday, and we had to move on. But as I stood outside, even its exterior filled me with an aesthetic and spiritual sense of wonder.

The two-steepled Saint Anthony Chapel is laid out in a cruciform shape (i.e., in the form of a cross), with a pointed Romanesque arch at its center.

You’d never know that this modest house of worship, built to minister to a predominantly German immigrant population towards the end of the 19^th century, contains what is believed to be the greatest collection of relics outside the Vatican.

Although the relic dealing directly with St. Anthony of Padua here is a molar (the only part of the saint outside his hometown in Italy), more than 5,000 relics of other saints are contained inside, arranged in altars and side cases constructed of hand-carved solid walnut. Saints represented include the first martyr, Stephen; Frances of Rome, Philip Neri, Macharius and Stephana.

The dynamic force in collecting all of this was the shrine’s founder, the Belgian-born Father Suitbert G. Mollinger. He was able to secure so many relics because he traveled so widely and used his family’s great wealth for the acquisitions.

After Fr. Mollinger died in 1892, the chapel passed into the hands of the Archdiocese of Pittsburgh, which considered closing it when it couldn’t afford repairs because of hard financial times for the area in the late 1970s. Luckily the crisis was averted and the shrine remains for pilgrims offering prayers.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Gorman Beauchamp, on the Vatican Amid ‘A Veritable Tsunami of Apology’)

“We live amid a veritable tsunami of apology. The Catholic Church, which, of course, has much to apologize for, has, of late, offered mea culpas to Galileo, the Jews, the gypsies, Jan Hus, whom it burned at the stake in 1415, even to Constantinople (now Istanbul) for its sacking 800 years ago by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, an event for which the late John Paul II expressed ‘deep regret.’ No wonder that a group in England, claiming descent from the medieval Knights Templars, is asking the Vatican to apologize for the violent suppression of the order and for torturing to death its Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1314, an apology timed to commemorate the 700th anniversary of that fell deed.”— American literary critic and scholar Gorman Beauchamp, “Apologies All Around,” The American Scholar, Autumn 2007

Almost lost in the hoopla over last week’s release of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical about AI (which I will try to discuss sometime in the near future), was his apology for the Catholic Church’s role in legitimizing slavery and centuries-old slowness over condemning the practice.

A couple of days later, I came across Beauchamp’s appraisal of expressions of regret by major nations and institutions over past injustices. If he took in the pontiff’s more recent statement, I can’t imagine he regarded it with anything other than cynicism.

To some extent, Beauchamp’s outburst was understandable, as he wrote it when cries for reparations, most notably for slavery, began to gain steam in legislatures across the country. Still, there seemed something altogether too categorical with his concluding sour plea, “No more apologies.”

Within a couple of years, the Grouchy Gus persona adopted by Beauchamp spread through American conservative circles. Although Barack Obama never used any form of the words “apology” or “sorry,” his remarks to foreign countries about America’s past tangled history in his first term fed a myth that he had done so.

It all climaxed in Mitt Romney’s charge during his 2012 debates with the President that he had been on an “apology tour”—a phrase that Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in a different context, would have called “boob bait for the bubbas,” or tough-sounding rhetoric meant to turbo-charge populist hordes. It was not one of the shining moments of Romney's career, and one that I'm sure he would prefer that people forget.

During his first year at the Vatican, Pope Leo was extremely cautious, making some moves that helped mollify the Church’s right wing that had smarted over the more spontaneous Pope Francis (e.g., calling for “generous inclusion” of those attached to the Latin Mass). But I’m afraid that President Trump’s increasingly intemperate outbursts (including, this weekend, his third) about Leo have neutralized that effort toward internal unity.

One sign of the end of this era of good feeling came in Christopher Tremoglie’s essay a few days ago in the conservative Washington Examiner, which posited that the pope and other liberals should have saved their breath, because it was African chiefs, waging war on fellow rulers and selling as chattel to whites, who were really responsible for the African slave trade.

Leo is not engaging in the “woke culture” or “white guilt” that has led Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and other GOP politicians to interfere in how Americans learn about the greatest stain in our history.

Instead, experience—in dealing with emerging Third World countries considering their relationship to Catholicism, and in tracing mixed-race Black creoles on his mother’s side of the family—has taught Leo how complicated and wounding the Church’s attitude towards slavery has been over the centuries.

It started with ecclesial institutions owning slaves themselves in the Middle Ages, and continued with Renaissance popes legitimizing the quest of Spanish and Portuguese conquerors to subjugate and seize the lands of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ" anywhere, according to Nicole Winfield's article for the National Catholic Reporter.

Africans now account for roughly 20% of the Church’s population worldwide. Moreover, it is growing rapidly not just in overall numbers but also, in contrast to what has been happening in the U.S. and Western Europe, in terms of seminarians, priests, and nuns.

For conservatives holding the line against any changes, if the Church hopes to retain its ban on clerical celibacy, it will have to import to the U.S. many of these African-trained religious personnel. And to appeal to these people entering the ranks of the religious, the church must own up to its past terrible mistakes related to the continent.

But another aspect of acknowledging past injustices, whether the Vatican’s or the West’s in general, is being lost. Formally admitting these mistakes not only has the potential to heal the wounded but to remind others why they would feel this way in the first place.

Slavery perpetrated over centuries, for instance, permeated virtually every aspect of culture and commerce over much of the world. Given that all-pervasive influence, nobody should imagine that it would not leave psychic stains on those it injured.

All the same, don’t be surprised if the pope’s right-wing critics begin to resurrect that “apology tour” bit. Only the next time, I want that “tour” to be comprised of Donald Trump and his supporters displaying proper penitence for denouncing a not-at-all-radical pontiff trying to speak plainly about the facts of history.

Pope, Pentagon, and Imperial Impiety

So much chaos erupted on multiple fronts with the Trump Administration in the last 10 days that it’s easy to lose sight of the astonishing Free Press report that in January, Pentagon officials issued a veiled threat to the former papal nuncio that the Vatican had better side with the President on foreign-policy issues—or else.

This news item should concern all Americans, but especially Roman Catholics, one of the key electoral swing groups of the Trump era. (An estimated 56% of American Catholics voted for the President in 2024.)

Although it can be problematic to ascribe a single motive to a demographically diverse group like Catholics, GOP officials have surely been pleased that the church’s hierarchy emphasized so-called cultural issues like abortion and LBGTQ.

It encouraged voters to put in the background matters of relatively secondary interest to the archbishops, such as the rights of labor, economic justice, international peace, and humane treatment of immigrants—to say nothing of a return to power by the lone Presidential candidate since the Civil War to contest election results and foment a domestic insurrection.

I wish but don’t expect that archbishops and parish priests will use their sermons to address the disquieting report about the Pentagon meeting with the papal nuncio (a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See, in effect an ambassador).

Administration officials and voters still in their thrall have predictably dismissed it as—take your pick—“fake news,” “uncorroborated” or “highly exaggerated.”

Those terms cannot be applied to what has happened since Sunday, however, including:

*Trump’s remarks to a reporter that he was “not a big fan” of Pope Leo XIV, adding “He likes crime, I guess”;

*The President’s lengthy, deranged—and, of course, spectacularly self-centered—Truth Social post claiming, among other things, that Leo “wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”;

*A later Truth Social post—equally demented, but this time blasphemous—depicting Trump as Jesus ministering to the sick (the image accompanying this post);

* A subsequent news conference in which the President ludicrously declared that this latter AI-generated meme didn’t show him as Jesus but as a doctor.

A confession here: I have never voted for Trump, and it would not be hard to find posts of mine that have criticized him. 

At the same time, accepting at face value any report that confirms one’s biases—including those that, like this one, cited anonymous sources— damages a writer’s credibility and persuasiveness. 

So, when I first heard the Pentagon meeting news in fragmentary form, I wanted to know how much, if any, of it could be validated.

My conclusion, after reading the initial Free Press story, follow-up accounts, and other reports on the principals involved, is that, while not all details are demonstrably true, enough are verifiable that they should prompt soul-searching among past and present Trump-leaning members of the American hierarchy and the faithful who followed their electoral cues.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni has issued a formal statement declaring that “the narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting is completely untrue.”

“Completely untrue”? Not so fast. 

Possibly, despite what the Free Press article claimed, Pope Leo XIV had other reasons for not visiting America on July 4 than anger or fear over the threat. Even if he might now be reluctant to come while Trump is still President, he could be persuaded otherwise eventually.

In addition, the provenance of the publication may, in this case if few others, underscore the report’s credibility. 

The Free Press cannot be dismissed as a progressive news outlet like MS-NOW or CNN, given that it remains true to the editorial philosophy of co-founder Bari Weiss, who now runs CBS News. It has no motive for publishing a story in which the Trump administration appears bullying.

Moreover, the meeting did take place. While not characterizing the encounter’s tone, the Vatican Embassy, or apostolic nunciature, in Washington told Catholic news and information service OSV News, that the meeting occurred. In addition, there’s a picture of the then-nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, with Defense Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, issued by the Religion News Service, a credible outlet.

The Financial Times has an article about what seems to have happened:

An American present—not Colby—alluded to the Avignon papacy, infamous in European history as the site of a “Great Schism” between pontiffs who had returned to Rome and “anti-popes” who remained in France, subject to state pressure and corruption.

Other Americans at the meeting, who had hoped to smooth-talk Cardinal Pierre and the pope into taking a gentler tone toward the “Dunroe Doctrine” towards Latin America, were aghast over the effect of the remark. 

That’s why an initial anonymous Pentagon source, while deriding the report as “just absurd,” did admit the meeting included “a frank exchange of views”—a diplomatic euphemism for a tense or even storm encounter.

At this point the Vatican doesn’t want a nasty fight with Trump; hence, Bruni’s disclaimer that offers no further details about what did happen.

While the Vatican Embassy termed meetings with government officials as “standard practice” for the nuncio, neither it nor the Pentagon explained why the meeting occurred in the Defense rather than State Department.

Was it an accommodation to Colby, whose grandfather William, as CIA head and a Catholic, interacted with Rome extensively in the Cold War? Or was the venue an attempt at intimidation?

If the latter, it should come as no surprise. Trump has sought to bully the press, large law firms, universities, corporations, and other non-governmental institutions. 

Why should a major religion fall outside his reach—particularly since Trump whisperer Laura Loomer has derided Leo as a “woke Marxist” for interfering with Trump’s mass deportation program?

If the allusion to the Avignon papacy is true, it would conform to a pattern in authoritarian regimes: the thuggish initiatives taken by a midlevel flunky, sure that his bosses would approve his move or, if not, cover it up.

Though MAGA influencers expressed shock about Trump’s vile actions and language over the Easter weekend, there is little sign yet of a re-evaluation among his base. There should be.

In particular, when his Catholic supporters consider Pope Leo’s increasingly sharp, direct criticisms of the President’s trigger-happy tendencies, they should bear in mind that he is merely conveying the consensus of the 1965 Vatican II document, “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”:

“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”

In an Atlantic Monthly essay published after remarks by Pope Leo last week, Francis X. Rocca confessed that, like many observers, he had mistakenly thought that, in comparison with Trump and even Pope Francis, Leo would be a “quiet” pontiff. But I’m not sure that Leo has stopped being “quiet” even now.

A ruthless authoritarian may prompt stances previously unthinkable under ordinary circumstances, as Thomas More, a government official who loved life, found no alternative to opposing Henry VIII. Extreme situations lead some to cowardice but others to courage.

What unites the Tudor-era saint and the American-born pontiff is an inner strength that seems confounding in a time of toadies.

More’s silent refusal to assent to Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn contrasted dramatically with courtiers and counselors who meekly went along, just as Leo’s steadfast opposition to Trump positions on immigration and national security diverges from the President’s allies within the American hierarchy (whose complicity with administration outrages I discussed in this post from last Christmas).

More of that is needed as the President breaches new moral boundaries. Will his followers take the lead of Leo, or follow Trump into ignominy?

The President’s actions over the last 10 days is forcing Catholic allies, within the administration and the American Church hierarchy, to choose sides.

J.D. Vance said the pope should stick to “morality” and not involve himself with “politics”—without explaining why a pontiff denouncing abortion is "moral" but one calling for peace is “political.”

On the other hand, Bishop Robert Barron, such an administration favorite that he’s a member of the Religious Liberty Commission established by the President, called the anti-Leo comments “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful” and urged him to apologize—a move that Trump predictably refused.

Before long, we may well find that whatever happened at the Pentagon in January is a mere dust-up compared with the unholy war that Trump now appears set on mounting against the Vatican.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Archbishop Ronald Hicks, on Being a ‘Missionary Church’)

“We are called to be a missionary Church that takes care of the poor and the vulnerable, upholds life from conception to natural death, cares for creation, builds bridges, listens synodally, protects children, promotes healing for survivors and for all those wounded by the Church, and shows respect for all, building unity across cultures and generations.”—New York Roman Catholic Archbishop Ronald Hicks, Homily at Installation, Feb. 6, 2026

Praying for a Change of Heart

Two of the most enduring holiday entertainments involve a change in the main character’s heart. In the upteen versions of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (as seen in this image), malignant miser Ebenezer Scrooge repents after late-night visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, a kind of American Christmas Carol, pulls salt-of-the-earth George Bailey from a fatal jump off a bridge, to which he’s been driven by Bedford Falls’ equivalent of Scrooge, banker Henry Potter.

For nearly three-quarters of a century, American Roman Catholics were accustomed to praying for “the conversion of Russia,” the Soviet state spearheading an atheistic assault on  religion.

This alarming Christmas season might at last induce Americans—including Catholics who constituted the key swing group in the past three Presidential elections—to pray for another dramatic change of heart: Donald Trump’s shift away from the authoritarian path he has followed more assiduously than ever before.

It’s no wonder that Silicon Valley has embraced Trump in his second term, as no American politician has so embraced one of the tech industry’s biggest mantras: “move fast and break things,” as when he quickly demolished the East Wing of the White House.

In the last two weeks, however, several incidents have increasingly called into question what PBS Newshour commentator David Brooks termed the President’s lack of “moral acuity,” including:

* telling a Bloomberg News reporter who was asking a follow-up question, “Quiet, piggy”;

* referring to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as “seriously retarded” in a Truth Social post, leading to a tripling in use of the slur on social media in the hours afterward;

* adding his name to the JFK Center for the Performing Arts, only hours after its board (whose directors were stacked in his favor) voted him the honor;

* affixing negative plaques to White House West Colonnade signs of prior presidents he loathes (e.g., Joe Biden was “the worst President in American history”);

* alleging that the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife by their son Nick was “reportedly due to the anger he caused by others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction … known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME."

Let’s spell out the unprecedented nature of these remarks and actions:

*No other President has had public buildings or monuments (re)named in their honor while in office, and in most cases this occurred after their deaths.

*No other President has publicly derided the physical attributes of female reporters.

*No other President has bandied the word “retarded” about in public to deride another person’s intelligence, like the kind of 1950s middle-schooler who used to be called “fresh.”

*No other President has falsely ascribed a family’s private tragedy—arising from one member’s addiction or depression—to public opposition to White House policy.

None of these incidents touch on policy matters. They relate only to Trump’s character, or lack of it. For that reason, in no way can his diehard defenders default to the “what-about” option they have invariably employed about his opponents.

A relative asked me recently how I thought history would judge Trump. Though I told him this would depend to a large extent on Trump himself, I think now that the larger question is how history will judge us—especially my fellow Roman Catholics—for not just putting him in power in the first place, but returning him to the Oval Office, when his instinct for unchecked power had become obvious with the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

For years, I groaned at the prospect of sermons touching in any way on government policy or officeholders. These all seemed too divisive, too oblivious to the compromises needed to advance legislation.

But Trump has fundamentally changed the situation. There is no longer any realm of life—including sports or entertainment—that is beyond his commentary and befoulment. 

To borrow what John F. Kennedy said about the racism undergirding segregation in the 1960s: “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.”

Trump’s remarks and actions beg for a forthright condemnation by the American archbishops, not the muted, passive voice-laden admonitions of their recent statement on violations of immigrants’ rights.

Over the past decade, few matters have dismayed me as much as the affection held by many Catholics for Trump. 

Just a few weeks ago, for instance, a fellow member of a Catholic group to which I belong complained that the President had been “investigated to death,” ignoring the fact that his political rise was made possible because local officials hadn’t investigated him enough early in his career.

That immunity from prosecution (including most GOP senators refusing to go along with impeachment) only ensured his current impunity in defying even legal efforts to stop him.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States cannot escape its own responsibility for the disaster now unfolding.

By emphasizing the overwhelming importance of outlawing same-sex marriage, transgender designation, abortion, or even contraception, it didn’t merely narrow the focus of what Joseph Cardinal Bernardin had rightly termed the “seamless garment of life” but effectively tore it to pieces. Other issues, such as civil rights, immigration, climate change, and economic justice, were inevitably downplayed.

The point man for this approach, and the one best exemplifying its dangers, is the now-retiring Timothy Cardinal Dolan. As President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) from 2010 to 2013, he led national church policy and advocacy, including opposition to Obamacare regulations calling for religious-affiliated institutions like hospitals and schools to provide contraception for employees.

More recently, as a recent New York Times article noted, he not only served on Trump’s “Religious Liberty Commission” but joked in a private phone call that he spoke with the President more than with his own mother.

That friendliness and solicitude were the bonds that ensured the prelate’s silence when Trump engaged in humorless insults of Democratic rivals for the Presidency at the 2016 and 2024 Al Smith Dinners, occasions normally given easygoing bipartisan joshing.

“Instead of telling Trump he was over the line, Dolan enabled him in his blasphemous effort to cast his campaign as a quasi-religious crusade and himself as a saintly martyr saved by God,” Times columnist Maureen Dowd correctly observed. “The conservative cardinal didn’t care about soiling the legacy of the great Democratic patriot Al Smith.”

Last week, when Brooks decried Trump’s lack of “moral acuity,” he elaborated on why the President's recent unhinged behavior is so disturbing: “Authoritarian leaders know that a certain part of the population likes it when they see the great leader idolized and venerated…. It is a form of psychological amassing of power to turn yourself into a demigod.”

Brooks likened such acts to those perpetrated by Mao Tse-Tung and Joseph Stalin. But there is another historical comparison that Dolan and like-minded colleagues on the USCCB might better understand: In abrasiveness, vindictiveness, financial and sexual corruption, and megalomania, the President is the modern equivalent of the pagan Roman emperors in the days of the Apostles.

Those emperors engaged in self-aggrandizement even as they persecuted the early Christians. These days, Trump has pursued self-preservation and self-aggrandizement even as he disregarded the civil liberties of undocumented aliens, many of whom are members of the very church led by Dolan and company.

In ignoring Trumpism’s increasingly open appeals to nativism, bigotry, and authoritarianism, the more conservative archbishops overlook a glaring 20^th-century dark spot in American Catholicism: the inflammatory radio broadcasts of Fr. Charles Coughlin that fueled the rise of the Christian Front in the 1930s.

They can rest assured, however, that American Jews still remember that the church hierarchy did nothing to stop Coughlin until the U.S. was at war with the Axis powers in 1942. Complicity, now as then, will breed consequences.

Photo of the Day: All Souls' Day Display, St. Cecilia Church, Englewood NJ

Over the weekend, my longtime parish, St. Cecilia, decorated a back corner of the church in connection with All Souls’ Day, in recognizing those who died in the past year.

What’s on this display in this photo I took reflects the traditional Mexican observance of Día de los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”). This corner attracted quite a throng of parishioners at the conclusion of the morning Mass I attended, and, I imagine, all the others this weekend.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. John Henry Newman, on Reason and Faith)

“[I]t is our great misfortune here, and our trial…that, where power of intellect is, there need not be virtue; and that where right, and goodness, and moral greatness are, there need not be talent. It was not so in the beginning; not that our nature is essentially different from what it was when first created; but that the Creator, upon its creation, raised it above itself by a supernatural grace, which blended together all its faculties, and made them conspire into one whole, and act in common towards one end; so that, had the race continued in that blessed state of privilege, there never would have been distance, rivalry, hostility between one faculty and another. It is otherwise now; so much the worse for us;—the grace is gone; the soul cannot hold together; it falls to pieces; its elements strive with each other. And as, when a kingdom has long been in a state of tumult, sedition, or rebellion, certain portions break off from the whole and from the central government, and set up for themselves; so is it with the soul of man.” —English Roman Catholic convert, theologian, educator, and memoirist St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), “Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training” (Sermon on the Feast of St. Monica, Aug. 27, 1856)

It was welcome news late last month when Pope Leo XIV named St. John Henry Newman, an honor bestowed through a person’s writings, teachings, and research that have influenced Catholic doctrine. Only 38 saints in the Church’s long history have received this designation, including St. Thomas Aquinas, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux.

For a summary of how Newman “influenced the thought and magisterial teachings of the Church during and after his life,” please read this essay by Benedictine College theologian Matthew Muller.

Quote of the Day (P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, on the ‘Sheer Variety’ of Popes Throughout History)

“Seventy-eight [popes] have been declared saints as well as, oddly enough, two antipopes; eight have been pronounced ‘Blessed.’ There have been seventy-seven Roman popes, one hundred Italian, fourteen French, eleven Greek, six German, six Syrian, two Sardinian, two Spanish, two African, one English, one Dutch, one Portuguese, and one Polish. Fifteen have been monks, four friars, two laymen, and one a hermit. Four have abdicated, five have been imprisoned, four murdered, one openly assassinated, one deposed, and one subjected to a public flogging. One died of wounds he received in the midst of battle, and another after a ceiling collapsed and fell on him. The sheet variety of the ways they began and ended is riveting in itself."— Scottish historian P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Papacy Over 2000 Years (1997)

Well, there is some limit to the variety of pontiffs, which you can see immediately in the accompanying composite photo: all aging white men.

Still, Maxwell-Stuart’s overall point is well-taken. Here are some updates on the helpful statistics above, as of yesterday:

*five popes have abdicated;

*83 have been declared saints;

*seven were German;

*one was Argentine;

*one is American.

Like his predecessors, Pope Leo XIV—the former Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost—will face immense challenges preaching the Gospel in a world increasingly hostile to its message of brotherhood, preserving the unity of the Church, and reaching out to other religions. He deserves our prayers, even as he prays for us.

One thing is for sure: he is likely to confound expectations, just as his predecessors back to and including Pope John XXIII did.

Media Blowing Smoke About Papal White Smoke

“It is a familiar saying around the Vatican that ‘he who goes into a conclave a pope comes out a cardinal.’ It is considered bad form to openly promote a papal candidate, even worse to appear to be campaigning for the job. Traditionally, to be considered a front-runner is almost a guarantee of failure. Yet that has never stopped Vatican observers from compiling lists of papabili—cardinals considered to be ‘popeable.’ The current lists are heavily dominated by Italians.

“No Americans are among the papabile. Modern popes generally have come from countries with little political or military power. If an American were elected, says [Jesuit priest and author Thomas] Reese, ‘people would think the election was fixed by Wall Street or the CIA.’”— Jeffery L. Sheler and Eleni Dimmler, “The Next Pope,” US News and World Report, May 11, 1998

As I’ve gotten older, I have increasingly delighted in coming across past analytical journalism to see how well they predict what will come to pass. For all the hours these scribes devoted to their beats, you’d be surprised how many flunk this basic test.

This US News and World Report article from a quarter-century ago is a good case in point. It took another seven years after its publication before Pope John Paul II died. In that time, he appointed several dozen cardinals. Just as important, several were of such an advanced age that they were no longer considered papabile by the end of his pontificate. Some were even too old even to vote by this time.

Few fields lend themselves less to such thumb-sucking exercises as papabili prognostication. Reporters look at the Roman Catholic Church, see an institution whose dogma has changed little, all things considered, over the centuries, and believe that they can scope out which cardinal will ascend the throne of St. Peter.

As far as I’m concerned, they’ve been blowing smoke about the white smoke at the end of these conclaves for years. Somehow, though, it feels worse with the one that will start on May 7 to replace Pope Francis.

I chuckled when I read the line in the above quote about how the trail of unsuccessful front-runners “has never stopped Vatican observers from compiling lists of papabile.” Precisely—the US News and World Report piece was doing just that!

My question: have Vatican insiders been compiling these to guide their personal selections for the next pope—or to amuse themselves as they take languid lunches with journalists desperate to please their bosses back home?

In many respects, I part company with the neoconservative author George Weigel and his brand of ultra-traditional Catholicism. He notes, for instance, that notwithstanding efforts by Francis to broaden Church governance, he was “the most autocratic pontiff in centuries.” Really? While Weigel might not be guilty of heresy, he certainly is of hyperbole—so much so that you couldn’t even get a devil’s advocate to argue his case convincingly.

Even so, I must agree with three points he makes in his Wall Street Journal analysis from a week ago about the upcoming conclave:

*“The cardinal-electors don't really know each other”;

*Popes, even with their appointment of many cardinals, can’t control the election of their successors;

* “Every conclave is a unique micro-environment, psychologically and spiritually.”

Considering these three points, why are so many people foolhardy enough to think they’ll know what will happen?

The speculation about the winner at the conclave has become ridiculous. A combined $17 million have changed hands on the prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi, according to Alexander Osipovich’s article in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal.

Complicating all of this even further is the misleading lens through which the media interprets the factions within the Church in general and the conclave in particular. Whatever divisions exist in the hierarchy—and they are real—they don’t neatly align with Democratic and Republican policies.

For all their orthodoxy on sexual issues, for instance, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were largely indistinguishable from Pope Francis on matters of war and peace and their deep skepticism of unrestrained capitalism.

So there is a strong possibility that whoever is selected at the end of this process will fulfill neither the greatest hopes nor worst fears of those watching the proceedings with burning interest.

I hope—no, I pray—that the cardinals conclude their deliberations swiftly. I just don’t think I can take much more of this ill-informed silly season.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Margery Kempe, Speaking Truth to Clerical and Temporal Power)

“Sir, I also hear it said that you are a wicked man. And if you are as wicked as people say, you will never get to heaven, unless you amend while you are here.”—English medieval housewife, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438), answering the Archbishop of York (who had just told her “I hear it said that you are a very wicked woman”), in The Book of Margery Kempe (ca. 1436), translated by B. A. Windeatt (1985)

The climax of the Oscar-nominated movie Conclave occurs when Sister Agnes (played by Isabella Rossellini) makes a crucial revelation before the College of Cardinals. “Although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears,” she says.

The scene, like the larger movie, is a challenge to the patriarchy that has dominated the Roman Catholic Church for centuries—and, in its way, an echo of the above earlier pointed rebuke by Margery Kempe, who wrote (in the third person) what is believed to be the earliest surviving autobiography in English.

The current century has found the Church in a rolling crisis, its most tumultuous since the Reformation—its religious orders depopulating, its churches emptying, its coffers drained by clerical abuse settlements, and its counsels often unheeded. 

Even aside from a failure to take women into its hierarchy, the Church is finally paying the price for the alternating carping and obliviousness that its worst male leaders have displayed toward the females in their pews, even as they covered up the worst offenses of each other.

At the next papal conclave, however soon that occurs, the assembled cardinals will do far more than pick their next leader. They will also choose the fundamental direction of the Church, which, for its own survival, must be a belated attempt to do what Margery Kempe urged centuries ago: “amend while you are here.”

More widely, Kempe's rejoinder applies to the patriarchy that exists in governments around the world. Substitute "nasty woman" for "wicked woman" and the archbishop's fit of pique will sound all too familiar to citizens of the United States these last eight years.

Quote of the Day (Pope Gregory VII, ‘Oppressed’ by Multiple Challenges)

“The Eastern Church fallen from the faith, and attacked by the infidels from without. In the West, South, or North, scarcely any bishops who have obtained their office regularly, or whose life and conduct correspond to their calling, and who are actuated by the love of Christ instead of worldly ambition. Nowhere princes who prefer God’s honor to their own, and justice to gain…. And when I look to myself, I feel oppressed by such a burden of sin that no other hope of salvation is left me but in the mercy of Christ alone.”— Hildebrand of Sovana, later Pope Gregory VII (1020-1085), in a letter to his friend, Abbot Hugo of Cluny, Jan. 22, 1075, quoted by Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (1907)

The new film adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel Conclave spotlights, amid the election of a new pope, deeply unholy political infighting, corruption, and clerical disobedience of vows of chastity.

I was going to write that readers and filmgoers—with attention spans shortened to a TikTok clip and little if any historical background—may be surprised to learn that the same problems besieged the Vatican nearly a millennium ago.

But now I read that German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, and—ahem!—TV commentator Megyn Kelly have blasted the thriller for depicting such issues in a manner that Cardinal Muller has termed “anti-Christian propaganda,” according to Edward Pentin’s January 20 blog post for National Catholic Register.

Clearly, these outraged worthies haven’t read one of the greatest of medieval popes, Gregory VII, on the same subjects.

According to legend, the reforming Benedictine monk Hildebrand, on a wave of popular acclamation, was carried into the church in St. Peter’s in Vincoli (an easy task to perform, as he was dwarfish), and elected pope in 1073, protesting all the while his unworthiness for the office.

Maybe the anguish that Hildebrand (who took the name Gregory) felt before and while serving as the successor of St. Peter was the kind that the intensely pious exhibit in measuring how far they fall from the injunction in Matthew 5:48 to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Or maybe he dreaded the enormous problems that had plagued his mentor, Pope Gregory VI—including exile into Germany forced at the behest of Emperor Henry III.

From the first, Gregory VII denounced the growing practice of simony, the sale of church offices or ecclesiastical preferments, and soon he also banned lay investiture, or bestowal of a church office by a member of the secular nobility rather than by church officials, and clerical marriage.

His actions sparked an epic clash with Emperor Henry IV that weakened both. Like his successors to this day, Gregory had to keep church objectives in mind even as he dealt with secular rulers. The problem was that he and Henry IV could not—or chose not—to move beyond non-negotiable positions.

Medieval monarchs like Henry saw, in appointing bishops to their offices, the opportunity to break the hereditary rule of lords, with bishops becoming vassals of kings. Countering the notion that Henry advocated of the divine right of kings, Gregory proclaimed a spiritual authority higher than a temporary power.

Though never using the word “infallible,” Gregory laid the groundwork for the doctrine by positing that the Holy See “did not err.” Pure and ascetic himself, the pope could never imagine that the supreme power he pronounced over spiritual and secular affairs in the name of removing clerical corruption might ever be used to conceal it.

Like so many reformers in all walks of life, Gregory exhibited a zeal and anger that upset his targets. (German bishops, for instance, complained that he treated them like bailiffs on an estate.) At his best, however, he was as fearless as he was fierce, overcoming his initial self-doubt, and even surviving a kidnapping and imprisonment before being liberated by many of the faithful at the end of 1075.

Henry IV could never forget his humiliating winter journey to the castle of Canossa in 1077 to beg the pope’s forgiveness as the first step in lifting his excommunication. Three years later, he invaded Rome, replacing Gregory with an “anti-pope.”

"I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore, I die in exile,” Gregory remarked sadly on his deathbed in 1085.

Church historian Eamon Duffy has rendered the most judicious assessment of the pontiff in Ten Popes Who Shook the World:

“To 19th-century Protestant politicians like Bismarck, it [the meeting at Canossa] embodied the overweening claims of a power-mad Church, a humiliating defeat for the autonomy of the secular world that must never be repeated….

“Gregory was defeated in the short term, but he changed the world all the same. Other popes would avoid such all-out confrontation, but never again would the Church accept the right of kings and rulers to determine spiritual matters. Whatever Gregory’s intentions, a lasting line had been drawn between the claims of conscience and the claims of state power. And under this overbearing autocratic pope, human freedom took one small, uncertain step forward.”

Nevertheless, spiritual leaders who dare to openly confront wayward politicians continue to encounter peril, as Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is experiencing now following her inauguration day sermon directed to President Trump at Washington Cathedral. (I doubt that anyone would want to read the kind of messages she must be receiving from MAGA followers following their leader’s whining, abusive tweet.)

(For original source material on the escalating clash between the "City of God" and the "City of Man" in the Middle Ages, see a volume edited by Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300.)

This Day in Catholic History (Birth of Pius IV: Compromise Conclave Choice, Arts Patron and Counter-Reformation Pontiff)

 

Mar. 31, 1499— Gian Angelo Medici, who as Pope Pius IV brought to a successful conclusion a council that would guide Church doctrine and practices for the next four centuries, exerted a moderating influence on policy, and served as a patron of Renaissance artists, was born to an impoverished family in Milan, Italy.

Mark that place of birth—this branch of the Medicis did not partake of the activities of the flamboyant Florentine family who, as mercantile princes, cut a wide swath through Renaissance commerce and the arts. The papacy had three successors to Saint Peter (Leo X, Clement VII, and Leo XI) who came from the latter portion of the clan—and their accomplishments were dubious (the first two) when not minimal (the third).

The obliviousness of Pius’ 16^th-century predecessors had left the Church vulnerable to the challenges of Martin Luther and other key figures of the Protestant Reformation. As historian Barbara Tuchman noted in The March of Folly:

“The folly of the popes was not pursuit of counter-productive policy so much as rejection of any steady or coherent policy either political or religious that would have improved their situation or arrested the rising discontent. Disregard of the movements and sentiments developing around them was a primary folly. They were deaf to disaffection, blind to the alternative ideas it gave rise to, blandly impervious to challenge, unconcerned by the dismay at their misconduct and the rising wrath at their misgovernment, fixed in refusal to change, almost stupidly stubborn in maintaining a corrupt existing system. They could not change it because they were part of it, grew out of it, depended on it.”

The history of these popes reminds me at times of Game of Thrones or The Sopranos, complete with tangled family relations, power struggles, revenge, and even violence. It reached a particular depth with the reign of Pius' immediate predecessor, Paul IV, who not only waged war on Spain himself but appointed to high church offices two nephews who (without his knowledge) looted their coffers, engaged in philandering, and even ordered the  assassination of an alleged lover of one of their wives.

In terms of his own background, Gian Angelo Medici might not have seemed a particularly holy man. But by comparison with Paul, he was quite an upgrade. 

His initial instincts led him towards the law, where he excelled, but his brother persuaded him to take up holy orders.

He then worked successively as a governor in the Papal States, Commissioner of the papal military forces in Hungary and Transylvania, and vice–legate to Bologna before being named a cardinal by Pope Paul III in 1549.

A decade later, Medici emerged the victor in the conclave called to name Paul IV’s successor. I had always thought that the 1924 Democratic National Convention—the one requiring 104 ballots over 16 days to produce a Presidential nominee—was the most preposterously long contest I’d ever heard of for high office.

But it took four months—once the doors of the Vatican’s Sala Regia were locked— before Medici received the gift of the papacy. 

The College of Cardinals was supposed to be sequestered, but that didn’t stop the French and Spanish factions from furious politicking. With riots following the death of Paul in Rome, considerable money was spent on security measures to keep the population in check.

One of the 47 electors died in this tense period, while two others became ill and had to be taken away. (See Katharine Fellows’s review of Mary Hollingsworth’s Conclave 1559 in the November 2021 issue of History Today for more background on this.)

I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that, after Medici emerged as the compromise choice acceptable to the factions and he took the name of Pius IV, he instituted measures to ensure that no such electoral madness occurred again.

As far as popes go, Pius was more pragmatist than zealot. He was no stranger to sins that beset other Renaissance popes, including lack of chastity (three illegitimate children before his election as pope on Christmas Day 1559) and nepotism.

But in the case of the latter defect, it could have been far worse as far as Pius was concerned. If you’re Artie from The Larry Sanders Show or J. B. Biggley of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, you pick a relative manifestly unfit for his duties.

But Pius not only passed over any of his progeny for Church offices, but among the nephews he did favor, one was Carlo (Charles) Borromeo, as remarkable for his administrative ability as for concern for his flock.

In other words, the worldly pontiff selected one of the most important and beloved saints in the 2,000-year history of the Roman Catholic Church. (See my blog post from 15 years ago on how Borromeo—by this time, an archbishop—survived an assassination attempt.)

In addition to charging Borromeo with governing the Papal States, Pius named him Secretary of State, where he supervised the Council of Trent. Though this ecumenical council had been called originally back in 1545, it had only proceeded in stops and starts, and had not convened at all since 1552.

With Pius reconvening members in 1562 and Borromeo working with enormous energy, the third period adjourned in December 1563. By this time, nearly a half century since Luther had challenged Church authority with his 95 Theses, Pius and the council members had given up any hope of bringing the Protestants back into the fold.

However, Pius was able to prevent more members lost to the new European sects by reforming Church practices and governance in some cases while reaffirming fundamental doctrine in others, including through:

*The first catechism for the Church;

*Limiting the practice of indulgences (the abuse that had launched Luther’s original protest) without completely forbidding their use;

*Reaffirming the number of sacraments as seven and salvation coming through faith and good works;

*Formally defining as dogma the concept of purgatory while warning against "unnecessary speculations concerning the nature and duration of purgatorial punishments";

*Rejecting calls that the Church modify its ban on clerical celibacy;

*Defining the relative authority of bishops and the pope.

By leaving implementation of the decrees in the hands of the pope, the council also boosted the primacy of the pope in Church affairs.

The Council of Trent kick-started the Counter-Reformation, resulting in a Catholic Church culture that was more:

*Emotional, often marked by tearful contrition, pathos in depicting martyrdom, and emphasizing the transitory nature of life on tombstones;

*Puritanical, with even Michelangelo’s nude figures on “The Last Judgment” covered with fig leaves (but, as I explained in this prior post, such proscriptions defanged fanatics who, alarmed by "lascivious" and "pagan" subjects proscribed, allowing religious imagery to continue flourishing);

*Mystical, particularly with reference to saints;

*Devotional, including in more frequent reception of the Eucharist.

As with so much of Church history, reform and reaction alternated under the Renaissance popes. In contrast to Paul IV, for instance, Pius avoided harshness and persecution.

Though Queen Elizabeth of England was favoring Protestantism, Pius did not excommunicate her. The worst excesses of the Index of Forbidden Books and the Inquisition were curtailed, though not completely abandoned. He moderated, and in some cases eliminated, restrictions on Jews that had been implemented under Paul. Non-believers could move around more freely than they could under Paul.

Like other Renaissance popes, Pius genuinely believed in the power of art to further the Church’s mission. He gave Michelangelo one of his last commissions: turning a large hall of Diocletian's Baths into the church of S. Maria degli Angeli.

Pius died at age 66 in 1565, serving only five years—less than the seven-year average for pontiffs. But it was long enough to re-energize a Church rocked by tumult and corruption.