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Spectator
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The Renaissance master who rescued polyphonic music
Last month I watched conductor Harry Christophers blow through what sounded like an arthritic harmonica but in fact was a pure-toned pitch pipe, which handed the singers of his vocal group the Sixteen their starting notes. Then the Kyrie from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's Missa Regina coeli unfolded inside the resonant splendour of St James's Church in Mayfair and, 500 years after his birth, I grasped why Palestrina, maestro di cappella of St Peter's Basilica in Rome from 1551-5, still has the capacity to surprise. Christophers and the Sixteen are celebrating this greatest of the late Renaissance composers in his anniversary year with three concerts promoted by the Wigmore Hall but held at St James's: this music lives or dies by the acoustic in which it is heard. That first concert returned me to my days as a music student trying my best to unpick, then put back together, Palestrina scores, always with a sinking feeling that I might as well be unscrambling Einstein's theory of relativity; this was advanced mathematics, not music. The point was never made that Palestrina laid down rules because he had listened carefully to the acoustics of churches not dissimilar to St James's, then conceived a compositional approach that led him to create music of unfailing luminosity. A second anniversary concert on 18 June will focus on Palestrina's music depicting the Last Supper, and then there's a gap until the final instalment of the series on 22 October. The very idea that anyone attending these concerts might have heard weak links in his robust chains of sound would have filled Palestrina with dread and that's where those rules came in. In a Palestrina score every note in every chord needed to have its function; notes had to arrive from somewhere and land somewhere else. Doubling the same dissonance across different voices – which would have temporarily dimmed a chord – was banned. Notes moving in consecutive sequence between different voices – diluting the rich texture by having one part existing as a mini-me shadow of another – was similarly banned. It's a checklist of compositional terms and conditions that goes on and on, but out of this intense discipline Palestrina found enormous creative freedom. Lassus and Victoria – also associated with Rome and the papal chapel – composed magnificent music, but no composer of the period wrote as prolifically and with such consistent finesse as Palestrina. He matters historically, too, because, without his brilliance, Renaissance choral music might have been allowed to wither away. Growing up in Rome, he had his first musical training in the city, and the Catholic church formed him as composer and thinker. By the time of the Council of Trent – which, beginning in 1545, was intended to give church orthodoxy a spring-clean in the light of the Protestant Reformation – the fear was that church music had become too fancy for its own good. People were in danger of enjoying the sound of the music at the expense of engaging with its liturgical texts. Deep in the mythology is the suggestion that, in 1564, Palestrina wrote his Pope Marcellus Mass in response to a papal request for something that might prove otherwise. Everything came out right. Palestrina's pristine vocal lines didn't strain any voices and, most importantly, allowed for easy comprehension of the text. Had he failed, the church might have stopped polyphonic music altogether – but instead his piece became the prototype for choral music of which the church could approve. For his efforts, Palestrina became known as 'the saviour of music'. Out of this intense discipline Palestrina found enormous creative freedom Today Pope Marcellus Mass, and his Stabat Mater setting, remain Palestrina's most popular and often performed works. When we spoke a few weeks after that first anniversary concert, Harry Christophers was keen to emphasise just how much Palestrina exists – 'there are 104 masses, but only three or four of them are regularly performed'. There are currently nine Palestrina CDs on the Sixteen's own Coro label, with more in the pipeline. But even Christophers took time to work Palestrina out. 'For years I didn't touch his music,' he confides, somewhat to my surprise, 'because as a conductor you want to interpret. This music was intended originally to adorn the liturgy, but now we're taking it out of its liturgical context, presenting it as great music. Palestrina is the master craftsman and I couldn't impose myself on it too much. I had to learn to keep out the way and let the music speak for itself.' Soprano Kirsty Hopkins, who has been a mainstay of the Sixteen for the past 16 years, remains in awe of Palestrina's empathy for voices. 'He tops my list of composers who make singing incredibly easy,' she tells me. 'He understood instinctively how long a phrase can be and how much breath you need in between phrases, so as not to be forced to snatch a sneaky breath. This means we can focus entirely on giving texts their meaning.' As a listener the challenge, and indeed the joy, of Palestrina lies in tracking how his weave of interlinking voices, moving inexorably through time, keeps turning on its axes. It's tempting to categorise Palestrina as a 'classical composer', forgetting that he was writing two centuries before Haydn and Mozart, and that his musical vocabulary inhabits whole other worlds. Abrupt shifts of harmony and key changes, the narrative juice of 18th- and 19th-century music, are entirely absent from Palestrina. His rhythms roll out of the stresses and inclines of liturgical text; you'll never hear dislocating rhythmic jolts or, heaven forfend, any beat-shifting syncopations. The fascination lies almost entirely in following the network of association between intertwining vocal lines as they imitate each other's paths. But Palestrina often feels like a kindred spirit to the free flow of sound that emerged from 20th-century composers such as Cage and Ligeti. The stylistic distance from the dominant 18th- and 19th-century compositional traditions has often led to nods of recognition between the early-music and modern-music ghettos. Think about how that supposed 1950s enfant terrible Peter Maxwell Davies built compositions around Henry Purcell, or of David Munrow – the nearest thing the British early-music scene had to a rock star – recording Rattlebone and Ploughjack in 1976 with Ashley Hutchings of folksy rock group Fairport Convention. Christophers helps clarify the reasons for this closeness. Ligeti – who heard music as continuums of jittery, snaking texture – often noted in his scores that bar lines were strictly for the practicality of rehearsal so that musicians could find their place. Palestrina didn't use bars either, albeit because the convention didn't exist. Christophers tells me that modern editions come with added bar lines, but merely as a rehearsal guide, which leads me to ask about the material the Sixteen use to perform from. Is finding reliable sources the stuff of nightmares? 'In Victorian times, editors would take out clashes between major and minor chords, which was a real feature of his style, assuming they were a mistake,' he winces. 'Modern editions tend to be very good though. Some things singers would have done naturally back in the day, like automatically flattening or sharpening notes, because they knew the language of the music, mean that sometimes we must experiment: did he want A flat there? Or an A? But the thing I say to the choir more than anything else – never become a slave to the bar line. The shape of the words, that's what matters.' Kirsty Hopkins reminds me that this music has been part of the DNA of British choirs for centuries and that the key to successful Palestrina is twofold: breath and blend. Choirs like the Sixteen do use vibrato, but not in the manner of a Wagnerian singer. To hear that all-important weave, their vibrato must be finely mingled. 'Breathing properly means making sure we're heading for the right moment in a word. A word like 'Hallelujah', measured against the bar line could sound very square, but the point is to get the word stress right.' There's a whole PhD thesis to be written, you feel, on breath control in Palestrina, but both Christophers and Hopkins agree with my hunch that if singers are breathing in a natural way, determined by the words, then the music can start to breathe naturally across its structure. And Palestrina's music maps out the dimensions of those majestic acoustics, testament to, depending on how you hear it, the glory of physics – or God.
Spectator
2 hours ago
- Spectator
Can Pope Leo end the liturgy wars?
Last weekend, under windswept banners depicting the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, nearly 20,000 young pilgrims marched through fields and forests between the cathedrals of Paris and Chartres. All of them carried rosaries and chanted in Latin, sometimes breathlessly: it's a punishing 60-mile trek through mud and rocks. Each 'chapter' of the column was accompanied by priests. Like the lay pilgrims – drawn from 30 countries but dominated by French teenagers in scouting uniform – they wore backpacks and trainers, but also full-length cassocks or habits. They were traditionalists and so were the young people: despite their informality, they were utterly committed to intricate Latin worship. Making peace is the first great challenge of his pontificate From a distance, the banners and fleur-de-lys flags summoned folk memories of St Joan of Arc. When the Maid's forces approached Orléans in 1429, her English enemies were startled by the hymn 'Veni Creator Spiritus' sung by priests emerging from the woods. Was this an army or a religious procession? It's tempting to ask the same question about the Chartres pilgrimage, an event that grows bigger every year. Though the atmosphere was joyful, this time the gathering was overshadowed by the 'liturgy wars' raging most fiercely in the United States and France. Pope Leo XIV, himself an American, must know how desperate the situation is; making peace is the first great challenge of his pontificate. The casus belli is the old Latin Mass that a growing number of young Catholics are discovering, more than half a century after the Church decided that it was too reactionary for their grandparents' generation. Celebrated ad orientem (facing east), it follows a rubric of crossings, bows and genuflections that can take years to master. Until recently it was known as the Tridentine Mass, a name derived from the Council of Trent that codified it in 1570. Now its devotees call it the Traditional Latin Mass or 'TLM', recognising that most of its prayers and ceremonies long predate the Counter-Reformation. In other words, it was already centuries old when Joan of Arc attended it. The Traditional Latin Mass is the western counterpart of the ancient eastern liturgies that Pope Leo praised within days of his election, telling Catholics whose rituals developed in Byzantium or the Holy Land that 'we have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies'. But was that sense of mystery lost or thrown away? In 1970, after the Second Vatican Council, Latin-rite parishes – making up most of the world's Catholic congregations – were ordered to ditch the TLM in favour of simplified vernacular masses, often badly translated and influenced by Protestant models. Pope John Paul II tried to purify the new mass by curbing the excesses of priests who, grinning like game-show hosts, turned the Holy Sacrifice into a 'communal meal' in which the 'people of God' worshipped themselves. He was widely ignored. He also faced the challenge of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), founded by the ultra-conservative French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who broke away from the main Church. John Paul excommunicated Lefebvre after he illicitly ordained bishops. Yet the SSPX flourished, and when the Pope set up a rival body, the Priestly Society of St Peter, whose priests had permission to celebrate only the old mass, that also flourished. Then came Benedict XVI, who declared that 'what earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred'. In 2007 his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum horrified liberal cardinals. From now on, any priest could say the TLM in parish churches so long as people wanted it – and a small but formidably well-organised Catholic subculture wanted it very much. But in 2013 the conclave elected Francis. In his native Argentina he was a merciless opponent of the TLM – but as Pope he held fire because Benedict was still alive. By 2021, however, Francis's health was failing. Worried that his predecessor might outlive him, he tore up Summorum Pontificum. Francis's Traditionis Custodes banned the TLM from parishes and forbade new priests from learning it. However, many bishops found ways of circumventing the carelessly drafted ruling. They weren't necessarily fans of the old mass, but they deplored the brutal tactics of the Pope's enforcer, the Yorkshire-born Cardinal Arthur Roche. 'It was like watching some monstrous child pulling the wings off flies,' says one source. With Leo XIV's election, traditionalists hoped for reprieve. But it was only a faint hope, because the new Pope – who combines a quiet charisma with a certain frustrating inscrutability – was so fond of quoting their tormentor Francis. Then the liturgy wars went nuclear. Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte, North Carolina – a Birkenstock-wearing Franciscan with a Trumpian ego – announced that from 8 July the old mass would be banned from the four parishes where it was celebrated. Ignoring protests from their pastors, he designated an out-of-town chapel as the location of just one TLM on Sundays. Other bishops had taken similar actions, but what disgusted traditionalists was Martin's tone, dripping with contempt for anyone who preferred the ancient rite. Someone then leaked a memo in which the bishop planned a dumbing-down of the new mass, removing all traces of Latin, ripping out altar rails, banning kneeling for communion and even forbidding women readers from wearing head coverings. This scorched-earth policy caused such outrage from priests that he withdrew the memo. Too late: overnight Martin became the most reviled bishop in the United States, and not just in Latin Mass circles. Catholic YouTube channels went into overdrive. Was Martin implementing Leo XIV's secret agenda, or was he trying to force the Pope's hand? Last week, though, something odd happened. Martin announced that he was pausing the TLM restrictions until October, something he'd previously ruled out. He did so immediately after a meeting between Pope Leo and Cardinal Roche, who is expected to retire soon as the Vatican's head of liturgy. Also, Martin said that if the Vatican changed the rules restricting the TLM, the Diocese of Charlotte 'would abide by those instructions'. What did that mean? Everyone is sick of the confusion. 'It was like watching some monstrous child pulling the wings off flies' Things are no better in France. On Monday there was a glorious Solemn Mass in Chartres Cathedral – but it nearly didn't happen. Some French bishops wanted to slam the doors in the face of the pilgrims for wanting the wrong sort of 'youth mass'. A moment in the ceremony explains why boomer Catholics are so alarmed. The dozens of priests genuflecting before the altar, birettas in hand, were only a few years older than the worshippers. Something similar is happening in some of London's Anglican churches, where Generation Z are flocking to old-fashioned evensong. The difference is that the Church of England long ago stopped harassing anyone attached to the Book of Common Prayer, agreeing with Pope Benedict that what earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred. Progressive cardinals and bishops, by contrast, freak out at the sight of a maniple, a strip of silk worn over the arm of a priest celebrating the old mass. To be fair, they have always hated this sort of vestment; but Pope Francis and Cardinal Roche encouraged them to channel their dislike into the sort of petty-minded persecution that English Catholics endured under the penal laws. Pope Leo cannot allow the liturgy wars to drag on. He may choose to dismantle Traditionis Custodes gently, employing loopholes rather than trashing his predecessor. That's fine. But dismantle it he must. Contrary to some reports, it's not true that significant numbers of young people in the West are turning to Catholicism. But among those few young Catholics who practise their faith, a rising proportion are drawn to the 'Mass of the ages', as it's sometimes called. If Pope Leo wants their loyalty, enabling him to pass on the spiritual gifts of tradition to his successors, then he must learn one lesson now, in the first months of his pontificate: he cannot square the circle of singing plainchant from his balcony while suppressing the supreme expression of Latin worship.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
As the Conclave Continues, Catholicism Is at a Crossroads
Cardinals attends the opening of the Conclave in the sistine Chapel on May 07, 2025 in Vatican City, Vatican. Cardinals of the Catholic Church have descended on Vatican City to commence the papal conclave, the secretive voting process held in the Sistine Chapel that requires a two-thirds majority to elect the new leader of the Catholic Church. The election follows the death of Pope Francis on April 21 at the age of 88. Credit - Vatican Media/Vatican Pool—Corbis/Getty Images As the cardinals gather in Rome to choose the new leader for 1.4 billion Catholics, the Catholic Church once again stands at a crossroads. The animating question facing the conclave is whether the cardinals want the Church to continue in the direction of a broader, more capacious understanding of the faith as articulated by Francis, or will they revert to the conservative, more traditionalist ways of his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The Church has stood at similar crossroads several times in the modern era. From 1545 to 1560, the Council of Trent met to determine the Church's response to the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar prior to his excommunication in 1520, had pointed out the corruptions of medieval Catholicism and emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith (not works) and what he called the priesthood of believers. The question before the prelates at the Council of Trent was whether to acknowledge the excesses and reform the Church in the direction of the more stripped-down Protestantism that Luther and other Reformers advocated. Trent, however, moved in the opposite direction, becoming 'more Catholic' in its affirmation of the importance of the sacraments and good works. This hyper-Catholicism can be traced most graphicly in the Baroque and Rococo architecture that followed, which John Updike described as 'the incredible visual patisserie of baroque church interiors, mock-marble pillars of paint-veined gesso melting upward into trompe-l'oeil ceilings bubbling with cherubs, everything gilded and tipped and twisted and skewed to titillate the eye, huge wedding-cake interiors meant to stun Hussite peasants back into the bosom of Catholicism.' Another crossroads for modern Catholicism occurred following the death of Pope Pius XII in October 1958. The cardinals opted for what they thought was a 'caretaker' pope, 76-year-old Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who took the name John XXIII. He turned out to be anything but a caretaker. Declaring that it was 'time to throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the spirit blow through,' he convened the Second Vatican Council, which reformed Church theology and liturgy (including mass in the vernacular) and, its supporters say, brought the Church into the modern world. John XXIII's successor, Pope Paul VI faced another crossroads shortly after the conclusion of Vatican II. John XXIII had formed a study group, the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, to review the Church's teaching on the matter. The commission, which Paul VI expanded, included laywomen, married couples, theologians and bishops. The overwhelming recommendation was that the Church should revise its teaching to allow artificial means of birth control. Paul VI, however, rejected that recommendation and issued the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968. The only acceptable means of birth control, the Church decreed, was the rhythm method, which critics promptly dubbed 'Vatican Roulette.' Humanae Vitae persuaded many Catholics, especially in the United States, that the Pope was hopelessly out of touch. Second-wave feminism, the drive for upward mobility, career opportunities and the desire for smaller families prompted many Catholic households to ignore the papal directive on birth control. As many studies have shown, Catholic attendance declined after 1968; many Catholics felt for the first time that it was all right to disobey the pope and still consider themselves good Catholics. Now, following the death of Pope Francis, the Church once again stands at a crossroads. Conservatives, those Mark Massa, a historian and a Jesuit, calls 'Catholic Fundamentalists,' are pressing for a pope who will reverse course. They criticize Francis for making overtures to the LGBTQ community and for permitting priests to bless same-sex unions. They claim he has 'feminized' the Church by calling out what others describe as 'toxic masculinity.' They dislike the fact that he restricted use of the traditional Latin mass and entertained the possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood. The other faction of the Church points out that Francis graciously sought to welcome marginal people—gays, lesbians, divorced people—into the Church and evinced concern for immigrants and for the poor, positions that have demonstrable appeal to a younger generation of Catholics. They also appreciate his attention to the ravages of climate change. The term liberal in the context of the Roman Catholic Church may be an oxymoron, but this second camp seeks to perpetuate the work and the legacy of Francis. The conclave stands at a crossroads, and the person the cardinals choose will likely determine the direction of the Church for years to come. As an Episcopal priest, not a Catholic, I have only a rooting interest in the conclave, and I'm loath to make predictions. But I recall the lyrics of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia,' by the Charlie Daniels Band, a fiddler's faceoff between Satan and a young man named Johnny. The devil bets a fiddle of gold against Johnny's soul and leads off with the bow across the strings, making 'an evil hiss.' The rendition may be technically perfect, but it lacks soul. When Johnny takes his turn, the fiddle vibrates with verve and passion—and he prevails. Whoever prevails in the cardinals' deliberations will inherit a church with plenty of gilding but still in need of some of the verve and passion that Francis brought to the task. Contact us at letters@
Time Magazine
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
As the Conclave Continues, Catholicism Is at a Crossroads
As the cardinals gather in Rome to choose the new leader for 1.4 billion Catholics, the Catholic Church once again stands at a crossroads. The animating question facing the conclave is whether the cardinals want the Church to continue in the direction of a broader, more capacious understanding of the faith as articulated by Francis, or will they revert to the conservative, more traditionalist ways of his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The Church has stood at similar crossroads several times in the modern era. From 1545 to 1560, the Council of Trent met to determine the Church's response to the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar prior to his excommunication in 1520, had pointed out the corruptions of medieval Catholicism and emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith (not works) and what he called the priesthood of believers. The question before the prelates at the Council of Trent was whether to acknowledge the excesses and reform the Church in the direction of the more stripped-down Protestantism that Luther and other Reformers advocated. Trent, however, moved in the opposite direction, becoming 'more Catholic' in its affirmation of the importance of the sacraments and good works. This hyper-Catholicism can be traced most graphicly in the Baroque and Rococo architecture that followed, which John Updike described as 'the incredible visual patisserie of baroque church interiors, mock-marble pillars of paint-veined gesso melting upward into trompe-l'oeil ceilings bubbling with cherubs, everything gilded and tipped and twisted and skewed to titillate the eye, huge wedding-cake interiors meant to stun Hussite peasants back into the bosom of Catholicism.' Another crossroads for modern Catholicism occurred following the death of Pope Pius XII in October 1958. The cardinals opted for what they thought was a 'caretaker' pope, 76-year-old Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who took the name John XXIII. He turned out to be anything but a caretaker. Declaring that it was 'time to throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the spirit blow through,' he convened the Second Vatican Council, which reformed Church theology and liturgy (including mass in the vernacular) and, its supporters say, brought the Church into the modern world. John XXIII's successor, Pope Paul VI faced another crossroads shortly after the conclusion of Vatican II. John XXIII had formed a study group, the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, to review the Church's teaching on the matter. The commission, which Paul VI expanded, included laywomen, married couples, theologians and bishops. The overwhelming recommendation was that the Church should revise its teaching to allow artificial means of birth control. Paul VI, however, rejected that recommendation and issued the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968. The only acceptable means of birth control, the Church decreed, was the rhythm method, which critics promptly dubbed 'Vatican Roulette.' Humanae Vitae persuaded many Catholics, especially in the United States, that the Pope was hopelessly out of touch. Second-wave feminism, the drive for upward mobility, career opportunities and the desire for smaller families prompted many Catholic households to ignore the papal directive on birth control. As many studies have shown, Catholic attendance declined after 1968; many Catholics felt for the first time that it was all right to disobey the pope and still consider themselves good Catholics. Now, following the death of Pope Francis, the Church once again stands at a crossroads. Conservatives, those Mark Massa, a historian and a Jesuit, calls 'Catholic Fundamentalists,' are pressing for a pope who will reverse course. They criticize Francis for making overtures to the LGBTQ community and for permitting priests to bless same-sex unions. They claim he has 'feminized' the Church by calling out what others describe as 'toxic masculinity.' They dislike the fact that he restricted use of the traditional Latin mass and entertained the possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood. The other faction of the Church points out that Francis graciously sought to welcome marginal people—gays, lesbians, divorced people—into the Church and evinced concern for immigrants and for the poor, positions that have demonstrable appeal to a younger generation of Catholics. They also appreciate his attention to the ravages of climate change. The term liberal in the context of the Roman Catholic Church may be an oxymoron, but this second camp seeks to perpetuate the work and the legacy of Francis. The conclave stands at a crossroads, and the person the cardinals choose will likely determine the direction of the Church for years to come. As an Episcopal priest, not a Catholic, I have only a rooting interest in the conclave, and I'm loath to make predictions. But I recall the lyrics of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia,' by the Charlie Daniels Band, a fiddler's faceoff between Satan and a young man named Johnny. The devil bets a fiddle of gold against Johnny's soul and leads off with the bow across the strings, making 'an evil hiss.' The rendition may be technically perfect, but it lacks soul. When Johnny takes his turn, the fiddle vibrates with verve and passion—and he prevails. Whoever prevails in the cardinals' deliberations will inherit a church with plenty of gilding but still in need of some of the verve and passion that Francis brought to the task.
Irish Examiner
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Tony Flannery: Francis was a counter voice to all those who venerate power
Though not a great surprise, due to his recent serious illness, the announcement of the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday morning is a matter of great sadness to many people. I am deeply saddened by his death. He was a remarkable man who made an enormous contribution not only to the Catholic Church, but to the whole world. The role of the papacy in the Church had become very inflated over the past few centuries, probably since the Council of Trent in the 16th century, but especially since the First Vatican Council in the middle of the 19th century, with the definition of Papal Infallability. This teaching declared that the pope had a direct line to God, and that when he spoke infallibly he could not err, and raised him to an almost super human level. The exalted position was accentuated by residing in the papal residence, the elaborate attire - remember Pope Benedict and his red shoes. A strong counter voice So when Francis, on the day of his election, came to the balcony in a simple white soutane and announced himself as the Bishop of Rome, rather than the Pope, it gave an immediate signal that this would be different. Somehow, he was on par with other bishops around the world. There was a shift in emphasis from the global to the local. When asked who he was, he responded that he was a sinner. So now we had someone who was equal to the rest of us, not standing above us, or claiming any special status. In that too, he was giving a message, one which he continued to emphasise right through the succeeding years, to all bishops, to all clergy, that they were to be servants of the people rather than lords over them. In a world that is increasingly unstable, and is falling under the rule of people who seem to be obsessed with their own power, and moving more and more toward control over the lives of their people, Francis was a strong counter voice, constantly portraying a different type of leadership, one that was about love, care, justice, rather than oppression. He was a great defender of the poor, the migrant, and saw everybody as equal, and gave them all a welcome. But at the same time he was always open to meeting world leaders of all shades of opinion, because he believed that progress was made not by excluding people but by meeting and talking to them. Fr Tony Flannery: 'I think the next conclave could be a battle.' File picture: Don Moloney This was shown right to the very end by meeting with the United States vice president J.D. Vance, who had been a very strong critic of him, and whose values appear to be at odds with those of Francis. Francis will be remembered for his stance on the environment, one of the major issues of our time. His encyclical, Laudato Si, will be one of his great legacies. A small local angle to that encyclical, but also one who shows that measure of the man. In founding the Association of Catholic Priests in 2010 I was joined by Brendan Hoban and Sean McDonagh. Sean, a Columban priest, was an expert on the whole world of climate change. Maybe it was his involvement with the ACP that caused him to be ignored by the Irish Church authorities. But we were all surprised when Sean got a message from the Vatican, asking him to come to Rome and help draft the encyclical. He did, and played a significant part in putting it together. Francis was not perfect. I think it is fair to say that the Church has traditionally had an obsession with matters of sexuality and gender, and Francis was not completely free from those attitudes. He upheld the ban on women becoming deacons or priests, and that has been a great disappointment to many, especially women. But he opposed efforts that were being made by various bishops and priests to exclude people from receiving the Eucharist, such as people who were in second relationships or members of the LGBT community. Under Francis, the Church generally was a more compassionate and welcoming place. 'All are welcome' was his motto. The Eucharist was food for the journey, not a reward for good living. His biggest legacy, if it becomes embedded in the future Church, is the process of synodality. The vision he had that members of the Church would be consulted on all matters that affected them is intended to dramatically change the way the church operates, by opening up the exercise of authority and decision making to lay people, and in that way reduce the control of the clerical caste over the Church. Francis had many critics within the Church, including men in very high offices both around the world and in the Vatican. The United States Church in particular is very divided and among its Catholic hierarchy there seem to be very few supporters of Francis or of his message. I hope and pray that his successor will continue his work, but I am not holding my breath. I think the next conclave could be a battle. Tony Flannery is a Redemptorist priest and a founder of the Association of Catholic Priests. Read More Who will be the next pope? Some potential candidates who might succeed Francis
