What next in the papal succession
Pope Francis is pulling every available lever to ensure that his reforms are irreversible. Might there even be a change to the way his successor is elected?
Pope Francis will be 87 by the end of this year, but this pontificate is keeping up its intense pace. World Youth Day in Lisbon, where the crowds of young people swelled to around 1.5 million for the final Mass, provided an injection of hope for the Church and Francis returned from Portugal rejuvenated. On the last day of August, Francis will travel to Mongolia, sandwiched in a geopolitically significant position between Russia and China, and at the end of September he will make a brief trip to Marseilles, in the south of France, before returning to Rome to hold a consistory to create 21 new cardinals.
On 4 October, the feast of his namesake St Francis of Assisi, he will take charge of the crucial month-long synod assembly. Although he shows no signs of slowing down, the Francis pontificate is in a consolidation phase. After more than 10 years in post, he is working to ensure that his reforms are irreversible. He is using every lever at his disposal to keep the supertanker on course towards becoming a more mission-focused, synodal Church. But what happens next? Will the next conclave choose a candidate ready to continue on the journey that Francis has set for the barque of Peter?
These questions are increasingly being asked in Rome. The next World Youth Day will take place in Seoul in 2027 and will be attended by the Pope. That might be Francis – or, perhaps more likely, his successor. Lisbon has shown the impact a pope with the charisma to connect with large crowds and deliver a message for the big occasions can make. The Bishop of Rome is the world’s most visible Christian leader and it is vital for the mission of the Church that he is able to cut through to as broad an audience as possible. Francis encouraging the huge crowd in Lisbon to chant “todos, todos, todos” was an unforgettable moment that highlighted his vision of a Church open to everyone.
Someone like Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who combines charisma and humility, has that mass appeal and is high on the papabile shortlist. Over the last decade, Francis has made good on the mandate he received from the cardinals in 2013 to reform the Church’s central government, culminating with the promulgation of a new constitution for the Roman Curia – only the fifth in 500 years – while taking decisive steps to clean up the Vatican’s finances. The ambitious, multi-year synod process is likely to outlast this pontificate and should be seen as part of the next phase in the implementation of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. What a more synodal church should look like will be one of the most hotly contested questions the electors will face at the next conclave. The big prize remains the transformation of the culture of Catholicism.
This will be the focus of the forthcoming synod, which will seek to embed the practice of discernment and listening to the Holy Spirit into the way decisions are made in the Church. The Pope will insist that the sessions are regularly punctuated with periods of silence and that the synod is preceded by a retreat in which all the participants are being asked to take part.
As the working document for the synod emphasises, the move to a more synodal Church requires a fundamental re-think of how authority is exercised. All the People of God – lay women and women, Religious, priests and bishops – must be involved in governance and decision-making. “Synodality is the key to governing a global Catholicism in which it can no longer be the pure will of the Pope alone that is expressed,” Alberto Melloni, the highly respected Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia, told me. He thinks that at the next conclave the cardinals will look to who can produce the most “convincing proposal” that will give the Church “a method [of governance] involving the communion of bishops and through them the communion of the local churches”.
Synodality still needs a lot of work, says Melloni, who more than 20 years ago edited Synod and Synodality: Theology, History, Canon Law and Ecumenism in New Contact with Silvia Scatena (a collection of papers from a 2003 colloquium). While all the ingredients are there in the forthcoming synod meetings, “the recipe for the jam” has still to be devised. A synod cannot be seen “as a kind of deodorant that is sprayed inside the Church”. Synodality, he stresses, is a way “to be more faithful to the Gospel on the part of individuals and authorities and local churches”.
It requires serious theological reflection but for synodality to take root Melloni believes there must also be hard thinking that reflects on “institutional” change. It looks highly likely that the next pope will be tasked with furthering the synodal process, just as Paul VI was elected as the man the cardinals thought best-equipped to guide the Second Vatican Council to its conclusion after the death of John XXIII. The next conclave will almost certainly seek someone who can build on the reforms Pope Francis has begun and steer the next stage in the journey.
That suggests that cardinals who are leading the synod process, such as Jean-Claude Hollerich and Mario Grech, could emerge as candidates. Meanwhile, some cardinals and their supporters are trying to ensure the next conclave chooses a pope who will roll back the reforms of the Francis pontificate. This group – relatively small but well-organised and well-funded – has been working away for some time, through behind-the-scenes meetings, public conferences, and coordinated media activity. Rod Dreher, the conservative writer and polemicist, recently revealed that a leading figure in this group, the late Cardinal George Pell – who regarded the Francis pontificate as a “catastrophe” – was “so in favour” of the Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo, who holds theological and political positions at odds with the tone and thrust of the Francis papacy, as the next pope.
Much of the opposition to Francis’ reform agenda comes from the United States, not just in terms of numbers but in money and influence. “The US Church is really a rallying point for all those angry at Francis over politics, liturgy, doctrine, and simply losing the perks they enjoyed for decades under previous popes. So there is no doubt that they will have an influence in the next conclave,” David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, New York, tells me. “The American conservatives have the visibility and influence and reputation on culture war and sexuality issues to help rally cardinals unsettled by Francis’ openness on those issues.” But Gibson believes this group is not as influential as its members like to think.
Even within the US Church, “opposition to Francis is a minority”, he says, and the current cardinal-electors from the US are evenly divided between those who support this Pope and those who are vehemently opposed. And now that the college of cardinals increasingly reflects the global Church, it is unlikely to respond well to conservative US prelates and their wealthy backers trying to manipulate the outcome of the next conclave. “That dynamic and that diversity [among the cardinals] is why they may prefer a synodal Church rather than one run by dictates from Rome,” Gibson adds. “They need the flexibility to adapt to their respective environments, and it’s a good bet they will want a pope who will encourage that.” It’s also possible that Francis could reform the way the conclave works, making it a more synodal event. The current process involves all the cardinals – the cardinal-electors and those over the age of 80, who are no longer eligible to take part in a conclave – meeting over several days to discuss the Church’s needs before the doors are closed and the voting for the next leader of global Catholicism begins.
Since Francis has included women as voters for the first time in a synod assembly in October, don’t rule out the possibility that Francis will find ways for a greater diversity of voices to be involved in the discussions before future conclaves. Melloni strongly believes that a reform of the rules is necessary. Two years ago he argued in The Tablet that the conclave process should be slowed down to allow for more dialogue and discernment. He says that the global influence of the Church, including the papacy’s call for peace in war zones, and its long struggle to address the scandal of sexual abuse by priests, means there are powerful forces outside and within the Church who might seek to interfere in a papal election. Many members of the college of cardinals, which includes an increasing number from the farthest reaches of the global Church, do not know Rome, or each other, well.
“The cardinals must have plenty of time to reach a consensus: this means a two-thirds majority, as usual in the conclave, but reached through a consensus around the person they want to elect, and ensuring they can be certain about the truth or falsity of any serious allegations against them,” Melloni explains. If more time were made for discussions before and during the conclave, this could allow the People of God to have a say. With the Church becoming involved in increasingly complex geopolitical tensions and conflicts, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi’s mediation efforts in Ukraine and Cardinal Pietro Parolin’s calm diplomacy could make them papabile. If the conclave was to turn to either of them it would see the first Italian Pope since Albino Luciani was elected and took the name John Paul I in 1978.
There is no “front runner” among the candidates for the next pope. Melloni says that the Pope’s very personal choice of cardinals and his habit of keeping people on their toes by creating a “certain degree of bewilderment” through his decisions are among the ways he’s sought to cement his legacy. After the consistory next month, Francis will have appointed more than 70 per cent of the cardinal-electors, the closest thing a pope has to succession planning. The future successor of St Peter could still emerge in the next couple of years, as the synod gatherings in October this year and in 2024 will create a stage for potential leaders to catch the eye of cardinal-electors. Francis has created the conditions for them to spring a surprise, just as they did in 2013.
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