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National Post
17-05-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Conrad Black: High time for an American pope
There are two principal takeaways from the election last week of Pope Leo XIV, one reflecting on the condition of the Roman Catholic Church, the other that the new Pope is an American, albeit one who has spent much of his career in Latin America. Despite centuries of effort by millions of people to portray the Roman Catholic Church as a superstitious anachronism, it endures. This is the first pope whose native language is English since Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear), who died in 1159. English is the most widely spoken language in the world and although that singular self-nominated 'defender of the faith' Henry VIII of England caused the English-speaking peoples to be more heavily influenced by the Reformation, and not necessarily its best aspects, than the other great western cultures, it is high time that there was an English-speaking pope. Article content Article content Article content People of my venerable age group will recall that St. Pope John XXIII attempted a substantial modernization of the Roman Catholic Church and made it more accessible by increased use of contemporary languages in place of Latin and other liberalizations, and that this is a process that generally has continued gradually. His successor, Paul VI, initiated the practice of popes travelling widely and the subsequent elections of Polish, German, Argentinian and now an American Pope, are steadily wrenching that organization free from the secretive and easily caricatured Roman cohort of its curial governors, and have brought it closer to and made it more reflective of its far-flung constituencies. With any organization, ecclesiastical or secular, the challenge of reform is to make the basic tenets more available and popular without modifying them in a way that undermines the raison d'etre of the institution. The Catholic Church, in walking this line, has tested the faith of many and forfeited the respect of some. Article content Article content Of the approximately 1.4-billion nominal Roman Catholics, about one billion attach a significant amount of credence to being members of that faith. It is an organization united by concepts of the sanctity of life and the existence of a divine intelligence that can be propitiated, and that does assert itself in human lives. Anyone who entertains any religious views is thoroughly aware of the widespread practice, particularly prevalent in our atheistic media and academic and other cultural communities that religion is merely a fetishistic heirloom of the Dark Age when people generally had an insufficient respect and ambition for what human ingenuity and diligence could achieve; a consolation for the fact of death. Perversely, our anti-theistic elites profess a respect for Islam, which is in some measure a violent replication of theoretically pacifistic Christianity (including the annunciation of both by the Archangel Gabriel). This indicates that non-western support of Islam is really, in many cases, just antagonism to Christianity. It requires more faith and is intellectually more difficult to deny the existence of any spiritual or supernatural forces in the world than to uphold them. There has always been a zone in the human psyche that ponders the unknowable regions of the cosmos and attempts to replace authentic faith with a vacuum, which has sometimes led to the most horrible pagan aberrations in history, including Nazism and communism. Article content The immense crowd that packed St. Peter's Square and the approaching Via de la Conciliazione last week, conspicuously largely composed of younger people waving the flags of most of the countries of the world, indicated that the papal election is not just a Roman municipal tourist celebration. Interest in ecclesiastical matters has fluctuated very widely throughout history, from the dawn of Christianity when Christ and most of his early disciples were brutally murdered, through centuries when Rome was more powerful than any secular government, and times of terrible lassitude, degradation and corruption, when the public's respect was thoroughly alienated but the faith that had been dishonoured survived. Article content Article content There are now evidences of growth of Catholic religious practice, partly in reaction to the oppressions of Christianity, partly in recognition of the spectacular failure of secularization and the unsustainably incompetent performance of most secular governments, and partly because of a resurgent sense that spiritual forces do exist and persist despite the antics of charlatans and publicity-seeking iconoclasts. While the rigorous non-believers regard the Roman Catholic Church as an institutional bumble bee, flying laboriously in defiance of all laws of nature and logic, the election of the new Pope has demonstrated its imperishability again. Secularism and parts of the Enlightenment have not delivered a human plenitude of knowledge, any more than unspontaneous piety did. When Christianity fields its intellectual first team from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to modern thinkers such as St. John H. Cardinal Newman and Jacques Maritain, it always defeats the atheists.
The Hindu
14-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Pope offers to mediate between world leaders to end wars
Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday (May 14, 2025) offered to mediate between leaders of countries at war, saying that he himself "will make every effort so that this peace may prevail". The new U.S. pontiff, who became head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics last week, also called on Christians living in the Middle East not to abandon their homes, in a speech to members of the Eastern Catholic Churches. "Who, better than you, can sing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence?" he told the packed Paul VI hall at the Vatican, noting that "from the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray and the Caucasus, how much violence do we see!". He urged them to pray for peace, adding: "For my part, I will make every effort so that this peace may prevail. 'The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace.' "The peoples of our world desire peace, and to their leaders I appeal with all my heart: Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate!". He took over as pontiff from Pope Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88. He was speaking at a pre-arranged event for the 2025 Jubilee holy year dedicated to the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, located across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, and parts of Africa. In his appeal to end conflicts — a dominant theme in his addresses so far — The Pope thanked those "sowing seeds of peace". "I thank God for those Christians — Eastern and Latin alike — who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them," he said. "Christians must be given the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence. Please, let us strive for this!"
New Indian Express
14-05-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Pope offers to mediate between world leaders to end wars
Vatican City, Holy See: Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday offered to mediate between leaders of countries at war, saying that he himself "will make every effort so that this peace may prevail". The new US pontiff, who became head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics last week, also called on Christians living in the Middle East not to abandon their homes, in a speech to members of the Eastern Catholic Churches. "Who, better than you, can sing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence?" he told the packed Paul VI hall at the Vatican, noting that "from the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray and the Caucasus, how much violence do we see!". He urged them to pray for peace, adding: "For my part, I will make every effort so that this peace may prevail. "The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace. "The peoples of our world desire peace, and to their leaders I appeal with all my heart: Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate!". Leo took over as pontiff from Pope Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88. He was speaking at a pre-arranged event for the 2025 Jubilee holy year dedicated to the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, located across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, and parts of Africa.
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.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A conclave like no other: How papal pick gathering is different this year
The conclave that begins May 7 to pick a successor to Pope Francis will feature many long-established rituals, as befits a church that has been around for nearly 2,000 years. Cardinal electors will be sequestered from the outside world until a new pope is chosen. Every person involved – including support staff – will be required to take an oath of secrecy. Smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney – black for no, white for yes – will announce whether a decision has been made. Within all those traditions that go back centuries, some new developments have emerged. Though Francis didn't make any major changes to the conclave itself, his outreach to what he called "the peripheries" left an imprint that will be felt in the upcoming gathering to elect his replacement. Here are some ways this conclave is different: The highest number of cardinal electors in any conclave Pope Paul VI set a rule in 1975 limiting the number of cardinal electors to 120, a norm that wasn't strictly adhered to in the College of Cardinals meetings known as consistories. However, this is the first time a conclave has gone over the 120 mark, and not just by a couple. Of the 252 current cardinals, 135 are under 80 and eligible to vote, though Antonio Cañizares of Spain and John Njue of Kenya have said they won't attend for health reasons. That leaves 133 voters, and a record 108 of them were appointed by Francis, more than 80%. That doesn't mean a progressive that follows in his footsteps will get the nod − many of the new cardinals hardly know each other and may not share his views − but it likely eliminates a hardcore conservative. A two-thirds majority is required. The most diverse conclave For the first time in memory, Europeans make up less than 50% of the voting cardinals, coming in at 47%. The trend in that direction was set in motion decades ago, but the advances of other regions stand out more than ever. In an unprecedented distribution, representatives from Latin America (18%), Asia and the Pacific (16%) and Africa and the Middle East (14%) all make up at least 14% of the voting cardinals at the conclave. That's the same percentage of those from Italy, the formerly dominant presence at these events. The Asian and African contingents made the biggest leaps since the 2013 conclave that elected Francis, no coincidence considering his outreach to those continents. Cardinals attend a mourning Mass for Pope Francis on the fifth day of Novendiali (nine days of mourning after the pope's funeral) at St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on April 30, 2025. The first Asian or African pope in modern times? There has never been a pope from what's now known as Asia, nor an African pope since the end of the fifth century. The three African popes before that – Victor I, Miltiades and Gelasius I – were believed to be Black and born during the Roman Empire. All three became saints. Now one of the seemingly top candidates for the papacy is Luis Antonio Tagle, 67, an ally of Francis and a native of the Philippines, home to the largest Catholic population in Asia (about 85 million) and third biggest in the world. Hardly a list of contenders is published without including Tagle's name. Likewise, two African cardinals – Peter Turkson of Ghana and Fridolin Ambongo of the Democratic Republic of Congo, both advocates for social justice – are often mentioned as papabili, or potential candidates. They hail from fertile ground for the church, which saw an increase of more than 3% in African Catholics from 2022 to 2023, totaling more than 280 million. That's 20% of the estimated 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide. The fewest Italian cardinals There was a time – 455 consecutive years, to be exact – when betting the new pope would hail from Italy made for easy money. Now it's a much iffier proposition. The centuries-old tradition of Italian pontiffs ended when John Paul I unexpectedly died in 1978 and was succeeded by the Polish-born John Paul II. The next two popes, Benedict XVI and Francis, were from Germany and Argentina, respectively, and suddenly Italy was on an extended losing streak. There are strong Italian contenders among the current cardinals, including Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Bologna Archbishop Matteo Zuppi, but with Italian voting representation down to 14%, odds of the next pope coming from the Bel Paese have diminished. Still, it will be a while until any other nation catches up. Italy's 216 popes are 200 more than the next country on the list, France. A man holds a cross as he walks on Saint Peter Square with St Peter's Basilica in the background on April 28, 2025. Several newcomers to the voting process Francis would be proud that the electors at this conclave hail from 71 countries, in keeping with his desire for the church to become more inclusive. Italy still leads with 17, followed by the United States with 10 and Brazil with seven. Perhaps more notable is the presence of more than two dozen cardinal electors from countries that have never voted for a pope, among them Rwanda, Myanmar and South Sudan, according to the Washington Post. 'It has become more exotic,' said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. 'There are now many cardinals from Asia and North Africa who are potential popes. That makes it different than it has been for many centuries.' Contributing: Marc Ramirez This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A conclave like no other: How picking a pope is different this year
