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The Economist, 9 mai
Habemus papam Americanum : What it means to have an American on the throne of St Peter
By choosing Robert Prevost the cardinals seek unity in a fractured church
Full text:
DONALD TRUMP was not in the end chosen to be pope, as he had jokingly suggested. But on May 8th the cardinals of the Roman Catholic church did elect an American, breaking a taboo against the identification of a geopolitical superpower with a spiritual one.
It is unlikely that the American president will be overjoyed by the choice of Cardinal Robert Prevost. The new pontiff sent out a first message of his intent by choosing as his papal name Leo XIV: a homage to the last pope to adopt that name, who reigned from 1878 to 1903. Leo XIII was a progressive by the standards of his times. Known for his efforts to find an accommodation with the modern world, he was the father of the Catholic church’s social doctrine and the author of a seminal encyclical, Rerum Novarum (Of New Things).
But the cardinals also voted for unity and compromise. Pope Leo has a reputation for discretion and reserve. He is no radical. The cardinals who chose him eschewed others more clearly associated with the liberal wing of the church and voted instead for someone with a good chance of bridging the chasm that has opened in Catholicism between progressives and traditionalists.
Speaking vigorously and in good Italian from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, the new pope, who is 69, began his first address as pontiff with the words “Peace be with you all.” Repeatedly in the speech that followed, the tanned and bespectacled Leo invoked the concept of peace, coupling it with those of justice, charity and, in one instance, a church “open to all”.
The Chicago-born pontiff is scarcely typical of his fellow Americans. He has spent a large part of his life in Peru as a missionary, serving as a parish priest, teacher and later bishop. He became a Peruvian citizen in 2015 and thus has dual nationality. Leo headed the Augustinian order to which he belongs. And for the past two years, he has been in charge of one of the most important Vatican departments, which oversees the vetting of candidates for bishop.
Among the most pressing questions the cardinal-electors had to answer was whether, at a convulsive moment in international affairs, they wanted a pope ready to use the moral authority of the pontificate in the same way as his predecessor, to challenge the precepts of the new, populist right, notably in respect of migration. In electing Leo, who cited Francis in his first address, they have opted for a fair measure of continuity with the late pope’s approach. And the election of an exceptionally cosmopolitan American smacks of outright defiance of Mr Trump and his aggressive nationalism. On X, a social-media platform, then-Cardinal Prevost rebuked Vice-President J.D. Vance for his views on immigration. He also retweeted a post decrying the president’s attitude towards Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported from America to El Salvador.
The American pope shares the environmental concerns of his predecessor and supports the decentralisation of the church that Francis encouraged (within strict limits). “Dominion over nature”—the task that God gave to humanity—should not become “tyrannical”, he told a seminar in Rome last year. It must be a “relationship of reciprocity”.
But Leo is firmly opposed to receiving women into holy orders as deacons, let alone as priests. And he is unlikely to be as welcoming in his approach to gay people as his predecessor was. In a 2012 address to bishops, he regretted the promotion of “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel”, citing as examples the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children”.
The conclave once more validated the saying that “he who enters a pope leaves a cardinal”. Pietro Parolin, Francis’s secretary of state, had been the firm favourite of betters and bookies. The outcome also confounded predictions of a drawn-out election. Pope Leo was chosen on the fourth ballot on the day after the opening of the conclave. He becomes the 265th occupant of the throne of St Peter at a time of crisis and change. But in its two millennia the papacy has seen plenty of both. ■
The New York Times, 9 mai
Who Is Pope Leo XIV?
Here’s what to know about Pope Francis’ successor, Robert Francis Prevost, who was chosen on Thursday. He is the first American pope and will be known as Leo XIV.
Full text:
Robert Francis Prevost was elected on Thursday to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, making him the first pope from the United States. He chose the name Leo XIV.
Speaking from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope delivered his first public remarks since taking over as leader of the Roman Catholic Church. He urged the world to seek peace and remember those who suffer.
Here’s what to know about the new pope, how he was chosen from the many contenders, and the issues he will face as the successor to Pope Francis, who died last month at 88.
Who is the new pope?
Robert Francis Prevost, 69, was born in Chicago and served for two decades in Peru, where he became a bishop and a naturalized citizen, then rose to lead his international religious order. Leading up to the death of his predecessor, Cardinal Prevost held one of the most influential Vatican posts, running the office that selects and manages bishops globally.
A member of the Order of St. Augustine, he resembles Francis in his commitment to the poor and migrants, and to meeting people where they are. He told the Vatican’s official news website last year that “the bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom.”
He has spent much of his life outside the United States. Ordained in 1982 at 27, he received a doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. In Peru, he was a missionary, parish priest, teacher and bishop. As the Augustinians’ leader, he visited orders around the world. He also speaks Spanish and Italian.
Where does he stand on major issues?
Often described as reserved and discreet, he would depart stylistically from Francis as pope. Supporters believe he will most likely continue the consultative process started by Francis to invite lay people to meet with bishops.
It is unclear whether he will be as open to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics as Francis was. Although he has not said much recently, in a 2012 address to bishops, he lamented that Western news media and popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.” He cited the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”
As an American, he is uniquely positioned to stand in contrast to the energized conservative Catholicism in his home country. He has pushed back forcefully against the militant vision of Christian power that the Trump administration has elevated.
Before he became pope, a social media account under his name shared criticisms of the Trump administration’s positions on immigration.
Like many other leaders of the Catholic Church, he has drawn criticism over his dealings with priests accused of sexual abuse.
Who chose the new pope?
Francis’ successor was selected in a conclave that began on May 7. Cardinals, known as the “princes of the church,” rank just below the pope in the Roman Catholic Church; together, they are known as the College of Cardinals. There are currently 252 cardinals. Only those under the age of 80 are eligible to vote, and there are 135 of them, the largest number in the church’s history. Pope Francis appointed about 80 percent of them.
When a pope dies or steps down — which is unusual — the college chooses a successor. The cardinals cast repeated votes until there is a two-thirds majority. After every vote, the ballot papers are burned in a stove, along with an additive that produces a color. The smoke is released through a chimney that can be seen from St. Peter’s Square, where crowds typically gather to watch and wait. If a vote ends without a two-thirds majority, the smoke is black. When a decision is reached, the smoke is white.
How long did it take for him to be elected?
The length of papal conclaves has varied widely over the centuries. Since 1900, this has been the fifth pope to be elected in two days.
The longest conclave during that time took 14 ballots, lasted five days and produced Pope Pius XI in 1922. Francis was elected after two days of voting.
The shortest conclave, the election of Pope Pius XII in 1939, took three ballots. But it has not always been so quick: The conclave that ended with the election of Pope Gregory X on Sept. 1, 1271, took two years, nine months and two days.
What are the key issues in the Catholic Church?
The cardinals had to decide whether to choose a pope who would follow Francis’ path of openness and inclusion or pick a pontiff who would forge a different one. During his 12-year pontificate, Francis made landmark declarations that encouraged liberals, including allowing the blessing of people in same-sex unions and raising his voice for migrants.
The cardinals who elect the pope sometimes look as ideologically polarized as many secular voters around the globe. Many conservative Roman Catholic leaders disagreed with Francis.
But the typical divisions between progressives and conservatives don’t correspond so neatly with the ideological battles within the Vatican and the broader church. There are complex debates over the role of women and L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics in the church, whether priests should be allowed to marry, accountability for sexual abuse by clergy and other divisive questions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/world/europe/who-is-robert-francis-prevost-pope-leo-xiv.html
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 mai
Michael Wolffsohn: Die Kirche betreibt beim Nahostkonflikt eine skandalöse Umkehrung von Tätern und Opfern
Derzeit wird in Deutschland die Mahnung an die historische Verantwortung gerne polemisch verknüpft mit dem Hinweis auf die vermeintlich überzogene Gewalt Israels gegen die Palästinenser. Der Historiker Michael Wolffsohn kritisierte am Evangelischen Kirchentag heftig den Israel-Hass. Die NZZ bringt hier seine Rede.
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Auch am Evangelischen Kirchentag 2025 wird wieder kräftig politisiert. Aber als politischer Akteur ist die Kirche einer von vielen politischen Akteuren und hat ihre Rolle als irdisch-moralische, nahezu metaphysisch legitimierte Instanz selbstverschuldet verspielt.
Trotzdem habe ich die Einladung zum Kirchentag 2025 angenommen. Wegen des Themas der Diskussion, an der ich teilnehmen soll: «Eine Vertrauensfrage? Deutsche Erinnerung nach dem 7. Oktober». Ich fürchte nämlich, dass weniger die Podiumsteilnehmer als vielmehr die anwesenden Massen die beiden Themen «Deutschlands (Ewige?) Schuld» einerseits und andererseits «Nahost, Israel, Palästina» zusammenführen wollen, um zu «beweisen»: Damals begingen die Deutschen Völkermord an den Juden, heute tun die Juden beziehungsweise Israeli Gleiches an den Palästinensern.» Also: «Israel = Nazis». Gegen diesen kontrafaktischen Meinungsstrom müssen Deiche errichtet werden. Ich bitte also dieser mildernden Umstände wegen um Absolution.
Die willigen Helfer der Nazis
Thema deutscher Erinnerungskultur ist die Last der Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus von 1933 bis 1945, die Nachwirkungen nach 1945 bis in die Gegenwart. Deren Akteure im eigentlichen Sinne sind die heutigen und künftigen Nachfahren der Deutschen, die im «Dritten Reich» lebten.
Akteure im Nahostkonflikt zwischen Israeli und Palästinensern sind seit rund 140 Jahren Israeli und Palästinenser. Was aus taktisch, tages- und falsch verstandenen integrationspolitischen Gründen fast immer vermieden wird, ist die erweiterte Perspektive.
Blickt man über den nationalsozialistisch-deutschen Mordmeister hinaus auch auf seine ausserdeutschen, willigen Gesellen – ist festzuhalten: Zu den willigen Gesellen des nationalsozialistischen Mordmeisters zählten zahlreiche Kollaborateure in Europa, die damalige Führung der Palästinenser, weitere arabisch-islamische Nationalisten in Ägypten, Syrien und im Irak oder iranische, europäische sowie aussereuropäische Antikolonialisten, die mit den Faschisten die westlichen oder sowjetischen Kolonialisten bekämpften. Man denke an die ukrainischen, muslimischen Kaukasus- und hinduistisch-indischen Nationalisten.
Daraus folgt: Schon aus faktisch-historischen Gründen ist die besonders bei Anhängern der Postkolonialismus-Theorie beliebte Gleichung «Juden/Israeli = Nazis» grundfalsch. In Teilen stimmt eher die Nähe von Antikolonialismus und Faschismus.
Wenn man im Heute (inflationiert) die NS-Vergangenheit thematisiert, dann bitte nicht, indem man wesentliche Fakten ignoriert oder tabuisiert. Vielmehr gelte das Motto der «New York Times» («NYT»): «All the News That’s Fit to Print». Dass auch die «NYT» dieser Leitlinie nicht unbedingt folgt, sei nur nebenbei erwähnt. «Juden/Israel = Nazis» ist das Lieblingsthema der Postkolonialisten. Da eine Theorie bisher nicht Widerlegtes enthalten muss, ist die Postkolonialismus-Strömung keine Theorie, sondern es handelt sich dabei um kontrafaktische Konstruktionen.
Aus alldem folgt: Indem die Organisatoren des Evangelischen Kirchentages das Thema «Eine Vertrauensfrage? Deutsche Erinnerung nach dem 7. Oktober» wählten, griffen Sie zwar unausgesprochen, doch unzweideutig die postkolonialistisch gefärbte, kontrafaktische, nahezu global und millionenfach lautstark hinausposaunte Behauptung «Juden/Israel = Nazis» auf. Auf diese Weise erhält die skandalöse Umkehrung von Opfern und Tätern quasi kirchliche Weihen.
Damit präsentiert und qualifiziert sich die evangelische Kirche einmal mehr als politischer Akteur. Zugleich disqualifiziert sie sich als weltlich- und erst recht als religiös-moralische, nahezu metaphysische Instanz. Sie ist – mit und ohne Missbrauchsfälle – austauschbar und auf dem Feld der Möchtegern-Politik der echten Politik unterlegen, denn Politik können Politiker besser.
«Auge um Auge, Zahn um Zahn» bedeutet nicht wilde Rache
Einmal mehr: Schade, denn religiös, theologisch und eben über den deutschen Tellerrand hinaus menschheitsethisch liesse sich zum Thema «7. Oktober» so manches fragen und sagen. Ein Beispiel: Was soll, was kann als Reaktion auf den 7. Oktober 2023 gelten? Die Botschaft Jesu aus der grandiosen Bergpredigt (Neues Testament, Matthäus 5,44)? «Ich aber sage euch: Liebt eure Feinde.» Oder gelte (Altes Testament, Exodus 21,24) «Auge um Auge, Zahn um Zahn»?
Kann man von den Juden / den Israeli verlangen, ihre Hamas-Feinde zu lieben oder auch nur zu verschonen? Hätten die Juden und andere Opfer des deutschen Nationalsozialismus Hitler und seine Mitverbrecher lieben sollen? Wer die Frage bejaht, käme zwangsläufig zu dem Schluss, der Krieg gegen Hitler-Deutschland wäre durch und durch unmoralisch gewesen.
«Auge um Auge, Zahn um Zahn» wird ohnehin total missverstanden. Nämlich als Aufforderung zu wilder Rache. Das genaue Gegenteil trifft zu. Gemeint ist damit die Ausgewogenheit zwischen Tat und Strafe. Die Strafe dürfe nicht schwerer als die Tat sein. Das nennt man Verhältnismässigkeit. Von Rache keine Spur, und auf ebenjener Verhältnismässigkeit von Tat und Strafe basiert die Ordnung eines jeden Rechtsstaates.
Krieg und Verhältnismässigkeit schliessen einander strukturell aus. Im Krieg will A gegen B seinen Willen durchsetzen, also siegen und folglich stärker als der andere sein. Keine Verhältnismässigkeit, sondern Sieg oder Niederlage. Das moderne Völkerrecht versucht, die strukturelle Kluft zwischen der militärischen Notwendigkeit siegreicher Überlegenheit und menschlich, moralisch gebotener Verhältnismässigkeit zu verringern. Ehrenhaft, aber historisch bislang völlig erfolglos.
Stoff zum Nachdenken
Auch zum Thema «Völkermord» bietet die Juden und Christen gemeinsam heilige Bibel reichlich Stoff zum Nachdenken. Man denke an die (ganz und gar unhistorische) biblische Erzählung von der Eroberung des Heiligen Landes durch die Kinder Israels. Als sich ihnen unter König Saul die militärische Gelegenheit bot, empfingen sie Gottes Befehl, das Volk der Amalekiter, das ihnen lange zuvor den Weg ins Land brutal versperrt hatte, zu vernichten. König Saul besiegte die Amalekiter total, aber führte Gottes Befehl zum Völkermord nicht aus, was sowohl den göttlichen Zorn des Richter-Propheten Samuel als auch den höchstgöttlichen Zorn Gottes hervorrief. König Saul wurde bestraft.
Nicht nur Atheisten, wahrscheinlich (und hoffentlich!) sympathisieren wir Heutigen diesbezüglich mit König Saul und eben nicht mit dem alles andere als lieben biblischen Gott.
Wer jedoch den biblischen Text aufmerksam liest, erkennt: Der oder die Autoren dieser Bibelgeschichte erzählen sie vielschichtig, denn nicht nur am Ende ist Saul eine tragische, mitleiderregende Person – anders als David und Salomon, die wahrlich nicht als die Personifizierung menschlicher Tugenden dargestellt werden. Kein Wunder, dass der biblische Saul bedeutende Schriftsteller wie Karl Wolfskehl, André Gide oder Botho Strauss zu lesens- und sehenswerten Theaterstücken inspirierte.
Gerade ausgehend vom Politischen führen unzählige Seins- und Sinnfragen zurück ins Urreligiöse, ins Urmenschliche. Aber nein, auf dem Evangelischen Kirchentag beschäftigen wir uns mit der platten, kontrafaktischen, explosiven und letztlich antisemitischen Gleichsetzung von Juden, Israeli und Nazis. Wer heute Erinnerung so betreibt, wird nicht nur erinnerungspolitisch, sondern auch allgemeinpolitisch heute und morgen scheitern. Die Kirche wird sich selbst als religiöse Instanz abschaffen.
Michael Wolffsohn ist Historiker und Publizist. Der vorliegende Text ist eine leicht gekürzte Fassung der Rede des Autors zum Evangelischen Kirchentag am 1. Mai in Hannover. Jüngst vom Autor erschien «Feindliche Nähe. Von Juden, Christen und Muslimen», Herder-Verlag, Freiburg, 272 S., Fr. 29.90.
The Wall Street Journal, 8 mai
The Vatican Financial Mess Pope Francis Couldn’t Fix
The next pope will inherit a soaring deficit and culture of financial malpractice that Francis tried and failed to solve even through his final weeks
Full text:
The ailing pope was short of breath, sitting beneath a cherished painting of Mary, Untier of Knots, as he worked through a last-ditch plan to disentangle the finances of one of the world’s most opaque bureaucracies.
For over a decade, Francis had struggled to bring some transparency to the Vatican’s shadowy balance sheet. Now, in the final weeks of his life, advisers were filtering in and out of his austere reception room, presenting the details of a microstate awash in priceless treasures but tumbling deeper into debt. The budget deficit had tripled since the Argentine took office, and the pension fund faced up to 2 billion euros in liabilities it wouldn’t be able to fund.
The first Jesuit Pope was exhorting clergy to live frugally—but pinching pennies alone would not relieve the financial crisis facing the seat of the Church. The Vatican was increasingly relying on museum ticket sales to fund its civil service, its worldwide network of embassies and the Papal Swiss Guard, a small army paid in Swiss franc pensions. The city-state serves seven million visitors a year and a global flock, without collecting taxes.
After more than a month of discussion, Francis settled on one solution: Ask the faithful for more money.
On Feb. 11, he signed a chirografo, or papal directive, to boost donations. Three days later, he was hospitalized with double pneumonia. On April 21, he died, leaving his soon-to-be-chosen successor with a similar economic puzzle to the one Francis himself had inherited.
“Those of us who live and work here are obviously all too aware,” said a cardinal who oversaw the Vatican’s humanitarian outreach under Francis, Michael Czerny. Cardinals gathering to elect a pope were given what he described as a “thorough report” on the Vatican’s finances: “I am concerned because of the effects on our mission, our staff, our programs.”
Twelve years ago, the new Bishop of Rome was Francis, a pontiff elected with a mandate to fix the Vatican’s finances. But the first pope from the New World wasn’t prepared for the degree of resistance at the Curia, as the Vatican bureaucracy is known, his close advisers and allies said. He hired a professional auditor to modernize the finances—leading clergy to move Vatican funds to an account under a cardinal’s name and stockpile cash in a shopping bag. The auditor was mystified that nuns kept account ledgers in pencil and paper. At one point intruders broke into his office and tampered with his computer. Eventually the Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State—its police service—got involved.
Professional accountants, encouraged by Francis, ran training workshops for clergy who balked at the rules like obtaining multiple signoffs for expenses. Prelates tried to hide funds from scrutiny, citing national security concerns for the secret ledgers of funding missionaries in countries where proselytizing is a crime. Other departments shrugged off the modern-day challenge of balancing the budget of a papal state whose origins stretch back more than a millennium. The pope himself shifted focus to other topics. Meanwhile, the pension fund kept falling farther behind. Scandals over a $400 million real-estate investment ended with a cardinal being convicted of embezzlement and fraud in 2023.
The problems will now fall to Francis’ successor, who will be elected by cardinals from 70 different countries and territories in the Sistine Chapel starting Wednesday. Cardinals from the U.S. and Germany—the countries with the biggest donor bases—have given lengthy presentations to their brethren on the fragile state of the Vatican’s finances and efforts to repair them. Others view the financial strains as earthly concerns that are secondary to the Church’s main mission of saving souls.
To understand the combination of deficit spending and mismanagement that is driving the Vatican into unsustainable debt, Wall Street Journal reporters met officials from the Vatican’s bank, pension fund and regulatory institutions and with cardinals attending this week’s conclave. Several met in secret, in locations arranged over Signal, citing an atmosphere of suspicion as the Vatican’s balance sheet deteriorates and blame circulates. One top Vatican finance official refused to speak in detail until he was assured that Journal reporters were not surreptitiously recording him—pointing to an incident in which a cardinal, facing trial for embezzlement, covertly recorded the pope himself.
The first concern, they said, was a culture of financial malpractice that Francis was unable to defeat before his death. Shortly before the pope died, one of the banks managing assets for the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR, as the Vatican Bank is also known, cut ties—a sign of dwindling confidence in the Curia’s anti-money-laundering practices.
The deeper concern is the unforgiving math of running a cash-strapped country of tremendous wealth. Vatican museum walls are lined with the masterpieces of Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Leonardo. More than 1 million old and rare books are stored under the vaulted, frescoed ceilings of the Vatican Library, including some of the earliest extant Greek-language manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments. But the Vatican has no intention of ever selling off its inheritance. It lists many priceless works of art, including the Sistine Chapel, on its books at a nominal value of one euro each, as a way of indicating it prizes their religious and artistic significance over their financial worth. And yet the upkeep and insurance are burdensome.
The result is a paradox. A tiny country of unfathomable riches has been unable to sustain the basic functions of a state without running a perilous deficit. The country, per capita, has one of the highest percentages of residents working in finance. Yet its budget is ultimately controlled by clergy more versed in the spiritual mission of the church than the nuts and bolts of running a government, bank or treasury department.
It boasts a workforce of unmarried clergy that most pension-fund managers would dream of servicing: no spouses or dependents to pay as beneficiaries. Nonetheless, its pension fund will be unable to meet its obligations “in the medium term,” Francis warned in a letter last November.
“Five-alarm fire is what I tend to hear from people,” said Ed Condon, editor of The Pillar, the Catholic news website, about the Church’s finances, particularly the pension fund. “Some very, very unpleasant decisions are going to have to be made.”
A Vatican spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
‘The root of all evil’
Paying the bills wasn’t always so difficult for the pope. The crusades, the Sistine Chapel and Saint Peter’s Basilica were all financed in part by the sale of indulgences—a sixth-century invention that allowed the faithful to buy forgiveness for their sins, although the practice was considered so corrupt it helped spark the Reformation.
Into the middle of the 19th century, the Papal States taxed the rich farmland of what is now central and northern Italy, providing a steady income stream. That ended in 1870, when armies of the newly united Italy wrested Rome from Pius IX. That left a 0.2-square-mile estate in the middle of the ancient capital for what would become Vatican City.
With a population made up primarily of priests, nuns and church workers, it didn’t have much of a tax base. But the Vatican eventually realized it could leverage its tax-exempt status to become a financial hub, and its newly created bank over time took sizable shares in Italian and European companies.
The Vatican developed a reputation for murky financial practices, and the Vatican Bank was plagued by scandals, including allegations of money smuggling and laundering, for decades. The bank in the early 1980s became embroiled in the collapse of Italian lender Banco Ambrosiano, whose chairman, Roberto Calvi, was found dead with bricks in his pockets, hanging under London’s Blackfriars Bridge. The Vatican Bank agreed to pay almost $250 million to settle claims by the Italian bank’s creditors. But the question of how to finance a tax-free theocratic city-state lingered.
When Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, the rolling scandals were evolving into a financial crisis. One of the Vatican’s most lucrative income sources by then was a two-pump gasoline station located about 50 yards south of St. Peter’s, serving cars lined up to fill their tanks with gas that cost up to 30% less than in Italy. The German pontiff established a unit to combat money laundering and asked Moneyval, Europe’s financial crimes watchdog, to look into accounts. For the first time, the Vatican Bank started releasing annual reports.
But by July 2012, Moneyval said the Vatican was still failing in almost half of its 16 key areas of financial standards and called on the Vatican to strengthen measures to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
In January 2013, Italy’s central bank lost patience and blocked all electronic payments to Vatican City, leaving tourists unable to take money from ATMs or to use their bank cards. Priests had problems executing payments. Within a month, Benedict announced he would resign, the first Pope to do so since Gregory XII in 1415.
One step forward
Francis was elected in 2013 with a mandate to tackle the financial rot, and within weeks he had summoned a panel of cardinals from around the world to advise him. Moneyval warned that the Vatican Bank would be blacklisted if it didn’t tighten money-laundering rules. An internal report signaled to the new pope that the pension fund was in trouble. About a third of it was unwisely tied up in real estate, employees needed to contribute more to their own retirement, and the entire fund was facing up to 1.5 billion euros of liabilities it wouldn’t be able to honor—a number set to keep rising without significant reform.
Francis, who had witnessed the cost of financial mismanagement in his homeland of Argentina, established a new secretariat for the economy to run the Vatican’s finances. The group, made up of prelates and external financial experts, was led by Australian Cardinal George Pell. Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, a former chief executive of Invesco Europe, was tapped to run the Vatican Bank, which closed thousands of accounts, purging clients suspected of using the Vatican to evade taxes.
When Pell’s department began tracking budgets across the Curia, it riled the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that enforces church teaching and is historically known as The Inquisition. Those officials worried that Pell’s new department would seize control of funds they used for discretionary spending.
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller, who then led the doctrinal office, said the department’s treasurer returned from a briefing with Pell’s team one day in a state of alarm and advised that the congregation “save our money” by withdrawing funds from one of the congregation’s Vatican Bank accounts and storing the cash in a bag. The treasurer also transferred funds to a different bank account under Muller’s name—another attempt to conceal funding from Pell, Muller said.
The treasurer, Muller said, was an Italian prelate who struggled to communicate in English with Pell’s team and was “absolutely confused.”
Shortly after, in spring 2015, the Vatican hired Libero Milone, a former Deloitte executive who had worked at the accounting firm for more than 30 years, to become the Vatican’s in-house auditor. Pell asked him to look into the accounts of the doctrinal office, which was late in delivering its budget.
Milone questioned the doctrinal office’s treasurer. He eventually discovered that more than $500,000 was missing from the doctrinal office’s Vatican Bank account—later found in a shopping bag and in the account under Muller’s name.
“We were trying to get a hand on how things happen in the Vatican,” Milone said.
Milone reported his findings to the Vatican’s financial watchdog as well as the prosecutors’ office. But neither took action, he said. In early October 2015, Milone took the matter to Pope Francis himself. Instead of taking legal action, Francis wanted the auditor to simply fix the problem.
“He has to give the money back,” Francis told the auditor.
“Well, that’s not my responsibility,” Milone replied.
Francis insisted that Milone report his findings to Cardinal Muller, adding: “I’m sure he will give the money back.”
Milone said he met with Muller and the money was returned to the congregation’s account. Muller said that the handling of the funds was “a little bit strange or not modern” but that keeping access to the funds was vital for maintaining the congregation’s operations, whether it was hosting an international commission of theologians or buying office supplies. Getting funds from the Vatican’s treasury—known as the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, or APSA—could take a year, he said.
Soon, Milone himself was in a power struggle with APSA, which functions as the Vatican’s Central Bank and clears Vatican transactions. After the auditor questioned APSA’s accounting practices, APSA began scrutinizing Milone’s own expense reports, asking why he and his team purchased items as minor as coffee outside the Vatican City borders. Milone pleaded with APSA that the coffee in Rome was cheaper and tastier than what was available in the Vatican. As that fight broiled on, efforts to reform the pension plan stalled.
Break-in
In September 2015, Milone discovered his office had been broken into. He arrived on a Monday to find the bottom of his computer was unscrewed, with a spring missing, he said. Francis, instead of pressing for an investigation, proposed installing security cameras outside the office.
“Do you still feel independent?” Francis asked Milone.
In March 2016, Milone began to press Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu and other officials in the Vatican’s powerful Secretariat of State for documentation on the department’s 750 million euros in investments, half of which was in real estate, the auditor said. Becciu’s department declined to provide the documentation, Milone said.
In June 2017, Becciu summoned Milone to his office to deliver a message.
“The pope no longer has faith in you,” Becciu said, according to Milone.
Milone asked to see the pope, but the archbishop refused. Instead, Becciu phoned the Vatican gendarmes who detained Milone for 12 hours on suspicion he had hired private investigators to spy on Vatican employees. Milone denied the accusation, saying he had hired external consultants to investigate the tampering of his computer and to sweep for bugs in his office, which was outside Vatican walls. After the interrogation, Milone phoned his secretary to dictate his letter of resignation, he said, only to learn that the gendarmes already had a draft of one on file.
Lawyers for Becciu said the cardinal “didn’t block in any way the activities of the auditor,” adding that he was following orders. In meeting Milone, Becciu was “communicating a decision from the Holy Father,” the lawyers said, adding that the involvement of the gendarmes wasn’t Becciu’s call.
The next year, Francis raised Becciu to the rank of cardinal and made him head of the Vatican office that oversees the canonization of saints. The Italian cardinal was a rising star, even mentioned as a potential future pope.
Two years later, he emerged from a 20-minute meeting with the pope with a very different status—that of an accused criminal. Vatican magistrates alleged Becciu had embezzled more than $100,000 through a nonprofit group run by his brother. The magistrates also alleged Becciu was negligent in overseeing what became a $400 million investment into a building in London’s elite Chelsea neighborhood. Becciu denied the charges; Francis told him to resign his Vatican post.
Becciu and nine others faced charges that also concerned the alleged misuse of money intended to free a kidnapped nun. Days before the trial began, in 2021, Becciu called Francis, put the pope on speaker phone, and secretly recorded him as he asked the pontiff to confirm authorizing a complex financial arrangement in which the nun’s ransom was paid through a self-described security consultant. The consultant was later convicted of embezzlement after the court ruled she had spent Becciu’s payments on luxury holidays and designer goods.
The Vatican sold the London building for about $225 million in 2022, a steep loss. Becciu was found guilty of fraud and embezzlement in 2023, a conviction he is appealing.
The struggle between Francis and the Curia over finances escalated. The Pope slashed the salaries for the Church’s 250-odd cardinals three times. In early 2023, Pope Francis said he would stop providing discounted Vatican housing to senior officials. Those moves expressed Francis’ vision for the clergy: to live modestly, with humility.
The deficit continued rising. Last September, Francis issued a letter demanding the Vatican set a rigorous timeline for achieving a “zero deficit” regime. A few weeks later, he signed another letter, warning the current pension system suffered “a serious prospective imbalance,” and predicted the Vatican would have to make “difficult decisions.” He died before any substantial decisions could be taken.
As cardinals gathered in Rome, Becciu demanded admission to the conclave, arguing the pope had never stripped him of his title as cardinal. He relented after Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Becciu’s former superior and a front-runner to replace Francis, disclosed the existence of two letters that he said were written by the late pontiff, barring Becciu from the sacred vote.
Some cardinals this week have been critical of the emphasis some have placed on the Vatican’s financial struggles.
“Jesus sent the Apostles and later the bishops into the world to preach the Gospel of salvation, redemption, hope to everybody. This remains the main issue for the Church,” Muller said. “The other questions—the financial state of the Vatican—it’s not so important for the essence.”
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/vatican-pope-finances-5d3a9bbd?mod=hp_lead_pos7
Le Figaro, 7 mai
Luc Ferry: «Ce que nos démocraties doivent au christianisme»
CHRONIQUE – Ce que l’Église et son clergé ont pu faire du message du Christ au fil des siècles pose question. Mais il ne fait aucun doute que celui-ci est à l’origine de notre civilisation démocratique.
Full text:
C’est d’abord, à l’encontre de ce que beaucoup d’athées s’imaginent encore, l’idée de laïcité qui nous vient très directement du message christique. Comme Jésus n’a cessé de le dire (on pense d’abord au magnifique épisode de la « femme adultère »), le christianisme est une religion de l’esprit plus que de la lettre, de la conscience et de l’intériorité plus que de l’observance littérale et mécanique de règles de vie façonnées par les coutumes et les traditions. Ces dernières demandent qu’on lapide la femme adultère ?
Qu’importe si la loi du cœur et de la conscience s’y oppose ! En toutes circonstances, la première place doit revenir au « forum intérieur », à ce lieu de délibération de soi avec soi qu’on appelle la « conscience », le mot étant ici entendu en son sens moral. Non seulement le Christ rend à César ce qui est à César, mais il renvoie les hommes à eux-mêmes : que celui qui n’a jamais péché jette la première pierre, et tous s’en retournent chez eux la tête basse. Du coup, à la différence des autres grands monothéismes, le christianisme ne juridifie pas la vie quotidienne.
L’Évangile de Marc (7, 15) précise de manière particulièrement profonde cette rupture avec le judaïsme orthodoxe auquel Jésus s’oppose à l’époque, non bien sûr en tant que « chrétien », mais en tant que lui-même sage juif : « Il n’y a rien d’extérieur à l’homme qui puisse le rendre impur en pénétrant en lui, mais ce qui sort de l’homme, voilà ce qui le rend impur ».
La place unique accordée à l’intériorité a permis le passage à la laïcité
Peu importent les nourritures terrestres et même les rituels religieux, surtout s’ils sont accomplis avec hypocrisie ! Conséquence abyssale historiquement et philosophiquement : c’est cette place unique accordée à l’intériorité qui a permis le passage à la laïcité, le christianisme pouvant renvoyer la religion à la sphère privée, sans obstacle infranchissable même quand la sphère publique en diffère.
Pour nous, Européens de tradition chrétienne, la séparation du religieux et du politique va largement de soi
Pour nous, Européens de tradition chrétienne, la séparation du religieux et du politique va largement de soi. De là aussi, comme l’avait vu Tocqueville, l’origine de notre Déclaration des droits de l’homme : « Dans l’idée chrétienne », écrit-il dans La Démocratie en Amérique, « tous les hommes naissent libres et égaux… C’est nous qui avons répandu dans tout l’univers la notion de l’égalité des hommes devant la loi, comme le christianisme avait créé l’idée de l’égalité de tous les hommes devant Dieu ». Bien vu et bien dit ! Enfin c’est la critique de l’idolâtrie de l’argent qui permettra à de nombreux chrétiens de s’ouvrir à la question sociale. Souvenons-nous de ce que Jésus dit au jeune homme riche (en Matthieu 19) lorsque ce dernier lui demande ce qu’il « doit faire de bon pour obtenir la vie éternelle ».
La philosophie de l’amour
Jésus lui répond dans un premier temps qu’il doit observer les Commandements, le Décalogue. Le jeune homme lui rétorque que c’est déjà fait : que doit-il faire de plus ? Jésus lui dit alors : « Vends ce que tu as et donne-le aux pauvres et tu auras un trésor dans le ciel », mais le jeune homme, qui est fort riche, s’en va tout triste, trouvant la potion trop rude à avaler. C’est alors que le Christ se retourne vers ses disciples et leur délivre ce fameux message : « Il sera plus facile à un chameau de passer par le chas d’une aiguille qu’à un riche d’entrer dans le royaume des cieux. » Depuis lors, de nombreux ouvrages de théologie ou de littérature inspirés par ce passage ont développé une critique de l’argent, une tradition que développeront des auteurs aussi subtils que Péguy ou Bernanos.
On trouve dans le catéchisme officiel de l’Église une explication de ce rejet à travers une critique du système capitaliste que Marx aurait pu signer : « Une théorie qui fait du profit la règle exclusive et la fin ultime de l’activité économique est moralement inacceptable. » Bien entendu, ce n’est pas l’argent en soi qui est mauvais, mais ce glissement par lequel il devient une fin plus qu’un moyen faisant passer les hommes d’une logique de l’être à une logique de l’avoir : à partir de quel degré de richesse non partagée avec les autres, avec les plus démunis notamment, l’accumulation de l’argent cesse-t-elle d’être un moyen pour devenir une fin en soi ?
C’est toute la question et on y retrouve la philosophie de l’amour, celle d’Agapè, car le partage de la richesse suppose ce visage de la charité alors que son accumulation indéfinie l’exclut. Ce que l’Église et son clergé ont pu faire de ce message au fil des siècles est une chose, le fait qu’il est bien à l’origine de notre civilisation démocratique en est une autre qui ne fait aucun doute.
The New York Times, 1 mai
The Church of the Open Road
The writer Colum McCann biked across America, searching for a God.
I was on the road to nowhere. On the map, I kept to the blue highways. At night, I slept in a tent. I thought of myself as an apprentice Kerouac. Gone, Ireland. Gone, the strictures of Catholicism. Twenty-one years old, the deepest faith I had was in what might appear around the next corner.
For the first half of the journey — which is almost four decades ago now — I traveled with a friend. Tracey had been raised in a conservative Christian family in Massachusetts and, though only 19, she knew a thing or two about American churches, so we weren’t shy about crossing the threshold.
The New York Times is exploring how people believe now. We look at Americans’ relationship to religion, moments that shape faith and why God can be hard to talk about.
In the South, we grew to like Sunday mornings. The churches were open even for sinners of a Catholic persuasion. I was a hungry lad, putting miles underneath my wheels. The picnic tables at the backs of the churches were nearly always full. Pan-fried chicken. Brisket. Collard greens. Cornbread. Iced tea. Sweet potato pie.
South Carolina. Georgia. Mississippi. Alabama. The plates filled. The corners turned into other corners.
By the time we reached New Orleans, Tracey was growing tired of the rigors of the road. We bade each other goodbye in the city where the rest of America seemed to fall into the sea.
Now the blue highways were flung open entirely to me, alone.
I hesitated a little outside the Louisiana churches at first. Thibodaux. Houma. Morgan City. A little roadhouse shrine along an Atchafalaya Basin road. These were different worshiping places from those I had grown up in. They were smaller, more intimate, with no baptismal fonts, no Stations of the Cross, no Jesus on the crucifix.
I ventured south and stepped inside a small wooden structure near Cameron on a Wednesday afternoon. The pastor lived out back. I was given a pew to sleep on for an impending storm.
I had the sense that, in these churches, people wanted me to convert, or be saved, but I had no idea what they wanted me to convert into, or to be saved from. The whole idea that my soul should be rescued seemed anachronistic, given that the territory I was cycling through seemed more than enough saving grace for me anyway. I liked the wildness, and my joy was in change. Strangers confided in me. I took their stories and kept going. I was comfortable not knowing where I might be sleeping. I was reading poetry (Wendell Berry, Jim Harrison), not theology. I didn’t want, or need, another home for whatever faith I hadn’t yet shaped.
I went west, into Texas.
At night I began to have a little quarrel with God under the bullet-holed stars. What exactly did I believe in? Who were these people who were opening their doors? What did I mean to them beyond the fact that I was some lost soul? How could I achieve a sense of personal scripture?
I decided that the church of the open road would be my thing.
In the tiny crossroads of Independence, near Brenham, I found a reason to stay for over a month, and I worked on a Southern Baptist-run farm for kids, most of whom were coming out of struggling families or juvenile detention. I wasn’t much beyond a delinquent myself, but Miracle Farm sharpened my questions about God and action and belief and belonging.
On the farm, we built fences, cut the kleingrass, began a wilderness program. I taught for a while in a small on-campus school. I left with a Bible signed by all the staff members and the kids.
The long straight tarmacadam of Texas rolled out in front of me. Turkey vultures circled on the thermals above. My wheels turned. My questions deepened.
Eventually I ended up in a megachurch in Amarillo. Halfway through the service the pastor asked the congregation to close their eyes. “Let every head be bowed,” he said. “If you’re having doubts, or if you feel the spirit moving in you, raise your hand, we will pray for you.”
This was, I knew, more brimstone than potential barbecue, but I raised my hand. After all, nobody could see me. All eyes were supposedly closed. The dilemma of doubt was entirely my own. Then came the first surprise of a backslap. Then another. Soon I was surrounded by churchgoers, almost lifted off my feet, as I was guided toward the front altar, my head spinning, or was it even an altar, what was it called, where was I, hold on, wait, what was happening? A chorus of hallelujahs rang all around.
Startled, I tried to back away, but the pastor was all high hair and holler. He pulled me back, put his thick white arm around me and declared that I had been “washed in the blood of the lamb.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this freaked the living bejesus out of me.
Did this mean that I had just been saved? Had I renounced my Catholic history? Was I a Protestant? Had I somehow made a cultural shift and become an evangelical? Did I now have a new — and quite foreign — certainty about God?
I didn’t hang around. No barbecue. No collard greens. I gathered myself and pushed through the crowd. Outside, my bicycle. It had no rearview mirrors. I rode appropriately: like hell.
I hardly slept. I woke in ditches. I harangued the sky. I didn’t take stock until a number of days later when I snapped a number of freewheel-side spokes approaching Raton Pass into the Rocky Mountains. My wheel was ruined. So, where was this supposed God when I needed Him most?
I found myself a bed for the evening, in a railway hostel in a small village where I paid my way by washing dishes. Still my head spun from my megachurch encounter. Had I lost some essential part of myself? Had I been washed in the blood of a scam?
I telephoned a man I had met back in Independence, Texas. Terry Cooper had become a good friend over the course of a month. Half brother, half counselor, he was a solid Christian, but decidedly not a holy roller. He already knew a good part of my spiritual dilemma. He drove 10 hours in my direction and we camped for a couple of days in the woods outside Raton.
“Did you ever hear the story of the woman at the well?” he asked.
I had, but I hadn’t really — not truly, not carefully — and it was there, under a new series of stars, that I began to realize that I wasn’t really on the “road to nowhere” at all. The woman at the well, he told me, leaves behind her jar of water when she discovers something greater to live for.
“You’re a storyteller,” he said. “And you’re a listener. The God you want will be in the people you meet on the road. Not in a building.”
I figured he was right — the God I needed became articulate in the stories that people wanted, and needed, to tell me as I rode through their lives.
Later, Terry drove me, my bike and my broken wheel over the Raton Pass into Colorado. In the town of Trinidad I found a shop called the Bike Doctor. The owners, the McGuire family, invited me to stay for a little while. They would teach me, they said, to build wheels.
Circles within circles. Stories within stories.
Six months later, I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in California with the understanding that faith begins with the inclination to listen. The world was the story of everyone else. For me, it was only just beginning.
Colum McCann is the author, most recently, of the novel “Twist.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/style/colum-mccann-biking-church.html
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1 mai
Gendertheorie statt Heilsbotschaft: So kann sich die deutsche evangelische Kirche nicht aus ihrer Krise retten
Beim Evangelischen Kirchentag in Hannover geht es viel um Klimaschutz, Rassismus und Queerness – und weniger um Glaubensfragen. Gegen den Mitgliederschwund der Amtskirche dürfte das nicht helfen.
Full text:
Wie oft gehen Sie sonntags in die Kirche? Wenn Sie jede Woche den Gottesdienst aufsuchen, sind Sie zumindest in Deutschland die Ausnahme. Nur auf sechs Prozent aller Deutschen trifft das laut einer aktuellen Umfrage des «Freizeitmonitors» der Stiftung Zukunftsfragen zu. Die Amtskirchen verlieren jährlich Hunderttausende Mitglieder, Konfessionslose stellen inzwischen in Deutschland die relative Mehrheit.
Doch darüber wird die Grünen-Politikerin und Kirchentagspräsidentin Anja Siegesmund an diesem Mittwoch wohl nicht sprechen, wenn sie mit dem deutschen Bundespräsidenten Frank-Walter Steinmeier den 39. Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchentag eröffnet. Denn die fünf Tage dauernde protestantische Grossveranstaltung in der niedersächsischen Landeshauptstadt Hannover steht unter dem optimistischen Motto «mutig, stark, beherzt» – ein abgewandeltes Zitat aus dem Korintherbrief des Apostels Paulus.
Das Programm des Kirchentags ist ein Sammelsurium identitätspolitischer Ideen, die links der Mitte Blüten treiben. So soll es etwa auf einem Podium um das Thema «Queer in der Klimakrise» gehen, in einem anderen um «gendersensible Liturgie». In einem Workshop soll es «BIPoC/PoC-Kindern» erleichtert werden, sich «mutig und stark» zu fühlen.
Was sich hinter dem sperrigen Akronym verbirgt, wird sodann erklärt. Das Angebot richte sich «ausschliesslich an Black, Indigenous und Kinder of Color», ist im Programmheft zu lesen – also nur an nichtweisse Kinder. Mit dem Universalismus der christlichen Heilsbotschaft hat das nichts zu tun, mit sozialpädagogischen Trends und postkolonialer Theorie umso mehr.
Früher Avantgarde, heute Nachhut
Sicher, die hier erwähnten Veranstaltungen sind nur ein Ausschnitt aus dem Programm des Evangelischen Kirchentags. Und es steht ausser Zweifel: Die Kirchentage waren immer schon politisch.
Dabei galten die Kirchentage einmal als die Avantgarde der gesellschaftlichen Veränderung. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg diskutierten ihre Teilnehmer nicht nur über theologische Fragen, sondern auch über die Aufarbeitung der Kollaboration kirchlicher Kreise mit dem nationalsozialistischen Regime. Später ging es vor allem um Abrüstung und Umweltschutz. Damit prägten sie die grossen Debatten ihrer Zeit.
Heute hingegen wirken die Protagonisten des Kirchentags wie eine verlorene Nachhut. Sie weichen der Frage aus, warum sich immer weniger Menschen in Deutschland für die Botschaften der protestantischen Amtskirche interessieren. Der Evangelische Kirchentag mag der Selbstvergewisserung linksgerichteter Protestanten nützen. Die Krise des Glaubens in Deutschland behebt er nicht.
IREF, 30 avril
Le pape François aura beaucoup fait souffrir les libéraux
Retour sur l’antilibéralisme obsessionnel du pape François
Full text:
La personnalité du pape François, qui n’a laissé personne indifférent, fait l’objet d’analyses plus ou moins laudatives, plus ou moins critiques, dans tous les médias. L’Iref a souvent regretté certaines de ses prises de positions, notamment en matière de relations internationales, par exemple avec la Chine et l’Ukraine, et ne l’a pas épargné. Nous souhaitons cependant aujourd’hui nous concentrer sur la doctrine sociale de l’Eglise (DSE)
François, un pape qui a pleinement rempli ses deux rôles, chef religieux et chef politique
La popularité de François, quoique déclinante, n’en restait pas moins fort élevée. Un sondage lui donnait 87 % d’opinions favorables en 2015, un autre trois années plus tard 78 % encore, 87 % même chez les catholiques pratiquants et 90 % chez les catholiques non pratiquants (Le Figaro, 12 mars 2018). Un sondage en ligne sur « la question du jour » dans Le Figaro, juste après le décès de François, révélait que 61 % des 134.000 répondants considéraient qu’il avait été un « bon pape ».
Ce fut en tout cas un pape très actif, qui a beaucoup travaillé et s’est fermement prononcé sur les questions sociales dans l’optique de cette DSE, laquelle rend compte des positions adoptées par l’Église au sujet des questions économiques et sociales. Au sens strict, elle naît avec la très importante encyclique Rerum novarum de Léon XIII en 1891, mais en réalité certains textes antérieurs avaient en partie traité de ce type de questions. Les papes successifs y ont imprimé leur marque, la modifiant, l’enrichissant d’époque en époque.
N’oublions pas qu’un pape présente la qualité très particulière d’être à la fois un chef politique et un chef religieux.
Rappelons que l’infaillibilité pontificale ne s’applique qu’au dogme de la foi. Ainsi, une encyclique ne saurait être considérée comme un ordre donné par le souverain pontife à ses fidèles. Il s’agit seulement d’opinions, émises par une personnalité éminente dans un document officiel, qui constituent autant d’invitations à réfléchir sur des « choses nouvelles ». A fortiori lorsqu’il s’agit de documents de moindre niveau et plus encore de simples déclarations à la presse.
Un début de pontificat en fanfare antilibérale
Élu le 13 mars 2013, François prononçait dès le 16 mai suivant un discours dans lequel il prétendait que la pauvreté devenait plus criante, une allégation pour le moins étonnante. Il accusait l’argent en général et la finance en particulier. On aurait pu croire qu’il s’agissait d’une mauvaise information, un peu inquiétante toutefois pour un homme déjà âgé de 76 ans. Ou peut-être de paroles malheureuses qui avaient dépassé sa pensée ? Mais ce n’était pas le cas puisque, dès le 22 septembre, il faisait du chômage « la conséquence d’un choix mondial », celui d’un système économique commandé par le Veau d’or. L’année 2013 allait se terminer sur un rythme accru, puisque l’exhortation apostolique Evangelii gaudium du 24 novembre comportait entre autres la phrase selon laquelle « nous ne pouvons plus avoir confiance dans les forces aveugles et dans la main invisible du marché ». Une phrase qui se passait de commentaires, si ce n’est que le « plus » était sans doute de trop dans la pensée de François…
La confirmation antilibérale avec Laudato si’
Le 24 mai 2015 est dévoilée l’encyclique Laudato si’, autrement dit « Loué sois-tu », appelée à un grand retentissement (voir notre article sur « L’antilibéralisme radical du pape François », Contrepoints, 19 juin 2015).
François y reprend les termes négatifs de la « finance », du consumérisme, de la spéculation, de l’individualisme et du marché, d’une part, et les idées positives de l’interventionnisme économique, de la mise en place d’une « autorité publique mondiale » et d’une « certaine décroissance dans quelques parties du monde », d’autre part. Etaient égrenés les « mythes » de la modernité, « individualisme, progrès indéfini, concurrence, consumérisme, marché sans règles », on croyait lire le Syllabus du XXIe siècle, du nom du texte rétrograde dévoilé par le très conservateur Pie IX en 1864… Il ne faut pas oublier que ce qui a pu rendre populaire le pape François c’est, entre autres, ce mélange, a priori détonnant, de « progressisme », par définition antilibéral, et de passéisme, par définition antimoderne.
Laudato si’ adoptait un ton pessimiste et catastrophiste qui en lui-même a participé à son succès. Fondé sur un écologisme politique dénonciateur d’un capitalisme pathogène pour Gaïa, l’analyse de style passablement néo-paganiste ne manquait pas de sel s’agissant du Vatican…
Dans un discours du 9 juillet 2015, François avait entériné l’expression de « fumier du diable » pour qualifier l’argent, avant de parler d’une « dictature subtile » : « Cette économie tue. Cette économie exclut. Cette économie détruit la Mère Terre ». Le pape rejetait aussi le libre-échange en stigmatisant « certains traités dits de “libre commerce » qui masquaient un « nouveau colonialisme » et des mesures d’austérité préjudiciables aux « travailleurs » et aux pauvres.
Les sources de l’antilibéralisme de François
Manifestement, la description que faisait François de la vie économique et sociale se trouvait déformée par le prisme argentin – avant l’arrivée au pouvoir de l’anarcho-capitaliste Milei bien entendu – et sud-américain. Loin d’être un processus de découverte, de coordination et de paix, le marché devenait avec lui un monde d’affrontement, une guerre économique menée par les riches nations du Nord contre les pauvres nations du Sud et, au sein même des nations du Nord, par les possédants contre les nouveaux prolétaires. La dévalorisation de l’économie se trouvait compensée par une survalorisation du politique, paré de toutes les vertus d’une manière typiquement constructiviste. Explicitement « allergique à l’économie », comme il l’avait déclaré avec humour et lucidité le 13 juillet 2015, François en réalité n’avait aucune formation économique et il n’avait jamais comblé cette lacune.
Une rupture avec la doctrine sociale de l’Église ?
Soumis à des reproches virulents au début de son pontificat, François s’était défendu le 22 septembre 2015 en prétendant que sa critique du « capitalisme débridé ou libéral » faisait partie de la doctrine sociale de l’Église. Fin de la polémique ? Certainement pas. La DSE est un corps de doctrine cohérent, mais qui a pu être infléchi suivant la sensibilité des papes successifs. On peut trouver une anticipation de nombre de positions de François dans des encycliques, telles Quadragesimo anno, dans laquelle Pie XI brocardait en 1931, certes dans un contexte économique spécial, « l’anarchie des marchés », ou surtout celles de Paul VI dans les années 1960-1970 avec un ton autrement « progressiste ».
Il n’en demeure pas moins que les positions exprimées par François apparaissent clairement comme une inflexion de certains éléments fondamentaux de la DSE (voir l’article du grand spécialiste de la DSE, Jean-Yves Naudet, 21 avril 2025). Nous n’hésiterons pas à parler même d’une rupture à certains égards, double sur le plan temporel d’ailleurs. D’abord, au plus proche, s’agissant des dernières encycliques de Jean-Paul II et surtout de celles de Benoît XVI, remarquables au fond comme en la forme. On y trouve un rejet viscéral du protectionnisme et un éloge marquant de la propriété, puis, avec Benoît XVI, de la « mondialisation ». Ensuite, au plus éloigné, s’agissant de Rerum novarum, dans laquelle Léon XIII opère une critique dévastatrice du socialisme et prononce un vibrant éloge du droit de propriété (nous renvoyons nos lecteurs à l’analyse de la DSE faite dans notre ouvrage Exception française, Odile Jacob, 2020, pp. 308 et suivantes). A l’évidence, jamais François n’aurait pu écrire pareilles encycliques.
Le pape François était-il marxiste ?
La direction politique des premières sorties du pape François était tellement marquée que certains commentateurs en sont venus à se demander, surtout aux États-Unis, s’il n’était pas carrément marxiste. L’accusation était d’autant plus surprenante que la DSE s’est toujours opposée au communisme, dont le seul caractère violemment athée ne pouvait que l’en séparer.
D’aucuns ont révélé bien plus tard que François, adolescent, avait été communiste. Il n’en demeure pas moins qu’il s’en est éloigné rapidement, même si L’Humanité (22 avril 2025) a encore pu parler d’un « souverain ouvert au marxisme ». En réalité, il était adepte de la théologie du peuple, rameau de la peu recommandable théologie de la libération. La théologie du peuple a pour origine la Commission épiscopale mise en place en 1966 par les évêques argentins au retour de Vatican II. Rejetant la sociologie libérale comme la sociologie marxiste, ses membres ont cherché une « troisième voie ». Ils l’ont trouvé dans le concept de « peuple », tiré de la culture et de l’histoire argentine et latino-américaine. Un mouvement d’autant plus intéressant au regard du développement du populisme au XXIe siècle sur le plan politique…
Pour conclure, voici ce que nous écrivions en 2020 : « Holiste, nourri par la dialectique oppresseur-opprimé, “allergique à l’économie”, François ne dispose à l’évidence pas des armes pour voir dans le libéralisme autre chose qu’un “capitalisme débridé ». Nous ne changerons pas une virgule de cette analyse.
The Wall Street Journal, 29 avril
As Catholic Church Enters New Era, Conservative U.S. Members Push It Right
The conservative wing is reviving old practices and growing more assertive in the battle for the future of the Church—and the nation
Full text:
On Easter Sunday, hours before his death, an ailing Pope Francis roused himself to share a brief meeting at the Vatican with U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
For Francis, it was to be a final encounter with a conservative wing of American Catholicism that is flourishing and increasingly assertive at a time when the Church, more broadly, is struggling.
The Pope’s passing on Monday morning has thrown open a global succession race to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. Yet it has also focused attention on the Vatican’s fraught relationship with an American flock that is undergoing cultural and theological changes that echo the rightward shift in the nation’s politics in the MAGA era.
Personified by Vance, who was baptized in the Catholic Church in 2019, at age 35, adherents to this conservative style are reviving old practices, including the traditional Latin Mass and women wearing veils. While their numbers may still be small among the universe of Americans who identify as Catholic, they are increasingly influential, say observers—in the struggle for the Church’s future and that of the nation.
The conservatives are more likely to be kneeling in pews on Sunday and managing parish affairs while others stay home. Their worldview has found purchase in the Trump administration’s policies—be it the introduction of sweeping tariffs or its mass deportation of immigrants who entered the country illegally. And they are building a network of universities and media outlets to educate future cadres.
“Vance is one of a legion of young people who have followed the same path from atheism to radical suspicion and rejection of liberal culture to a form of Augustine-inspired Christianity,” said David Deane, a theologian who gave a recent lecture on Catholicism and the new right. “The seminaries are increasingly populated by young men who think like this.”
Their ascendance made for an unusually tense relationship with a Pope who emphasized compassion and humility. Before Sunday’s meeting, Vance had engaged in an unusually tetchy back-and-forth with the Vatican over the Trump administration’s deportation policies.
“For [conservatives], Pope Francis was a shock. And it became more of a shock when he started talking about gays, divorce and capitalism,” said Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at Villanova University. “It was a relationship that was damaged from the beginning.”
The appointment of a liberal successor, Faggioli warned, risked further estrangement. One possibility he cited was a “liquid schism” in which the two parties don’t suffer a formal rupture but increasingly look past one another. “The fear is that it basically could become a Catholic Church that is independent from the Vatican,” Faggioli said.
Stephen P. White, the executive director of the Catholic Project, a research initiative at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., likened that possibility to an “Anglicization” of Catholicism—or a fracturing of the Church on national lines. “That is a problem,” White said. “The faith is supposed to be one.”
The Catholic Project offered a stark measure of the conservatives’ rise in a 2022 survey of more than 3,500 U.S. Catholic priests. Among those ordained since 2020, it found, some 80% identified as “conservative/orthodox.” By contrast, those identifying as progressives and liberals were facing a “virtual collapse.”
“Among priests, it’s a massive shift,” said White, who views the conservative Catholic renewal as “a piece of the populism that seems to be spreading not just in the United States but over most of the Western world.”
Gaining strength
Since the 1960s, the Catholic Church has swung from the adoption of more liberal principles in the Second Vatican Council to the 35 years of Cold War conservatism espoused by Popes John Paul II and Benedict.
The 2013 appointment of Francis, an Argentine celebrated as the first Pope from “the global south,” marked a pivot toward a more pastoral approach that emphasized flexibility and compassion over doctrine. He made headlines by approving the offering of “blessings” for same-sex couples and talking about divorce and climate change.
Behind the scenes, though, the conservatives were gathering strength in America, bound together by a conviction that liberalism in its many guises—political, social, theological—has run aground. While it may have generated material wealth, they say, it has undermined communities and wrought the social “carnage” that President Trump invoked during his first inauguration in 2016.
For the Catholic Church, in particular, they believe that a project to embrace modernity and make itself more appealing to a younger generation instead yielded empty pews and confusion. In its place, they want to build a post-liberal world that is rooted in traditions of the past.
“For a lot of progressives, they think that if the Church could just accommodate the modern world, it will stop its decline. But everywhere the Church has accepted the modern world and its contemporary values, it’s died,” said Timothy Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, a Catholic graduate school of theology that emphasizes a return to the rigors of scripture and tradition and is one of the movement’s leading lights.
Augustine, which produces education materials and online content, was founded in 2005 and set up shop in a Denver office park. Last year, it paid around $20 million for a 284-acre campus outside of St. Louis that Boeing had used as a retreat and executive training center. It is still in the process of changing the artwork—from aviation prints that celebrate the miracle of flight to portraits of saints who performed actual miracles.
By contrast, St. Louis’ archdiocese had to close or merge dozens of parishes two years ago due to declining attendance and a scarcity of priests.
“You judge a tree by its fruit,” said Gray, as he reflected on the institute’s growth from his perch in a library lined with carved wooden panels harvested from a 16th-century English monastery.
Other conservative hotbeds include Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, and Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. The latter is where the Kansas City Chiefs’ kicker Harrison Butker last year delivered a commencement address in which he urged women to embrace their “vocation” as homemakers, creating a national stir.
Many of their students are embracing practices from an ancient, unreformed Catholicism that had seemed to be fading into obsolescence. The most striking may be the traditional Latin Mass, codified in the late 1500s and practiced into the 1960s, and which Francis had discouraged. In it, the priest keeps his back to worshipers so as to face God and speaks in Latin—while in the contemporary Mass that superseded it, the priest faces the congregation and gives the worshipers more opportunities to pray out loud in response.
Among those who have found a sense of mystery and transcendence in the old ways is Michael Knowles, who produces a popular podcast and online videos that offer commentary from a Catholic perspective and are hosted by the MAGA-aligned Daily Wire media company.
“People go to Mass for a glimpse into heaven,” said Knowles, whose videos have garnered more than 2.2 million subscribers on YouTube. “If the Mass gets more focused on me, if the music becomes more quotidian and casual, if the sacraments are not treated with due reverence, it teaches in a sometimes imperceptible way that one need not really go.”
Brittany Hugoboom, the glamorous editor of Evie, often described as a conservative Cosmopolitan, is a fan of the Latin Mass. So, too, is Megan Mlinarcik, a mother of six in Pittsburgh, who runs a Latin Mass Moms group on Facebook. While mainstream Catholic churches have been in decline for decades, her traditional parish is gaining members, she noted. Its motto: Our future is in our past.
“People would come during Covid and have stayed,” she said. The Latin Mass, which bonded Catholics across geography and generations, was a potent draw. “You can go to a Latin Mass anywhere in the world and it will be exactly the same,” Mlinarcik explained.
According to the most recent Pew Research Center survey, 19% of Americans—or some 53 million adults—identify as Catholic. That’s down from 24% in 2007. After a decadeslong slide, that decline appears to be leveling off.
A more salient statistic may be church attendance. At least half of Catholics turned up weekly in the 1970s, compared with only about a quarter today, according to Ryan Burge, an Eastern Illinois University professor who tracks religious data.
Long a political bellwether, Catholic voters were virtually split in their choice for president in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of people who voted that year. They broke sharply for Trump in the most recent election, supporting him by an 11 percentage point margin.
Once motivated by the cause of outlawing abortion, conservative Catholics now tend to be animated by a broader MAGA view that liberalism and its elites have jeopardized Western civilization and need to be defeated, said Faggioli. “[Their] real project is not to break the Church but is, forgive me, to make Catholicism great again,” he said.
Tensions with Pope Francis
The pope’s American critics were largely diplomatic during his recent illness—but on the fringe some were more explicit in expressing their desires for a successor. One is Bishop Joseph Strickland, an ardent conservative and Francis opponent, who the Vatican removed two years ago as the Church’s leader in Tyler, Texas.
“Certainly, we pray for him,” Strickland told Newsmax last month, “but we need the new Pope to be someone who is much clearer—really, frankly, stronger in the tradition of our Catholic faith.”
Francis had expressed his own discontent. In 2023, he complained of a “very strong, organized reactionary attitude” against him in the U.S. Church, adding: “I would like to remind these people that backwardness is useless.”
Trump’s return to power escalated the feud. In December, he chose his U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican: Brian Burch, a staunch critic of Francis who founded a Wisconsin group called CatholicVote that helped to mobilize support for Trump, entwining MAGA and faith. In his book “A New Catholic Moment: Donald Trump and the Politics of the Common Good,” Burch argued that the president’s policies on trade and immigration were aligned with Catholic teaching and would give rise to stronger communities.
Francis, in turn, appointed a liberal cardinal, Robert McElroy, as the Archbishop of Washington, D.C.
The vexed issue of immigration became a fault line between the camps. Days after his inauguration, Vance accused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops of supporting illegal immigration because it allowed them to reap millions of dollars in federal aid—prompting New York’s archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, to denounce the remarks as “scurrilous.”
In February, Pope Francis felt moved to issue an extraordinary letter correcting Vance after the vice president cited a theological argument about “the hierarchies of love” to try to justify the Trump administration’s deportation policies. (No, the pope chided Vance in so many words, compassion did not end at the border or hinge on a migrant’s legal status.)
It’s unclear just how much influence American conservatives will wield in the global contest to select a new pope. During his tenure, Francis stocked the College of Cardinals that will eventually determine his successor with loyalists who share his more liberal outlook.
Still, America is home to the world’s fourth-largest Catholic population, and it’s a big source of wealth for a Vatican under financial strain.
‘Universal answers’
In Denver, Father Michael Nicosia is co-pastor at St. Paul, an ecumenical Catholic church that bills itself as “radically inclusive” and promotes “a different way to be Catholic.” The onetime advertising executive had attended seminary in Rochester, N.Y., in the 1990s, then overseen by one of the most progressive bishops in the country. To his dismay, Denver’s archdiocese refers to St. Paul’s congregants as “so-called” Catholics.
“The danger is the certitude they harbor,” Father Nicosia said of those Catholics he calls “retroactive” conservatives.
Their appeal, he argued, was a kind of false nostalgia like that fueling populist political movements across the West. “From my sense, in these times of conflict and cultural change, many people find comfort in an exclusive church that offers absolute, universal answers,” he said, adding: “Certitude is attractive but only an illusion.”
Denver turns out to be a touchstone for conservative Catholics. Pope John Paul II chose the city as the site of his August 1993 World Youth Day festival, overlooking traditional Catholic bastions like Boston, New York or Chicago. The idea was to seed a new evangelism.
Among those in the audience that day was a 24-year-old Tim Gray, who was then leading a Catholic youth group from Rapid City, S.D., and can still recall the thunder of stamping feet in Mile High Stadium as the pope’s helicopter approached. “That was a moment where you thought: This could change things,” he recalled.
Gray was accompanied by Charles Chaput, who would go on to become Denver’s archbishop and a leading conservative voice in the American Church. Also on hand was Curtis Martin, who would create the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, or Focus, an outreach group that has become a Catholic hub on many campuses.
Gray grew up outside Chicago in a family he described as “culturally Catholic”—that is, going through the motions of the faith but without conviction. It was in high school that he discovered scripture. He studied at Franciscan and then returned to Colorado to help found the Augustine Institute, starting with a single classroom. “We felt like a lot of Catholic institutions had lost the sense of their roots,” he explained.
Augustine’s graduate school trains ordained clergy and church leaders, both in person and through remote learning. The institute also produces a wealth of Catholic content—from school textbooks to slick videos featuring teens talking about how they observe Lent. Much of it is available on Augustine’s smartphone apps. Gray—who studiously avoids politics—described Augustine’s approach as trying to recover the roots of Catholicism to apply to the present.
The idea appealed to Madeline Joerger, 24, who came to Augustine for graduate school after earning her degree in education at Benedictine College. She plans to teach at a Catholic school.
“We have 2,000 years of tradition,” Joerger said over lunch in Augustine’s dining hall. “We have to have something to say beyond the modern world.”
Her classmate James Luppino, 27, saw himself as part of a grassroots reaction to a prevailing culture that many found wanting. “An effect of the modern secular world has been a loss of meaning for a lot of people,” he said.
When the Boeing campus came up for sale, a group of Augustine donors swung into action to come up with the funds. In addition to the facilities installed by Boeing and miles of winding trails, the property features a French-style château built by the estate’s original owner, the fur trader-turned-Gilded Age magnate Joseph Desloge. He built a matching grand ballroom to host his daughter’s debut.
Augustine has turned it into a sanctuary, where students and staff celebrate Mass. On St. Patrick’s Day, dozens gathered for a service led by Abbot Gregory Mohrman, who reminded them that the holiday was about Christ—not corned beef and Irish culture. As they sang hymns and lined up for communion, the light reflected off the river and streamed in through french doors.
“The way to renew the Church is not to change the Church’s teaching to try to be popular,” Gray said. “It goes back to what Jesus said: if salt loses its tastiness, it’s not good for anything but to be thrown out. I think what’s interesting about this new movement is, it’s salty.”
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/conservative-catholic-maga-pope-vance-b2a4497b?mod=e2tw
The New York Times, Video, 28 avril
Can the Catholic Church Quit the Culture Wars?
Video link : https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010118682/can-the-catholic-church-quit-the-culture-wars.html
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 28 avril
Ein Requiem auf die Werte des christlichen Abendlandes
Gestern wurde mit Franziskus nicht nur ein Papst und Würdenträger zu Grabe getragen. Sondern vorab ein Mensch, der für all das stand, was in der Welt der Deals verschwindet: Rücksicht, Respekt, Rechtschaffenheit.
Full text:
Für einen Moment hörte das Herz der Ewigen Stadt auf zu schlagen. Der Barista des «Caffè San Pietro» kam hinter dem Tresen hervor und trat vor die Tür, Polizisten bekreuzigten sich, Pilger falteten die Hände und schlossen die Augen, Touristen liessen ihre Smartphones in die Tasche gleiten. Kein Helikopter, keine Sirene war mehr zu hören, nachdem das bisher grösste Sicherheitsaufgebot in der jüngeren Geschichte Roms den Soundtrack der Stadt bestimmt hatte. Auch der Bettler, der aus der Trauer über das Ableben des Barmherzigen Kapital geschlagen hatte, erhob sich vom Boden und verstummte. Rom stand still. Eine Massenandacht hat die Caput Mundi ergriffen, als gestern Samstagmorgen um 9 Uhr 45 die Totenglocke des Petersdoms das Requiem für Papst Franziskus einläutete.
Die ganze Welt schaute auf Rom, und in Rom war die ganze Welt. Es war nicht bloss ein Begräbnis, dem rund 200 000 Menschen auf und rund um den Petersplatz beiwohnten. Was auf die Monitoren auf der Via della Conciliazione und in die Stuben der ganzen Welt übertragen wurde, war das Aufeinanderprallen zweier Welten: Franziskus, der sich wie kein anderer Papst der Moderne ein Leben lang für die Schwächsten am Rand der Gesellschaft eingesetzt hatte, ist tot. Platz im Zentrum nahmen nun die Mächtigsten, unter ihnen solche, die Stärke zur Religion erhoben haben.
Als sei das Requiem für den Papst von einem Regisseur aus dem Marvel-Universum inszeniert worden, erwies allen voran Donald Trump, der selbsternannte Auserwählte Gottes, dem obersten Glaubenshüter die letzte Ehre. Der Mann des Deals verabschiedete sich vom Mann der Demut. Narzissmus beerdigte die Nächstenliebe. Masslosigkeit die Bescheidenheit. Egozentrik die Empathie.
Glaube an die Menschlichkeit
Man könnte die Liste dieser Gegensätze noch lange fortschreiben. Wenn das Prinzip des Amoralischen auf das Prinzip der Moral trifft, sind neue Antagonismen so einfach zu finden wie Menschen, die nachrücken, sobald ein Platz mit guter Sicht auf das Geschehen frei wurde. Und dieser Antagonismus war es wohl auch, der die Anteilnahme prägte: Noch weit mehr Menschen, als an der Trauerfeier teilnahmen, nämlich rund eine Viertelmillion, wollten in den Tagen davor persönlich von Papst Franziskus Abschied nehmen.
Auch als die Nacht über die Stadt am Tiber fiel, standen sie am vergangenen Donnerstag noch Schlange, drei Stunden und mehr haben sie gewartet, um an den offenen Sarg zu treten. So wie Franco, der seit dem Tod des Papstes fast nur noch in seinem Taxi gesessen hatte. Manche warteten mit Hund und Kleinkind, so wie Silvia Bruni aus der römischen Agglomeration. Viele haben Ferien geopfert, und manche sind um die halbe Welt gereist, um dem Oberhaupt der katholischen Kirche die letzte Ehre zu erweisen. So wie Gretchen und Bob Ward aus Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Und fast alle waren sie zu Fuss unterwegs. Ganze Strassenzüge wurden von der Polizei gesichert, Verkehrswege umgeleitet, so dass selbst die Busfahrer nicht mehr wussten, ob und wie lange sie noch ihre gewohnte Strecke fahren können.
Warum tun Menschen das? Die kurze Antwort lautet: weil sie glauben. Oder zumindest: weil sie glauben möchten. Nicht nur und nicht unbedingt an Gott. Sondern an die Menschlichkeit.
«Ich musste mich einfach vor ihm verneigen», sagte Silvia Bruni. Es war kurz nach Mitternacht, und das Töchterchen im Kinderwagen war längst eingeschlafen. «Er war nicht ein Papst der Wichtigen und Mächtigen, die jetzt alle anreisen, er war der Vater von uns Kleinen.»
«Er ist ganz klar die ‹numero uno› unter den Päpsten», sagte Franco, der in seinem Taxi seit Ostermontag mehrere Kardinäle in die Vatikanstadt gefahren hatte, «er war nicht bloss Würdenträger wie viele von denen, er war einfach einer von uns.»
«Ich bin nicht katholisch, und meine Frau ist noch nicht einmal gläubig», sagte Bob Ward, «aber der Papst steht für Haltung und Hoffnung.» «Und dafür, dass man nicht aufgeben darf, für seine Überzeugungen einzustehen», ergänzte seine Frau, «schliesslich hat er J. D. Vance nochmals ins Gebet genommen.»
Gegenentwurf zur Selbstherrlichkeit
Viele Worte sind beim letzten Empfang eines Regierungschefs am Ostersonntag im Vatikan nicht gefallen. Denn die drei letzten öffentlichen Worte, den Segen «Urbi et Orbi», hatte ein sichtlich abgekämpfter Franziskus kurz danach auf dem Petersplatz nur unter Aufbietung seiner letzten Kraft ins Mikrofon hauchen können. Man muss weder Katholik sein noch an Gott glauben, um dem Pontifex dafür Respekt zu zollen: Da zeigte ein alter, gebrechlicher, dem Tod geweihter Mann menschliche Schwäche und fand darin die Stärke, auch die wenigen Lebensmomente, die ihm noch vergönnt waren, dem Brückenbauen zu widmen. Und sich mit dem Mann zu treffen, dessen Regierung daran ist, sämtliche Ideale, die er verkörpert, aus der Welt zu schaffen. Bis zuletzt hat er gedient. Auf einer Weltbühne, wohlgemerkt, auf der einige der wichtigsten Männer an der Macht permanent ihre Muskeln spielen lassen und für Schwäche nur Hohn und Spott übrighaben.
Egal ob am Freitagmorgen beim Plaudern mit Espresso am Tresen oder im Gespräch am Tisch in der lärmigen Pizzeria am Ufer des Tibers, egal ob man auf Gläubige oder Ungläubige traf, zur Sprache kam in den Tagen vor der Beerdigung kaum religiöses Pflichtbewusstsein und selten der Wunsch, einem historischen Moment beizuwohnen, da man die Osterferien sowieso in Rom geplant hatte. Zur Sprache kam der Papst als Gegenentwurf zur globalen Selbstherrlichkeit. Zur Sprache kam die Angst vor dem Zustand der Welt, die zunehmende Rücksichtslosigkeit einer Ellbogengesellschaft. Und das diffuse Gefühl, dass etwas zu verschwinden droht, dem man nicht genug Sorge getragen hat. Fast so, als hätte Papst Franziskus das kollektive Unterbewusstsein besetzt und sei die Personifizierung des Gewissens.
«Papst Franziskus war für viele Menschen mehr Wertekompass als Vertreter der Kirche», bestätigt der Sozialpsychologe Ernst-Dieter Lantermann. Er habe auch in seinem Freundes- und Bekanntenkreis mit Erstaunen beobachtet, wie plötzlich wieder Worte wie «Demut» und «Nächstenliebe» gefallen seien. Sogar Menschen, die mit Religion nichts am Hut hätten, nähmen sie in den Mund.
Der emeritierte Professor der Universität Kassel und Autor des Buches «Die radikalisierte Gesellschaft» ist überzeugt, dass die «entfesselte Selbstermächtigung» und die damit verbundene Rücksichts- und Ruchlosigkeit, die gerade allenthalben zu beobachten seien, eben auch zu einer zunehmend schmerzhaften Leerstelle führten. Und diese Lücke werde in der Person des Papstes sichtbar: «Wenn der Tod von Franziskus für viele Menschen etwas unmissverständlich klargemacht hat, dann dass die Werte der Nächstenliebe, der Solidarität mit den Schwächeren, der Mitmenschlichkeit und Gerechtigkeit nicht einfach Folklore sind, sondern zu den grundlegenden Bedürfnissen eines jeden Menschen zählen.»
Allerdings, fügt Lantermann an, bezweifle er, dass damit ein Langzeiteffekt verbunden sei. «Als Vorbild fungieren eben auch diejenigen, die keine Vorbilder sind», sagt der Sozialpsychologe. Schliesslich sei Trump nicht trotz, sondern gerade wegen seines unflätigen Verhaltens gewählt worden. Er habe dieses salonfähig gemacht und so neue Standards des zwischenmenschlichen Umgangs geschaffen: «Rücksichtslosigkeit und Ruchlosigkeit sind zum Mittel geworden, sich Gehör zu verschaffen. Mitgefühl und Anstand gebührt dann nur noch Gleichgesinnten, denen, die genauso denken und handeln wie man selbst.» Das sei es, was die Menschen spürten, was sie umtreibe.
Das Grundgerüst von Moral und Anstand
Als «Papst mit grosser menschlicher Wärme» verabschiedete Kardinal Giovanni Battista Re den Verstorbenen in seiner Predigt und betonte mit einem Seitenhieb auf Trump: «Brücken bauen und keine Mauern» sei eine Aufforderung, die Franziskus mehrfach wiederholt habe. Als «Papst der Herzen» wurde er in vielen Nachrufen bezeichnet. Ähnlich wie man Prinzessin Diana nach ihrem Tod 1997 zur «Königin der Herzen» stilisierte, weil sie nahbar war, sich für die Vergessenen der Gesellschaft einsetzte.
Und auch wenn die Massentrauer damals einer säkularen Person galt, gehorchte sie doch einer ähnlichen Logik, spielte sich eine ähnliche Dynamik ab. Auch damals kulminierte eine lange nur vage verspürte Werteverschiebung in einer Person und machte sie zu ihrer Repräsentanz. Damals waren es die verstaubten Werte der Monarchie, die aufgebrochen wurden. Heute ist es das Grundgerüst von Moral und Anstand der Nachkriegszeit.
Tatsächlich hat sich weniger der Papst selbst in der zwölfjährigen Amtszeit bewegt als vielmehr die kollektive Wahrnehmung der Werte, für die er steht: Frieden ist nicht mehr bloss ein abstrakter Begriff, seit Russland die Ukraine überfallen und die Hamas den Krieg im Nahen Osten angezettelt hat. Vereinzelung und fehlender Gemeinsinn in der modernen Gesellschaft sind während und nach der Pandemie deutlich sichtbar geworden. Anstand droht zum woken Unwort zu verkommen, wenn Trump nach der Verhängung aberwitziger Zolltarife Regierungschefs, die eine Einigung suchen, öffentlich mit den Worten nachäfft: «Bitte, bitte, Sir, machen Sie einen Deal.» Und selbst lange für unantastbar gehaltene Institutionen wie die Gerichtsbarkeit müssen heute verteidigt werden.
Zerfall der Werte
Der südkoreanisch-deutsche Philosoph Byung-Chul Han, der auch katholische Theologie studierte, hat kürzlich in einem schmalen Bändchen aufgezeigt, wie Werte erodieren. Mit der intellektuellen Schärfe eines Skalpells analysiert er, wie kollektive Angst zu einer depressiven Stimmung führt, in der Ressentiments aufgebaut und Hass geschürt wird, die schliesslich Solidarität, Freundlichkeit und Empathie immer mehr zersetzen. Der Zerfall dieser Werte gefährde letztlich die Demokratie, so sein Fazit in der Abhandlung mit dem Titel «Der Geist der Hoffnung in einer Gesellschaft der Angst».
Vor ebendiesem Geist der Hoffnung verneigten sich am Samstagmorgen Hunderttausende von Menschen in Rom und viele Millionen mehr an den Rändern der Welt, woher Jorge Mario Bergoglio kam. Donald Trump aber sass auf dem Petersplatz in der dritten Reihe, trug Blau statt Schwarz und hatte drei Tage zuvor, am Mittwoch, noch Angst geschürt mit der Ankündigung einer neuen Arbeitsgruppe, die sich der Bekämpfung «antichristlicher Diskriminierung» widmen soll. Seine Mitarbeiter in der Verwaltung hat er im selben Atemzug dazu aufgefordert, ihre Kollegen zu denunzieren.
Auf dem Petersplatz sass er für das Bild, das um die Welt gehen und fortan überall zu sehen sein wird. Für sein Image, das er mit der moralischen Glaubwürdigkeit des Papstes aufpolierte. Gerade so, als liesse sich Moral en gros und zollfrei für eine religiös-konservative Wählerschaft importieren.
Tröstlich ist da einzig, dass auch der Heuchelei und Scheinheiligkeit ein Paradox innewohnt: Selbst wer Moral bloss als Maske trägt, gesteht damit nämlich – bewusst oder unbewusst –, dass sie einst Bedeutung hatte.
Und für viele noch Bedeutung hat. Papst Franziskus beendete jeden seiner öffentlichen Auftritte mit dem bescheidenen Wunsch, man möge für ihn, den Sünder, beten. Es war eine leise Bitte. Kein Befehl.
Sie wurde überall in der Welt gehört.
The Economist, 27 avril
Farewell Francis : The pope’s last coded message
Trump and Zelensky attend in Rome with 250,000 others
Full text:
AMID THE pomp, pageant and politics surrounding Pope Francis’s funeral—an extraordinary meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in St Peter’s Basilica, the lines of flamboyantly televisual cardinals in their scarlet robes—a simple fact risked being overlooked. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, “the pope of the last”, as Italians called him, had arranged to be buried as far as decently possible from the Vatican.
His funeral cortege had to cover six kilometres along streets lined with applauding crowds to cross Rome to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. As the presidents and prime ministers headed for their return flights, a group of some of Rome’s poorest residents were waiting to greet the arrival of Francis’s body, encased in a plain wooden coffin. Out of media sight, it was to be laid in a tomb of marble from Liguria, the region in north-western Italy from which his migrant forebears left for Argentina. The tomb bears a single engraved word: Franciscus.
It was to be a last stop appropriately distant from the Vatican for a pontiff who once told its prelates that getting them to change their ways was like trying to clean the Sphinx with a toothbrush. Maybe that is what Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the ultimate Vatican insider, but one trusted by Francis, was alluding to in his homily in St Peter’s Square. “With his characteristic vocabulary and language, rich in images and metaphors,” the cardinal said, Francis had “always sought to shed light on the problems of our time.”
Santa Maria Maggiore is a few hundred metres from the main railway terminus, in a part of Rome dotted with internet points and cheap hotels. It sits on the edge of a district that is starting to be gentrified but still has a high proportion of immigrants.
Santa Maria Maggiore is no mere parish church. It is one of Rome’s four papal basilicas. Other popes have been interred outside the Vatican. But the last was another liberal pontiff, Leo XIII, the father of Roman Catholic social doctrine. And he died in 1903. One reason why the basilica had a special appeal for Francis was because it holds the Salus Populi Romani, an icon from around the year 1000 that is a focus of local, Roman religiosity. He prayed to it before and after foreign journeys. A supremely pastoral priest, Francis never forgot that popes were bishops of Rome long before they had a global church to lead.
He shrank from the worldly trappings of the papacy. He refused to move into the Apostolic Palace, choosing instead to live in a two-room suite in the Vatican’s guest house. He was never seen in the traditional, shiny red papal slippers beloved of his predecessor, pope Benedict XVI, preferring to wear (and be buried in) clumpy, scuffed, black orthotics.
The two ceremonies on April 26th—one spectacularly ostentatious, the other simple and private—reflected the tensions within the world’s largest Christian church, tensions that will decide the choice of Francis’s successor. Catholicism can be found in the Vatican with its colonnades and conspiracies, its museums housing treasures of inestimable value. But it can also be found in some of the most wretched places on earth where its priests, monks, nuns and lay people care for the sick and needy.
The message that shone through Francis’s provisions for his departure was that the true place of his church was on the margins of society. Shortly before his death, he used nearly all the money he had left, some €200,000 ($225,000), to pay down the mortgage on a pasta factory that operates in a juvenile prison in Rome.
But the late pontiff also embodied a faith with room for doubt and uncertainty. Perhaps his most famous comment was when, asked about homosexuality, he replied “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”
His legacy included plenty of room for differing interpretations, notably over whether Catholics who divorce and remarry can receive communion. The uncertainty infuriated conservatives and others who craved the clear moral guidance of Benedict, and Benedict’s predecessor, Saint John Paul II.
The choice facing the cardinals who will assemble in a week or so in the Sistine Chapel for the conclave will be whether to choose a man ready to go deeper into the areas that Francis opened up to scrutiny or return to the more familiar Catholicism of those who came before him. Even before his funeral, conservatives and liberals were setting out their stalls.
With diplomatic understatement, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, the guardian of theological orthodoxy under Benedict, said Francis had been “a bit ambiguous at certain moments”, whereas in the time of his predecessor there had been “perfect theological clarity”. One of the questions around which doubt lingers is whether priests may bless gay couples. The next pope would have to clear that up, said Cardinal Müller.
By contrast, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, a Jesuit like Francis and the archbishop of Luxembourg, was looking for “a pope who watches Netflix series”: someone in the mould of Francis who “knew how to communicate with the young” and realised that the world was changing at breakneck speed.
It will be no surprise that Cardinal Hollerich was given his red cardinal’s hat by Francis. But so too was Cardinal Müller. The Catholic church does not always work in the way secular commentators would assume—and may not do so when it comes to choosing the man who replaces “the pope of the last”. ■
https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/04/26/the-popes-last-coded-message
L’Express, 26 avril
Robert Sarah, le cardinal ultra-conservateur favori des traditionalistes pour succéder au pape François
Religion. L’évêque guinéen, aux positions traditionalistes, constitue la figure de proue des catholiques les plus conservateurs.
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L’exact opposé de la ligne portée par le pape François. Le cardinal Robert Sarah assistera, comme l’ensemble de ses pairs, aux obsèques du souverain pontife, organisées ce samedi 26 avril au Vatican, en présence de nombreux chefs d’État et de têtes couronnées du monde entier. À 79 ans, le religieux participera ensuite au conclave, moment qui déterminera qui prendra le relais de l’Argentin, élu en 2013. Mais l’évêque guinéen a une toute petite chance de prolonger son séjour dans la cité-État : certains des partisans d’un catholicisme traditionnel font de lui leur favori pour devenir le prochain pape.
En réalité, selon les spécialistes, la probabilité de voir Robert Sarah accéder au Saint-Siège demeure malgré tout très réduite. Il n’en reste pas moins que cet homme a acquis durant la dernière décennie une influence considérable au sein de l’Église, dont il représente un courant ultra-conservateur. Fait cardinal en 2010 par le pape Benoît XVI, dont il est un admirateur assumé, il a occupé de 2014 à 2021 un poste important au sein de la curie romain. Durant cette période, Robert Sarah officiait en effet en tant que préfet de la Congrégation pour le culte divin et la discipline des sacrements au Vatican. Autrement dit, il était l’un des “ministres” de François, chargé de la protection de la liturgie, notamment des sacrements.
Une polémique liée à Benoît XVI
Un poste stratégique au sein de l’Église, mais dont il devra démissionner après son implication dans une polémique. En 2020, il publie un long texte combattant de manière véhémente la possibilité d’ordonner prêtres des diacres mariés en Amazonie, une région du monde en manque de religieux. Une idée finalement écartée par François quelques mois plus tard. Mais, avant cette décision, ce plaidoyer, paru dans un livre, avait semblé marquer une forme de contestation envers le pape.
Surtout, l’ouvrage avait été présenté comme coécrit par le cardinal Sarah et l’ancien pape Benoît XVI, alors toujours en vie. Le scandale commençant à naître, le souverain émérite s’était empressé de demander que son nom soit retiré de la couverture de cette publication. Mais aussi d’ôter sa signature de certains passages, dont il était mentionné en tant que coauteur. “Je suis entre les mains de Dieu”, avait commenté le cardinal après sa démission. “Le seul roc, c’est le Christ. Nous nous retrouverons très vite à Rome et ailleurs.”
Outre cette affaire, Robert Sarah est connu de manière plus générale pour ses positions très traditionnelles sur de nombreux sujets de société. La décision du pape François d’autoriser la bénédiction des personnes homosexuelles constitue par exemple pour lui “une hérésie”. Des propos qu’il réitère sur d’autres thèmes, comme l’avortement ou le rapport à l’islam, parfois de manière très violente. “Ce que le nazisme et le communisme étaient au XXe siècle, l’homosexualité occidentale, les idéologies abortives et le fanatisme islamique le sont aujourd’hui”, avait-il comparé en 2015, lors d’un synode. Le religieux n’a par ailleurs pas hésité à dénoncer à de multiples reprises l’arrivée de migrants en Europe, à rebours de la position du pape François.
Soutien d’une frange ultra-conservatrice
Un tweet de l’évêque, décrit par la presse anglo-saxonne comme un cardinal “anti-woke”, avait aussi créé des remous après l’assassinat en France du père Hamel, égorgé en juillet 2016 par deux terroristes se revendiquant de l’État islamique. “Combien de morts pour que les gouvernements européens comprennent la situation où l’Occident se trouve? Combien de têtes décapitées?” Cité comme un “papabile” par les médias italiens, c’est-à-dire comme l’un des candidats qui pourraient accéder à la fonction papale, Robert Sarah bénéficie du soutien de toute une frange du milieu conservateur, voire d’extrême-droite.
En France, l’ex-député RN Gilbert Collard s’est par exemple prononcé en faveur de son élection. Outre-Atlantique, plusieurs influenceurs de la sphère trumpiste lui ont apporté leur soutien. Au sein de l’Église, il détient aussi quelques fidèles. Quatre autres cardinaux avaient signé avec lui une tribune en 2023 demandant au pape de clarifier la position du Saint-Siège sur différents sujets. Plusieurs de ses pairs ont également dit l’apprécier dans le cadre du conclave à venir.
Son hypothétique élection contrasterait en tout cas fortement avec la vision davantage progressiste adoptée par François ces dernières années. Lors d’une messe donnée en partie en latin à Dakar (Sénégal) en décembre 2023, Robert Sarah avait en effet affiché sa volonté de conserver le cadre traditionnel catholique. “Nous assistons aujourd’hui, surtout en Occident, à un démantèlement des valeurs de la foi et de la piété… et à une destruction des formes de la messe”, avait-il alors déploré, fustigeant l’adaptation des rituels catholiques à certaines coutumes locales en Afrique et en Asie.
Le Figaro, 26 avril
L’éditorial d’Yves Thréard : «Le pape, un repère de civilisation»
Même mort, le souverain pontife suscite la fascination des vivants, par-delà les religions, les continents, les origines.
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Catholiques ou non, ils seront des centaines de millions de téléspectateurs à accompagner, ce samedi, François en sa dernière demeure. Quelle autre personnalité que le Saint-Père peut également rassembler autour de son cercueil quelque cinquante chefs d’État, dix monarques régnants et des dizaines de milliers de pèlerins venus du monde entier ? C’est la force du pape.
Même mort, le souverain pontife suscite la fascination des vivants, par-delà les religions, les continents, les origines. C’est dire aussi que l’Église, cette vieille dame de plus 2000 ans, souvent critiquée, parfois incomprise, aujourd’hui en butte au scandale des abus sexuels, reste un pilier, un repère de civilisation partagé. Avec ses secrets, ses rituels, ses obligations, qui sont comme forgées dans l’éternité. Il est bon de rappeler que le mot « catholique » veut dire « universel » et que sa doctrine est la même pour toutes les nations. Soudain, pour quelques jours, le latin redevient une langue vivante, commune à tous ceux qui ont l’oreille tendue vers le Vatican.
Le pape défunt, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, aura plus que tenu son rôle de paladin de l’universel. Lui qui aimait aller à la rencontre du popolino, le « petit peuple », a multiplié les voyages sur toute la planète. Quarante-sept au total, en douze ans, y compris sur les terres les moins accueillantes, de l’Irak au Bangladesh, de la Centrafrique à la Mongolie. Il revendiquait sa mission pastorale dans les périphéries, auprès des plus pauvres, des plus fragiles, des plus vulnérables, dont il lavait les pieds, quelle que soit leur religion. Loin des fastes de l’Occident et des puissants qui ont pu, à juste titre, s’interroger.
Ce n’est donc pas le moindre des paradoxes de voir accourir aux obsèques de François des dirigeants qui ne partageaient pas sa vision du monde. Celle d’un jésuite formé dans les bidonvilles de Buenos Aires et fils d’immigrés italiens. Donald Trump, tout comme le président argentin, le très libéral Javier Milei, seront notamment présents. Preuve du caractère hors du commun de l’adieu à un pape, qui peut aussi être vu comme un signe d’espérance.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25 avril
Kirchen sollten Sinn stiften, nicht Politik machen
Die Kirchen in Deutschland liefern kaum noch Antworten auf existenzielle Fragen. Sie machen Aktivismus für die vermeintlich gute Sache. Kein Wunder, dass sie immer mehr Gläubige verlieren.
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Nach dem Tod des Papstes brach Hektik aus. Im Vatikan, wo es gleichzeitig die Beerdigung und die Organisation der Wahl des Nachfolgers zu bewältigen gilt. Und offensichtlich auch bei einigen deutschen Prominenten und Politikern, die ihren routiniert getippten Abschiedsgruss unbedingt mit einem Foto aus dem eigenen Archiv bebildern wollten – auf dem nicht nur der Papst, sondern auch der jeweilige Promi selbst zu sehen war. «Ich und der Papst», das Ende eines Kirchenoberhauptes als willkommene Marketingmassnahme.
Es gibt eine Grauzone zwischen einem würdevollen und einem würdelosen Umgang mit der Kirche. Viele bewegen sich nicht erst seit den dramatischen Stunden nach dem Tod des Papstes in diesem Grenzbereich. Auch die Kirchen selbst tun das. Und immer öfter drohen sie vollends ins Würdelose abzudriften.
Der ehemalige «Bild»-Journalist Carl-Victor Wachs hat vor wenigen Tagen beschrieben, wie sich auf der ökumenischen Karfreitagsprozession in Berlin «ein Performer, nackt, mit Schlamm bedeckt und in Ketten» durch den Zug schrie. Der Auftritt, so schreibt Wachs, sei vorher von der evangelischen Pastorin Silke Radosh-Hinder erklärt worden – er sollte die Verfolgung queerer Menschen in Ghana thematisieren.
Das Geschlecht des Mannes sei deutlich sichtbar gewesen. Bilder von der Prozession zeigen erschrockene Menschen, die in Berlin des Todes und der Auferstehung Christi gedenken wollten, aber sich im Namen der Queer-Bewegung Ghanas vor fliegenden Schlammbrocken in acht nehmen mussten. Auch eine Imamin mit Hijab trat bei der Kreuzwegsprozession auf; sie nutzte die Gelegenheit, um ihre Meinung kundzutun, nach der Muslime in Deutschland durch Christen unterdrückt würden.
Abschreckend für Gläubige
Es ist nur das jüngste Beispiel von vielen, die einen fragwürdigen Umgang der Kirche mit sich selbst illustrieren. Er dürfte einen grossen Teil der Gläubigen abstossen. Zum Ende des vergangenen Jahres berichtete die NZZ zum Beispiel über einen antisemitischen Weihnachtsmarkt einer Gemeinde in Darmstadt, auf dem Terrorsymbole präsent waren. (Der Pfarrer hat sich dafür inzwischen entschuldigt – wenn auch auf fragwürdige Weise.)
An Ostern 2019 erfuhren europäische Christen von einem brutalen Massaker an ihren Glaubensbrüdern und -schwestern in Sri Lanka. Zugleich wurde im Berliner Dom über die Hilfe für afrikanische Staaten gepredigt. Kein Wort über die 270 ermordeten Christen, die Islamisten vor allem in Ostergottesdiensten getötet hatten.
Die Liste liesse sich beliebig verlängern.
Und so ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass auch in diesem Jahr über die Ostertage eine Debatte losbrach, wie sie seit ein paar Jahren regelmässig zu den hohen Festen des Kirchenjahres entsteht. Sie drehte sich um die Frage, ob die Kirchen noch Kirchen sind – Orte des Mystischen, Geistlichen, Sakralen. Oder ob sie sich zu sehr im Alltag verlieren, zu nahbar, zu politisch, zu aktivistisch, womöglich auch zu links und zu «woke» geworden sind.
Zur Wahrheit gehört, dass manche Kritik wohlfeil ist. Schlüge der Aktivismus der Kirchen in die konservative Kerbe, würden sich linke Politiker dagegen verwahren. Nun, da insbesondere die evangelische Kirche häufig nach links kippt, sind es eher rechte Köpfe, die über den vermeintlichen Verfall der Kirche klagen. Es geht in diesen Fällen nicht immer darum, dass die Kirche zu politisch geworden ist. Sondern darum, welche politischen Ansichten sie vertritt.
Aber das ändert nichts daran, dass Tausende Menschen die Kritik an den Kirchen offensichtlich teilen.
In Deutschland treten jedes Jahr Hunderttausende aus der Kirche aus. Es ist offensichtlich, dass sich viele Menschen nach einem Raum sehnen, der einerseits mit ihrem Alltag kompatibel ist und andererseits dediziert für das Nichtalltägliche da ist und obendrein noch Antworten auf existenzielle Fragen bereithält. Das Bedürfnis äussert sich auch im Zulauf zu allerlei Ersatzreligionen, von Yoga bis Klimaaktivismus, von Selbstoptimierung bis Esoterik.
Das Christentum ist nur in Europa bedroht
Doch offensichtlich können oder wollen die Kirchen diesen Bedarf nicht mehr decken – sie stecken im Dilemma: Sie können dem Drang neuer Mitglieder und Führungsfiguren wie der Superintendentin Frau Radosh-Hinder nachgeben, die den nackten Lehmverschmierten für den Kreuzzug als passend empfand. Dann verlieren sie sukzessive jene Christen, die sich nach Ernsthaftigkeit und Sakralität sehnen. Sie können den Rückwärtsgang einlegen und einen konservativeren Kurs einschlagen. Dann laufen sie Gefahr, jene zu verlieren, die in schwierigen Zeiten neu zur Kirche hinzugestossen sind.
Ein Ausweg insbesondere für die streng hierarchische katholische Kirche zeichnet sich allerdings ab. Es ist einer, mit dem hierzulande die wenigsten rechnen. Und einer, der sinnbildlich für ein Europa steht, das sich im Klein-Klein vieler Diskussionen verheddert, während anderswo Tatsachen geschaffen werden.
Denn tatsächlich ist das Christentum nur in Europa bedroht. In fast allen anderen Regionen der Welt ist es – nach dem Islam – eine der am schnellsten wachsenden Glaubensgemeinschaften. Insbesondere in Afrika, jenem Kontinent, den viele in den europäischen Kirchen ausschliesslich als hilfsbedürftig wahrnehmen. Dort kristallisiert sich eine traditionelle, von Politik und Alltag weit entfernte Kirche heraus.
Sollte ein Afrikaner Papst werden, könnten gerade jene linken, progressiven Kirchenanhänger, die sonst jede Förderung Afrikas gutheissen, bitter enttäuscht werden: Viele Kardinäle aus dem südlichen Kontinent sind erzkonservativ und treten für eine Kirche ein, die sich auf ihren Kern besinnt. Mit einem derartigen Mann in Rom an der Spitze würde sich zumindest die katholische Kirche auch in Deutschland verändern. Und womöglich für traditionelle Katholiken wieder an Attraktivität gewinnen.
The Economist, 24 avril
Big decisions in the Vatican : The coming struggle to choose the next pope
A conclave of 135 cardinals may pick someone very different from Francis
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THE DEATH of Pope Francis comes in the midst of a convulsive period in international affairs, one in which the late pontiff had been expected to play an influential role. His departure removes from the international scene a leader with vast soft power and a distinctly ambiguous view of President Donald Trump’s new administration. Though by no means all of the world’s 1.4bn baptised Roman Catholics follow the guidance of their spiritual leader in temporal matters, even those who vehemently disagree with the opinions of a pope cannot ignore them.
Francis could scarcely have given a clearer sign of his disapproval of the president’s plans for the mass deportation of America’s illegal immigrants. On January 19th he called them a “calamity”. The pope was, in any case, no great admirer of the United States, or of unbridled capitalism. As a Latin American—an Argentine—he had seen at close hand some of the less creditable aspects of American foreign policy.
More, perhaps, than any of his predecessors, he stressed that Catholic social teaching condemned not just Marxism, but also unchecked economic liberalism. His views became evident within a year of his election with the publication of his book, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), in which he inveighed against “an economy of exclusion and inequality”, adding: “Such an economy kills.” His ideas on climate change were at odds with those of Mr Trump and his movement. “We must commit ourselves to…the protection of nature, changing our personal and community habits,” he said last year. The reaction of conservative Americans to his strictures and exhortations ranged from dismay to outrage. It is deeply ironic that the last international figure he met before his death was J.D. Vance, the vice-president.
Where the late pontiff and Mr Trump did see eye-to-eye was on abortion and, to a more nuanced degree, on the need for an end to the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. But their areas of accord seemed unlikely to avert a collision of values and wills. On the contrary, on December 20th Mr Trump named Brian Burch, a hardline critic of Francis, as his envoy to the Holy See. The pope appeared to respond with the appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy, an outspoken champion of immigrants, as archbishop of Washington, DC. The stage had been set for a clash.
That will not happen now, unless, of course, the cardinals charged with electing Francis’s successor choose a man in the same mould. To an outsider that might seem inevitable. All but 27 of the 135 cardinals below the age of 80 who are entitled to vote in the next conclave were chosen by Francis. But papal elections, which Catholics believe are guided by the Almighty in the guise of the Holy Spirit, routinely produce surprises. Francis was chosen in 2013 by an electorate almost entirely composed of cardinals named by his two conservative predecessors, Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
There are several reasons why a liberal pontiff is not a foregone conclusion. One is circumstantial. Francis was plucked, in his own words after his election, from the “end of the earth” and had a penchant for appointing as cardinals prelates from parts of the world a lot more isolated than his native Argentina. Among those who will choose his successor is the apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. The result is that many of the cardinal-electors do not know each other. They may therefore be more susceptible to the influence of a well-organised lobby. And there is no lobby in the higher reaches of the Catholic church better organised than the conservative American cardinals.
A further reason is that not all of Francis’s choices for the college of cardinals are progressives. In Africa particularly liberal Catholic bishops and archbishops are few and far between. In many cases the late pope had little choice but to appoint the most competent available traditionalist. However, that perhaps explains why Africa will be underrepresented in the forthcoming conclave. The continent’s Catholic population accounts for about a fifth of the global total. Yet Africans will cast only one-eighth of the votes.
A further consideration is the way in which popes are chosen. Before a conclave the cardinals hold several days of informal discussion. One reason for this is to give them time to get to know one another and to decide how many of them are papabili (popeable). That will be particularly important in this instance. But the other reason is to try to reach agreement on the main issue facing the church so it can be used as a criterion for selecting the next pope. It is often said in and around the Vatican that, had the cardinals agreed in 2005 that Catholicism’s biggest challenge was the spread of Islam, they would probably have opted for Francis Arinze, a Nigerian cardinal. Instead, they decided it was the secularisation of Europe, and thus handed the job to a German, Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI.
Francis was elected to shake up the Vatican administration and, in particular, to make it more responsive to the wider church. The intention was to bolster the authority and influence of assemblies of bishops meeting in the Vatican to discuss specific issues. The pontiff fulfilled the first of those missions in 2022 with the publication of a new Vatican constitution—the result of nine years of work by a committee of cardinals. But the second remains more of an aspiration than an achievement, largely because Francis was unwilling to yield when the assemblies, or synods, reached conclusions he did not share.
Reinforcing the powers of the synods could be seen as the question that most needs to be confronted. But there are several other possibilities. One is the concern over the creeping secularisation of not just western Europe and North America, but also of Catholic eastern Europe and Latin America. That is due, in part at least, to another still-pressing issue: the continuing, debilitating effect of repeated scandals over the sexual abuse of young people by clergy. Another is the rise of China, notwithstanding its current economic difficulties. That could argue for an Asian prelate. Whatever issue is chosen, it could even be that a particular conservative would be better suited to addressing it than any of the progressives—however papabile he may be. ■
https://www.economist.com/international/2025/04/21/the-coming-struggle-to-choose-the-next-pope
The Wall Street Journal, 24 avril
Pope Francis Leaves Behind a Church That’s More Global—and More Divided
The pope transformed senior leadership, exposing growing differences over teachings; ‘confusion and also ambiguity in the doctrines’
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ROME—Pope Francis accelerated the transformation of the Catholic Church into an institution that reflects the unruly diversity of its global flock. His successor will have to make it work.
When cardinals from around the world gather in the Sistine Chapel in early May to elect a new pontiff, following Francis’ death on Easter Monday, they will bring with them a greater-than-ever range of views on Catholic teaching and practice.
The Catholic Church has become more culturally heterogeneous than at any point in its 2,000-year history. Nearly half of the voting cardinals will come from the global south, compared with just over one-third at the 2013 conclave that elected Francis.
The church has always defined itself as “universal,” but its power was long centered in Europe. Over the course of his 12-year pontificate, Pope Francis sought to reorient the church toward Asia and the global south, broadening the faith beyond its traditional strongholds in the West.
The Argentine pope transformed the demographics of Roman Catholicism’s senior leadership. He empowered churchmen from the farthest points of the globe, elevating them to cardinals in places such as Mongolia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Many of them are now deeply entrenched in church institutions, including Roman Curia or papal administration, and the College of Cardinals that will elect the next pope.
Francis also sought a rapprochement with China, signing an agreement with its Communist leadership to share power over the appointment of local bishops. He expressed admiration for Russia’s imperial era, even after the invasion of Ukraine.
“The papacy was once the chaplain of NATO. It has now become the chaplain of Brics,” said John L. Allen Jr., a longtime Vatican watcher and editor of the Catholic news site Crux, referring to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the group of emerging economies including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. “There’s a sense from the developing world that their moment has come, and they’re tired of being dictated to by the West.”
Francis’ determination to build a truly global church was driven in part by his desire to disrupt the hidebound traditions that had governed the Catholic Church for centuries. When he became pope, the Vatican was engulfed by clerical sexual-abuse scandals as well as scrutiny of its finances—forces that helped trigger the resignation of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.
The tumult in Rome compounded the Vatican’s struggle to resolve contentious debates stemming from the clash between its traditions and rising secularism in the Western world, including its rejection of same-sex unions and its requirement of an all-male, celibate priesthood.
Francis responded by embarking on what his supporters see as an epochal pivot for Roman Catholicism, toward regions such as Africa and Asia, where the faith is growing, and away from Europe, where church attendance is in decline.
Only by engaging fully with its “periphery,” Francis said, could the church find renewal. Clerics and laypeople from around the world, including women, were encouraged to participate in Vatican meetings known as synods to debate the future of the church.
Enduring pillar
For many cardinals voting in the conclave, there is no turning back.
The “de-Europeanization” of the Catholic Church will be an enduring pillar of Francis’ legacy, said Cardinal Michael Czerny, who oversees much of the Vatican’s humanitarian outreach worldwide and worked closely with Francis.
“The fact that Mongolia has a cardinal is a sign of its centrality just as much as the cardinal of Naples or of Turin,” Czerny said.
Francis’ biggest legacy is that “he really opened up Catholicism to a post-European, post-Western form,” said Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at Villanova University. “This is only possible under a pope who didn’t come from Europe or the Mediterranean world,” Faggioli said.
The emergence of new power centers in the Catholic world has revealed growing differences over some of the church’s core teachings. Liberal bishops from Germany pushed for same-sex couples to receive priestly blessings, triggering a backlash from African prelates who found the practice unacceptable. A synod on ministry in the Amazon sought to tackle a shortage of priests in the region by loosening the rules on priestly celibacy, provoking a furious reaction from conservative prelates in the U.S.
Cardinal William Goh of Singapore was broadly supportive of Francis’ pontificate, including his quest to bring the church’s hierarchy closer to ordinary believers, and to expand the representation of Asia and Africa. But the growing use of synods to expand dialogue within the church, Goh said in an interview, has given a platform to more liberal European prelates and laypeople to exert “ideological pressure.”
“Once you start opening the door, then there is confusion and also ambiguity in the doctrines,” Goh said. The Singaporean said the next pope should be a moderate who can unify the church by hewing more clearly to its orthodox teachings. “The next pope should be true to the faith of the church,” he said. “True to the word of God, the Magisterium, the tradition.”
Public disagreements between the church’s diverse factions have led to warnings of a schism, or permanent split.
One of the most divisive aspects of Francis’ global expansion drive has been the 2018 power-sharing deal that he cut with China’s Communist regime over the appointment of bishops in the country. Francis aimed to secure greater acceptance of, and future growth for, Catholicism in a largely irreligious land of 1.4 billion people.
The terms of the accord have remained secret, but church officials said it allows Beijing to nominate bishops and the pope to veto them. The selection of bishops has long been one of the papacy’s core powers, creating a bond between bishops and Rome that supersedes their allegiance to national governments.
In the U.S., bishops and politicians criticized the deal with Beijing as inimical to religious freedom. Cardinal Joseph Zen, a former bishop of Hong Kong, was another critic, arguing that the agreement betrayed Chinese underground Catholics who have long been persecuted for their loyalty to the pope. There were widespread fears that Beijing would use the agreement to assert power over all of China’s estimated 10 million Catholics.
China has begun to test the deal’s limits. The Vatican has accused Beijing of violating the accord by transferring a Vatican-approved bishop to a diocese in China that Rome didn’t recognize. China subsequently installed another bishop without consulting the Vatican.
Goh, the Singaporean cardinal, defended the aim of working together with Beijing, saying that a more confrontational approach was likely to backfire, particularly among Chinese who still chafe over the West’s past colonial domination of the country.
“Instead of getting their cooperation,” he said, “we will erode whatever confidence they might have because they will think: Again, these Western people, they are just trying to impose their ideology on us.”
Divisive issues
Francis’ push to extend the frontiers of Catholicism in the Amazon region exposed more tensions. In 2017, Francis called for a synod to address the struggle to minister to indigenous populations living in remote areas of the Amazonian basin, where priests are in short supply.
A Vatican document setting the meeting’s agenda asked bishops to consider whether married men with families in the region might be admitted to the priesthood to make up for the shortfall. The document also suggested the church should consider allowing women to perform “official ministry,” leaving open what their precise role would be.
The reaction from conservative cardinals was withering. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, a German who was once the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcer, said the document spread “false teaching.” American Cardinal Raymond Burke and Athanasius Schneider, a bishop in Kazakhstan, called for a 40-day “crusade of prayer and fasting,” warning that heresy might pervert the synod.
Francis ultimately decided not to relax the rules on priestly celibacy or expand the ministry to women. Women in the Amazon, he said, should be given roles that “do not entail holy orders” but allow them to serve “in a way that reflects their womanhood.”
After angering conservatives, the synod ended up frustrating progressives.
Czerny, a Jesuit whom Francis tasked with helping to run the synod before making him a cardinal, said the point of such gatherings isn’t to produce immediate changes. Rather, they’re intended to pry open a space for debate on delicate issues that might yield results decades later.
“What we need to do is launch and encourage processes. This is very difficult,” Czerny said. “In other words, you keep going and you try to bring the extremes to the middle.”
Few issues have exposed the divisions in the global church more than the question of whether it should show more openness to LGBTQ people. Francis made perhaps the best-known comment of his pontificate when, on a flight home from Brazil early in his reign, he was asked about the presence of gay men in the priesthood.
“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis said.
In the years that followed, liberal clerics in Germany began flouting Vatican rules against clergy blessing same-sex couples.
In 2023, Francis elevated a fellow Argentine, Victor Manuel Fernández, to the rank of cardinal and placed him at the helm of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, historically known as the Inquisition.
Months later, Fernández’s office published guidelines permitting priests to bless same-sex couples in ceremonies, provided the blessings don’t imply that such unions are the equivalent of heterosexual marriage.
The move stirred outrage in Catholic Africa, a region that is among the church’s fastest-growing and most conservative. Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, flew to Rome, demanding an audience with the pontiff.
“Tell him that I have arrived, I am in the house, and I am there only until Thursday evening, and I want to meet him before leaving because that’s what I came for,” Ambongo recalled later in a sermon that recounted his Vatican visit.
Francis met with Ambongo the same day and put him in touch with Fernández, who sat down with the African prelate at the doctrinal office to write out a statement, phoning the pope occasionally for approval of particular passages.
In January 2024, Ambongo issued a statement entitled “No Blessing for Homosexual Couples in the African Churches” that he said carried the imprimatur of Fernández and the pope. The document said same-sex unions were considered “intrinsically corrupt” in Africa.
The document provided Africa with a carve-out from teachings that applied to the rest of the world.
“Until now, Africa was always talked about as a missionary country, one that needs economic aid,” said Father Roberto Regoli, a historian at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. “This was the first time Africa sent a message to the rest of the church.”
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/pope-francis-death-catholic-church-6a57af4f?mod=hp_lead_pos10
The Jerusalem Post, 23 avril
Pope Francis’s moral compass faltered on Israel – editorial
From the very beginning of his papacy, Francis struck a markedly different tone toward the Jewish State than toward its adversaries.
Full text:
Pope Francis will be remembered for many things: his humility, his gentle demeanor, his compassion for the poor, and his tireless calls for peace in a fractured world.
He was the first pontiff to take the name “Francis,” in tribute to the saint who championed the poor and the powerless. And true to that inspiration, he steered the Catholic Church through turbulence – from the European refugee crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic – while taking long-overdue steps toward confronting sexual abuse within its walls.
But on one front, the pope’s moral compass faltered time and again: his relationship with the State of Israel. From the very beginning of his papacy, Francis struck a markedly different tone toward the Jewish state than toward its adversaries.
His 2014 trip to the region was rife with symbolic gestures meant to suggest balance where there was none. He visited both Yad Vashem and the separation barrier, where a photo showed him resting his head on the wall in a manner similar to pilgrims visiting the Western Wall.
He laid a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl, an unprecedented act by a pontiff – but also entered the West Bank not via Israel, but through Jordan, and celebrated Mass in Bethlehem beside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Later, he would invite Abbas and then-President Shimon Peres to the Vatican for a prayer summit.
That apparent symmetry was soon undermined by clear statements and actions that betrayed a disturbing bias. In 2015, Francis warmly received Abbas at the Vatican and reportedly called him an “angel of peace” – a truly baffling characterization of a man who has glorified terrorism, funded the families of suicide bombers, and denied the Holocaust.
This statement, carried by many media outlets, was denied by a papal spokesperson. In the same visit, the Vatican finalized a treaty formally recognizing the “State of Palestine,” a move condemned by Israel as “a hasty step” that undermined peace efforts and ignored Jewish historic rights in Jerusalem.
Time and again, Israel expressed dismay at the Vatican’s tendency to elevate Palestinian narratives while brushing aside Israeli concerns. Then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni put it plainly at the time: “I regret that the Vatican decided to participate in a step that blatantly ignores the history of the Jewish people in Israel and Jerusalem.”
The Vatican’s posture under Francis consistently privileged a politicized version of the Palestinian story over the complex reality on the ground. Whether during the canonization of two Palestinian nuns in 2015, or in statements following clashes in Jerusalem in 2021, the Holy See often seemed more interested in defending Palestinian identity than acknowledging Israel’s security dilemmas.
Criticizing Israel after October 7
Even after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, Pope Francis condemned both sides in a manner that was troublingly lopsided. While he did denounce Hamas’s initial slaughter, he quickly shifted to criticizing Israel’s military response as “cruelty, this is not war.” He went so far as to call Israeli airstrikes “terrorism” after two Palestinian Christian women were killed in Gaza.
No mention was made, in those same statements, of Hamas’s use of human shields, its embedding in civilian infrastructure, or its well-documented exploitation of churches and hospitals for military purposes.
As Israel’s campaign continued, the pope’s rhetoric intensified. In November 2024, he openly questioned whether Israel’s military campaign constituted a genocide. One of his final public addresses, read aloud on Easter Sunday due to illness, described the situation in Gaza as “dramatic and deplorable.” He called for a ceasefire and the release of hostages, yes – but the criticism of Israel was clear and constant, while Hamas’s atrocities were diluted into vague moral equivalence.
To his credit, Francis did call on Hamas to release the hostages and condemned antisemitism in his final Easter message. But these gestures felt obligatory, coming after months of slanted commentary and silence on Hamas’s continued aggression.
Even in his calls for peace, the pope too often spoke as if Israel’s existence was incidental to the conflict, rather than fundamental to the peace.
There is a tragic irony in the fact that the pope who sought to open the Catholic Church’s heart to the marginalized, who emphasized humility and reconciliation, struggled in exhibiting the same balance when it came to the world’s only Jewish state.
In the Jewish tradition, we say, “zikhrono livracha” (“May his memory be a blessing”). And in many ways, Pope Francis’s memory will be just that. But not, sadly, when it comes to Israel. On that front, history may record him as a missed opportunity – another well-meaning pope who failed to rise above the politics of the moment, and in doing so, lent moral cover to those who seek Israel’s destruction.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-850940
The Economist, 23 avril
Holy map : Searching for the Catholic church’s centre of gravity
How has its influence changed over time?
Full text:
IT IS THE most sacred week in the Christian calendar. Tens of thousands of Catholics will descend on Vatican City for Easter Sunday Mass on April 20th, which will celebrate Jesus’s resurrection. The pope would usually preside over at least eight ceremonies during Holy Week. This year, still recovering from double pneumonia, Pope Francis is more restricted. But on April 17th he nevertheless managed a visit to a prison in Rome.
Francis has led the Roman Catholic church since Benedict XVI resigned in 2013. Born in Argentina, he is the first pope from the southern hemisphere, and the only non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years.
His election reflected a broader geographical shift in the church. Although the Vatican has been Catholicism’s spiritual and administrative home since the Reformation in the 16th century, the church’s centre of gravity is moving. The Economist has traced this using two indicators: one for the faithful and another for the papacy.
The first, calculated with data from the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an American evangelical institute, shows the statistical centre of global Catholic populations since 33AD. The method finds the point at which equal numbers of Catholics live to the north, south, east and west (see map 1).
This method traces the Church’s complex history. The statistical centre started in the hills and deserts around Bethlehem (believed to be Jesus’s birthplace) and Jerusalem (where he was crucified). After his death, his apostle Peter, regarded by Catholics as the first pope, travelled to Rome, which was then the bustling capital of the empire. According to Catholic belief, Peter was executed by Emperor Nero on Vatican Hill, a pagan burial site outside ancient Rome. (He is said to have asked to be crucified upside down; he did not feel worthy to die in the same way as Jesus.) This area gradually transformed into the church’s headquarters—less for its ties to Jesus’s life, and more for its political and symbolic power.
Catholicism continued to grow outside Europe, too. Between 200AD and 400AD the Catholic population in north Africa grew from 100,000 to 1.6m because of urbanisation and missionary work. This growth ended in part because of the rise of Islam in the 7th century, pulling the Catholic demographic centre towards Europe, where it reached its northernmost peak in 1500.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Church’s rapid growth in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia triggered a southward shift once again. The World Christian Database shows that Africa and Asia are the only regions in the world where the increase in the number of Catholics has outpaced population growth over the past 50 years (see chart 1). In Europe, by contrast, the number has fallen slightly; the continent’s share of Catholics has shrunk from 37% in 1975 to 32% in 2025. The Gordon-Conwell researchers reckon that the Church’s demographic centre is now somewhere around Senegal’s southern border. Based on demographic projections by the United Nations this could move to the Ivory Coast by 2050.
Our second map shows the geographical centre of the papacy. It averages the longitude and latitude of the birthplaces of all popes over time, weighted by the lengths of their reigns.
These data show how the power of the church has remained rooted in Italy despite the growth in worshippers elsewhere. There have been 265 popes since Peter (who was born near the Golan Heights). Of the 260 whose birthplaces are known, 80% were from modern-day Italy.
By our calculations the centre of the papacy remains close to Rome. But that trend is weakening. John Paul II, who was head of the Church at the turn of the 21st century, was born in Poland. His successor, Benedict XVI, was German. When Francis became pope he said that it seemed as if the conclave had “gone to fetch (him) almost from the end of the world”.
Francis’s eventual successor might shift things further. The body that will elect the next pope is currently made up of 136 cardinals from 94 countries. Only 39% are from Europe, with a record number from Asia and Africa.
This institutional shift is also visible in the distribution of basilicas (Catholic churches granted special status by a pope for their historical, spiritual or architectural importance). We estimate that roughly 1,700 churches have been given this designation over the past 200 years—and more than 70% are in Europe. But that is changing. In the 2010s over 40% of new basilicas were outside Europe; in the past five years that has grown to 62% (see chart 2).
Rome remains the centre of power in the church. But demographically and institutionally, the faith is shifting south and east—along with the growing number of believers in the global south.■
Le Figaro, 23 avril
Lucetta Scaraffia : «Le pape François a été très réformateur dans les paroles, mais peu dans les faits»
ENTRETIEN – Historienne de l’Église et ancienne collaboratrice du pape François, cette éditorialiste italienne pose un regard très critique sur le mode de gouvernance du défunt pontife, qu’elle qualifie de «très autoritaire».
Full text:
Historienne de l’Église, spécialiste de la question des femmes dans l’Église, Lucetta Scaraffia est une figure majeure du Vatican. Sous le pontificat de Benoît XVI, elle a créé un mensuel féminin officiel du Vatican, Donne Chiesa Mondo (Femmes Église Monde), supplément de L’Osservatore Romano, quotidien officiel du Saint-Siège. Durant le pontificat de François, elle a notamment conseillé le chef de l’Église catholique durant le synode sur la famille (2014-2015) et été nommée conseillère du dicastère pour la promotion d’une nouvelle évangélisation. La publication de deux enquêtes, l’une en 2018 dévoilant l’exploitation et le travail forcé de religieuses domestiques pour de hauts prélats du Vatican ; l’autre en 2019 sur l’exploitation sexuelle des religieuses par des membres du clergé, dans Femmes Église Monde, conduira à sa démission – elle se dit alors victime de censure.
Bas du formulaire
Aujourd’hui, cette spécialiste reconnue de l’Église et du Vatican pose un regard très critique sur le pontificat de François.
LE FIGARO. – Un style pontifical axé sur l’humilité, la critique du cléricalisme, l’accueil des migrants, une Église plus «inclusive» (femmes, personnes homosexuelles, divorcés remariés…) et décentralisée… Nombre de commentateurs évoquent un pape «réformateur» pour qualifier le bilan du pontificat de François. Partagez-vous cette vision ?
Lucetta SCARAFFIA. – Le pape François a été très réformateur dans les paroles, mais peu dans les faits. Certes, il a beaucoup parlé du cléricalisme, mais il s’est entouré d’une majorité de prêtres – et d’hommes laïcs – comme conseillers. Il n’a jamais écouté la parole des femmes, ce qu’elles avaient à dire, laïques ou religieuses. Les réformes de la Curie romaine ont été catastrophiques. Au tribunal de la Cité de l’État du Vatican, pour le procès du cardinal Becciu, il est intervenu quatre fois pour changer le cours du procès – le pape a notamment modifié par décret le code de droit canonique afin de permettre l’inculpation d’un cardinal, impossible auparavant, NDLR –. Il s’est dit en faveur de la synodalité (participation de l’ensemble des membres de l’Église, laïcs, conférences épiscopales, religieux, à la vie et à la mission de l’Église, NDLR), mais il a été un pape particulièrement autoritaire : il a tout mis dans ses mains et n’a écouté personne. La Secrétairerie d’État ne comptait plus. La politique extérieure était gérée directement pas lui. La communication, de même : il décidait lui, de ce qu’il dirait aux journalistes, sans écouter ses conseillers.
Sur la question des abus, il a dit et écrit des choses fortes. Mais dans la pratique, c’est tout autre chose : il n’a rien fait pour sanctionner les évêques qui ont dissimulé des abus – le pape François a notamment renoncé à mettre en place la création d’un tribunal spécial pour les évêques accusés de dissimulation, mesure réclamée par des victimes, NDLR. Il n’a rien fait non plus sur la question des abus sexuels sur les religieuses.
Enfin, sur le plan international ou diplomatique, tous les papes ont dit être en faveur de la paix, et lui aussi. Pour autant, il est intervenu dans les conflits en cours en prenant parti. Dans le conflit Ukraine-Russie, il a ainsi dit des choses en faveur de la Russie. Au Moyen-Orient, il s’est plutôt prononcé en faveur des Palestiniens. En ce sens, cela reste un pape très politique.
Ses paroles percutantes sur l’accueil des personnes homosexuelles, la place des femmes, l’accueil des migrants, notamment, n’ont-elles pas tout de même amorcé un changement de paradigme, de regard, au sein de l’Église romaine ?
Le pape François a permis de signaler un problème : l’Église considérait le comportement homosexuel comme erroné, désordonné. Mais on ne peut pas résoudre la question de l’homosexualité en se contentant de dire simplement : «dans l’Église, il y a de la place pour tous, tous, tous». Avec la miséricorde, le pape François a pensé résoudre des problématiques plus complexes. Il a permis un changement de regard, mais en choisissant la facilité et avec superficialité. De même, pour la problématique de l’immigration. Il s’agit d’un sujet dramatique que tous les États doivent affronter. Et on ne peut se contenter de culpabiliser ceux qui disent ne pas vouloir les accueillir.
Sur la question des femmes dans l’Église, le pape François a tout de même posé certains actes, avec des nominations de personnalités à des postes clés, mais aussi sur le plan liturgique, théologique… Quelles sont les réformes qui ont retenu votre attention, et celles qui au contraire, vous ont déçue ?
Le choix d’élever la figure de sainte Marie-Madeleine – premier témoin de la Résurrection du Christ et à l’annoncer -, au même rang que les apôtres, en élevant cette simple «mémoire obligatoire» du calendrier liturgique, au rang de fête, le 22 juillet 2016, a été un choix symbolique très important. De même, le pape a permis que l’avortement, autrefois considéré comme un «péché réservé», puisse être pardonné par un prêtre quelconque, alors qu’il ne pouvait être absous auparavant que par un évêque ou un prêtre désigné par l’évêque. C’était une grande absurdité, alors qu’un assassin pouvait, lui, être absous par n’importe quel prêtre… Cette décision a été très positive.
Les femmes nommées à de hauts postes du Vatican ont été choisies en réalité par des ecclésiastiques comme des religieuses ou laïques très obéissantes. Or, il existe des religieuses avec des critiques, qui ont fait des requêtes au pape, mais qui n’ont pas été écoutées. C’est le cas de l’Union internationale des supérieures générales de congrégations, qui ont demandé d’ouvrir la réflexion sur les femmes diacres. Or le pape a fermé la porte. Le fait de créer des commissions de réflexion sur le sujet sans donner de réponse, c’est une manière de dire non. Aux premiers temps de l’Église, les diaconesses existaient. La consécration diaconale n’est devenue que bien plus tard un grade du parcours pour être ordonné prêtre. Mais il est possible aujourd’hui pour des hommes mariés de devenir diacre permanent sans jamais devenir prêtre. Pourquoi cela ne serait pas possible pour des femmes ? On ne comprend pas.
Quel pourrait être le profil du successeur du pape François ? Ces dernières années, ce dernier a créé de nombreux cardinaux de sa sensibilité pastorale. Qu’en pensez-vous ?
C’est la première fois qu’un pape a créé autant de cardinaux qui appartiennent à son courant de pensée. Avant lui, les papes faisaient en sorte de créer un équilibre, ce que je trouve juste. Il faut voir si ces cardinaux resteront «fidèles» à Bergoglio. Mais il est vrai qu’ils sont en très grande majorité. Pour moi, l’Église doit trouver des solutions d’équilibre. Espérons qu’elle les trouve. Depuis des siècles, jamais nous n’avons eu une élection papale aussi difficile à comprendre que celle-ci. Nous sommes dans une grande incertitude. Il est quasiment impossible de faire des prévisions. Le nouveau pape sera sûrement une grande surprise.
IREF, 23 avril
Disparition du pape François : l’Eglise catholique va-t-elle durablement adopter une position hostile au libre-marché ?
Full text:
La disparition brutale du pape François, le lundi de Pâques, qui était apparu, la veille, très fatigué, après une longue hospitalisation, a entraîné beaucoup d’émotion dans le monde catholique et au-delà. Certains ont parlé d’un pontificat de rupture. C’est l’occasion de revenir sur sa conception de la doctrine sociale de l’Eglise. On connait les prises de positions fréquentes de François contre le capitalisme. Mais, au-delà des discours de circonstances, François a-t-il fait évoluer les grands principes de la doctrine sociale dans un sens hostile au libre-marché ?
Les papes Jean-Paul II et Benoît XVI avaient, dans leurs encycliques sociales, défendu les grands principe de l’économie de marché : propriété, subsidiarité, liberté économique…Ces papes avaient connu les totalitarismes, notamment communiste, et pris clairement position pour les libertés en général et les libertés économiques en particulier. Le pape François, qui vient de disparaitre, a semblé tourner le dos à ces analyses et a multiplié les discours hostiles au capitalisme, au profit et au libre-marché, probablement influencé par l’histoire de son pays, du capitalisme de connivence et de l’héritage du péronisme.
Mais ce qui compte, ce ne sont pas les discours de circonstances, qui reflètent la « sensibilité » de chaque pape, mais les grands principes de la doctrine sociale de l’Eglise. Or, au moins sur deux de ces principes, la propriété et la subsidiarité, François a semblé infléchir fortement la doctrine sociale dans un sens hostile au libre-marché.
En ce qui concerne la propriété privée, elle a toujours été défendue par l’Eglise. Thomas d’Aquin la défendait, comme conforme au droit naturel. Les papes successifs, depuis Léon XIII font de même. Ce dernier, dans Rerum novarum (1891) a affirmé à son tour que la propriété privée était de droit naturel, a condamné la « proposition funeste » des socialistes de supprimer la propriété, et il a déclaré « Que ceci soit donc bien établi : le premier principe sur lequel doit se baser le relèvement des classes inférieures est l’inviolabilité de la propriété privée. » (RN § 12-2). Il a aussi expliqué comment concilier la propriété privée et le fait que tous les hommes aient droit à accéder aux biens (« destination universelle des biens ») : la propriété favorise cette destination, car elle est source de revenus (revenus de l’entrepreneur, du capital et du travail) et ces revenus permettent d’accéder aux biens. Si cela ne suffit pas, la solidarité complètera, si nécessaire. Tous les papes ont été sur cette ligne.
Or François a semblé infléchir ces principes. Dans son encyclique Fratelli tutti, le pape François aborde la question de la propriété : « Je rappelle que la tradition chrétienne n’a jamais reconnu comme absolu ou intouchable le droit à la propriété privée, et elle a souligné la fonction sociale de toute forme de propriété privée. Le principe de l’usage commun des biens créés pour tous est le premier principe de tout l’ordre éthico-social ; c’est un droit naturel, originaire et prioritaire. Tous les autres droits concernant les biens nécessaires à l’épanouissement intégral des personnes, y compris celui de la propriété privée et tout autre droit n’en doivent donc pas entraver, mais bien au contraire faciliter la réalisation (…). Le droit à la propriété privée ne peut être considéré que comme un droit naturel secondaire et dérivé du principe de la destination universelle des biens créés ; et cela comporte des conséquences très concrètes qui doivent se refléter sur le fonctionnement de la société. Mais il arrive souvent que les droits secondaires se superposent aux droits prioritaires et originaires en les privant de toute portée pratique ». (§ 120). universelle des biens. C’est important, car un droit naturel secondaire n’est plus véritablement un droit naturel, ce qui, si on pousse le raisonnement plus loin, remet en cause le principe même de la propriété privée.
Deuxième exemple, la subsidiarité ; principe essentiel depuis Pie XI. Les décisions doivent se prendre au plus bas niveau possible, celui des personnes, des familles, des associations, des entreprises, et ne faire appel à l’échelon supérieur, et en dernier ressort à l’Etat, qu’en cas d’impossibilité. C’est le fondement de toutes les libertés, notamment économiques, et donc du libre marché. Pour Benoît XVI, la subsidiarité est « l’expression de l’inaliénable liberté humaine » (Caritas in veritate § 52).
A sa façon, le pape François, dans Fratelli tutti, rend hommage à cette action subsidiaire de la société : « Grâce à Dieu, beaucoup de regroupements et d’organisations de la société civile aident à pallier les faiblesses de la Communauté Internationale, son manque de coordination dans des situations complexes, son manque de vigilance en ce qui concerne les droits humains fondamentaux et les situations très critiques de certains groupes. Ainsi, le principe de subsidiarité devient une réalité concrète garantissant la participation et l’action des communautés et des organisations de rang inférieur qui complètent l’action de l’État ». (§ 175).
En réalité, sous couvert d’une apparente défense de la subsidiarité, François inverse radicalement le principe. Si on lit bien ce texte, c’est l’action des Etats qui est première et la société civile est là pour pallier les insuffisances de l’action étatique ; elle n’est plus qu’un complément, au lieu d’être première (On trouve la même dérive dans l’application de la subsidiarité dans les traités européens). Le principe est donc dénaturé ; pour François, c’est l’Etat qui est premier et les organismes décentralisés de ls société civile ne font que combler les insuffisances étatiques.
Le pape François n’est plus, un nouveau pape prendra bientôt la suite. Il y a donc là un débat essentiel : l’Eglise catholique va-t-elle rester fidèle à la tradition de sa doctrine sociale et défendre la propriété, la subsidiarité et les libertés économiques, tout en rappelant -c’est son rôle- les exigences de la morale et de la charité ? Ou va-t-elle s’engager dans la voie ouverte par François et s’éloigner de ces principes fondamentaux ? C’est une question importante pour le combat des libéraux, car il est essentiel d’avoir, autant que possible, l’appui des « autorités morales ». Quant aux catholiques, ils se poseront la question de l’avenir de la doctrine sociale : si un pape dit, durablement et fermement, le contraire de ses prédécesseurs à propos des principes essentiels, c’est qu’on n’est plus dans la doctrine, celle-ci, par définition, étant immuable. François a donné un infléchissement contraire à ses prédécesseurs ; à son successeur de ne pas transformer cet infléchissement en rupture avec les grands principes de la doctrine sociale.
Jean-Yves Naudet, Professeur de Sciences Économiques à la Faculté de Droit de l’Université d’Aix-Marseille (Professeur de classe exceptionnelle
The Wall Street Journal, 22 avril
The Legacy of Pope Francis, 1936-2025
He championed the poor while favoring ideas that keep them poor.
Full text:
When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected the 266th pope in 2013, it marked a series of firsts. He was the first Jesuit pope and, as an Argentine, the first from outside Europe. Yet his legacy as Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday at age 88, was disappointing even on the priorities he set for his papacy.
Pope Francis was best known for urging concern for the poor, in the best Christian tradition. He called for a clergy of “shepherds who have the smell of their sheep”—that is, priests and nuns who shared the suffering of their neighbors. He made support for the weakest among us the rhetorical centerpiece of his papacy. He brought a public informality and openness to the Vatican.
Alas, Pope Francis believed ideologies that keep the poor in poverty. One of those earthly dogmas is radical environmentalism, which isn’t about keeping the earth clean for human beings but keeping the earth for itself and treating man as the enemy.
In one of his first writings as pope, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis cited air conditioning as an example of the “harmful habits of consumption” that will lead to mankind’s self-destruction. He didn’t seem to realize that escaping poverty requires greater energy consumption.
His papacy was marked by anti-Americanism, and not merely against Donald Trump. He seemed to believe that Latin America is poor because the United States is rich. That’s a recipe for stagnation and despair because the real reasons so many in Latin America languish in poverty are at home: Lack of the rule of law, business-government collusion, protectionism, and other barriers to human flourishing.
Some attribute his hostility to free markets to his Latin American background. Born in Buenos Aires, Pope Francis at a young age was made the provincial superior for the Jesuit order in Argentina during the time of the military junta. This was a hard line to walk, and some in his order accused him unfairly of being too friendly with the regime.
Argentina for much of his life was dominated by Peronism, a brand of left-wing populism named for Argentine President Juan Peron. When Bergoglio looked around, he saw corruption and the rich doing very well as their fellow countrymen languished in poverty. Perhaps it was understandable that he confused Argentina’s corporatism with capitalism.
Less forgivable was his deal with Beijing as pope that gave the Communist Party influence in the choice of bishops. Conditions for Catholics in China have worsened, though the Vatican has renewed the kowtow several times. The Vatican has stayed silent on the plight of publisher Jimmy Lai, who is China’s best-known imprisoned Catholic.
Unlike his two immediate predecessors—John Paul II and Benedict—Pope Francis was from the progressive wing of his Church. He punished traditionalist bishops who disagreed with his direction, and he has populated the cardinal ranks with fellow progressives.
The irony is that this progressivism is most popular in places like Europe where the Sunday pews are empty. The Church is thriving in Africa and among younger orthodox Catholics in the West looking for meaning in life beyond material consumption. The cardinals who will choose the pope’s successor will help determine which future they want for the Church and the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics.
The Economist, 22 avril
The works of mercy : Pope Francis changed the Catholic church, but not as much as he hoped
The most open-minded pope for many years died on April 21st—Easter Monday—aged 88
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The moment when the great doors of St Peter’s balcony swing open, announcing a new pope, seems to call for trumpets and drums. Instead, on March 13th 2013, the figure in white said: “Good evening.” Though he spoke in Italian, his parents’ language, he was Argentinian, the first non-European pope for almost 13 centuries. That in itself was interesting. Then, before the traditional urbi et orbi blessing, he asked the huge crowd for their blessing on him. Interest turned to patent surprise.
Francis did not stop there. There would be no papal cape or red slippers, just a plain white cassock and his ordinary black shoes. (He would as happily have worn the shirt of his football club, San Lorenzo, or his national blue-and-white with Messi, his favourite player, on the back.) No crest-embellished dinner plates, no new pectoral cross; he kept the iron-plated one he had worn, from 1998, as archbishop of Buenos Aires. No 12-room apartment in the Vatican, but a two-room suite in the guests’ hostel, and meals in the dining room with everyone else. “We’ll see how long it lasts,” said one aide, uncomfortable. It lasted until he died; for in Buenos Aires, after all, he had cooked his own meals and travelled by bus.
Humility did not drive these changes. For him, ostentatious displays of sanctity were “osteoporosis of the soul”. He just wanted to be among the people, out in the open, with his flock. In the Vatican apartment, he would have been alone. In the bullet-proof Popemobile, which he also discarded, he would have been unable to hug, embrace, get himself into selfies, tickle children and laugh with besotted nuns. From the hostel, too, he could sneak out with little formality, turning up at hospitals, prisons and hospices to the huge surprise of inmates and workers. On Holy Thursday he visited such places to kneel before people in trouble, wash their feet, towel them dry and kiss them. Good shepherds, he said, should get their hands dirty.
The saint whose name he had taken, Francis of Assisi, had said the same. Following him (though he was not a Franciscan but one of the sterner, more institutionalised Jesuits, the first to become pope), he opened up heart and hand to the travails of the poor. In Buenos Aires he was called the “Slum Bishop” for insisting that he, and his priests, should go out in the streets and on the margins. He was no fan of liberation theology, and fell out with some Jesuits over that; his vague political instincts were tinged with Peronist populism and scorn for capitalism. His immense encyclical “Laudato Si’ ” of 2015, advising care for the Earth, fiercely attacked consumerism and the profit motive; he even gave a copy to Donald Trump when he visited, and later challenged the president’s heartless views on immigration. Convinced that when people closed in on themselves, their greed increased, he made a point of reaching out, feeding hundreds of homeless with pizza at the Vatican and adopting several families of Syrian refugees.
His openness also had another, extraordinary, dimension. Turning the Roman Catholic tradition of centuries on its head, he refused to defend doctrine for doctrine’s sake. Some teachings—on abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage—were still non-negotiable in his mind. Sin was sin. Other issues brought out the solid streak of conservatism in him: he could clearly not yet deal with married priests or women deacons. On many matters, though, he left room for nuance and understanding. He would walk beside people and look on them as Jesus would have done. Of homosexuals, he said: “Who am I to judge?” His “exhortation” on married love, “Amoris Laetitia”, seemed to leave open the possibility that the divorced and remarried could receive communion. In his church there were no pariahs, save capitalists and those whose greed despoiled God’s gift of Earth: a passion encapsulated in the synod he held for his “Querida Amazonia”, and one he recapitulated often. His greatest ire (and he could be fearsomely angry and authoritarian, as the Argentinian Jesuits, of whom he was briefly provincial, discovered), was aimed at the “lying spellbinders”, “bloodsuckers” and “hypocrites” who, though nominally pastors, cared mostly for their curial careers.
They were among those who hampered his efforts at reform. A synod on the family made negligible progress. Francis’s efforts to address child abuse by clergy were often clumsy, and his apologies made little impression on the press or on the victims. His attempts to sort out the black hole of Vatican finances, though partly successful, left him open to accusations of high-handedness. The old guard found him impatient, too keen to get his way by simple exhortation, when the church required slow, careful consultation, over centuries if need be.
Many, especially within the American church and at the court of Benedict, the frail pope emeritus, were actively hostile to him. Some presented dubia, serious doctrinal doubts, about the teaching of “Amoris Laetitia”. He disregarded them, stubbornly appointing to the cardinalate the sort of men he liked, third-worlders and the open-minded. He too could play a long game. Meanwhile gratifying successes came from outside ventures, such as his brokering of a new relationship between the United States and Cuba.
Some wondered what truly motivated this broad-backed, smiling figure, a joyful tweeter who also used silence as eloquently as words. He admitted to “hundreds” of errors and sins in his past, referring perhaps to misjudgments in Argentina’s dirty war of 1976-83. Possibly (though nothing was proved) he felt he had much to make up for. If so, repentance was turned to one end: mercy. A merciful church could not shrink inwards, because its duty was to offer care, love and grace to all in need: not only to baptised members, but to every soul created in God’s image.
So Francis believed and acted, every day of his pontificate. But after him, the great doors of the balcony of St Peter’s may yet creak slowly shut again. ■
L’Express, 22 avril
Mort du pape : François, pèlerin de la paix et apôtre de l’écologie
Dans nos archives. Adepte du dialogue et de la poignée de main, le 266e souverain pontife, grand défenseur de l’environnement, est décédé ce lundi à l’âge de 88 ans.
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Lorsqu’il est élu pape le 13 mars 2013, le cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archevêque de Buenos Aires, décide de prendre le nom de François en hommage à Saint François d’Assise. Durant les années de son pontificat, de Jérusalem à Bagdad, il délivrera le message de son modèle, “Fais de moi l’instrument de ta paix”, à travers plus de 60 pays.
“J’offre ma maison”
En mai 2014, un an après son élection, le pape François se rend en Terre sainte. Il rencontre à Jérusalem le patriarche orthodoxe de Constantinople Bartholomée pour un échange ocuménique historique en faveur de l’unité des chrétiens. Plus tard à Bethléem, il invite les chefs d’Etat israélien et palestinien à venir prier avec lui au Vatican. Début juin, les jardins de la cité papale accueillent cette prière historique et inédite, qui réunit Shimon Peres et Mahmoud Abbas.
Dans L’Express, Christian Makarian analyse la portée géopolitique du voyage du pape : “Un pape vêtu de blanc et un patriarche drapé de noir se sont retrouvés sur le tombeau du Christ, l’Occident et l’Orient d’une même foi. Derrière l’aspect anachronique de cette image surgit la réalité profonde de forces spirituelles toujours agissantes. On aurait tort de s’en tenir à la célèbre moquerie de Staline (‘Le pape, combien de divisions?’) et de traiter par la dérision la diplomatie du Vatican.
Cinquante ans après le geste historique de Paul VI donnant l’accolade à Athénagoras, Jérusalem a été une nouvelle fois le décor – naturel – de fraternelles embrassades entre les deux familles de la chrétienté les plus anciennes. […]
Le grand mérite de François est d’avoir repris le flambeau du pape diplomate, que ce soit pour resserrer les liens avec l’orthodoxie, pour défendre la cause des chrétiens d’Orient, particulièrement menacés en Syrie, ou pour inviter à brûle-pourpoint Palestiniens et Israéliens à venir se rencontrer au Vatican. Saintes provocations.”
“Je suis ici comme un frère”
En 2019, pour son vingt-septième voyage apostolique, le pape François se rend aux Emirats arabes unis. Sous la plume de Christian Makarian, L’Express décrypte les rapports du pape avec le monde musulman.
“Derrière le caractère inédit, spectaculaire, historique de la visite qu’effectue François aux Emirats arabes unis, se dissimule une stratégie profonde, qui vise à la fois à désenclaver le christianisme et à favoriser l’évolution de la religion musulmane vers la modernité. Les rapports subtils entretenus par l’actuel chef de l’Eglise catholique avec l’Islam se lisent en effet à deux niveaux; l’un se déroule en pleine lumière, l’autre se situe dans l’ombre.
Le choix d’Abou Dhabi est loin de relever du hasard : la capitale des Emirats est aussi celle de l’Etat le plus proche du royaume wahhabite d’Arabie saoudite. Autant dire qu’exercer une influence, ou tout simplement exprimer une présence à Abou Dhabi, revient à provoquer un écho direct en Arabie, pays qui règne sur les deux principaux lieux saints de tout l’islam.
C’est donc a priori le pays idéal pour le ‘message de paix’ que le souverain pontife est venu porter dans le golfe Persique, épicentre d’un triple conflit entre Arabes sunnites et Iraniens chiites, entre sunnites de la péninsule arabique et rebelles chiites du Yémen, entre tenants d’une société traditionnelle où la religion est aux mains des émirs et partisans d’un Islam transformé en doctrine politique (autrement nommé Islamisme). Fidèle à sa ligne, le pape se rend au coeur des conflits, il ne reste pas à distance, comme il l’a fait avec les migrants en Méditerranée, ou avec les Rohingya en Asie.
L’autre versant de son action est plus discret, mais pas moins important. Celui que ses plus farouches adversaires nomment méchamment le ‘pape islamisé’ suit en effet une ligne très délicate – et controversée – qui l’a déjà conduit en Egypte, en Azerbaïdjan (surtout pour ‘équilibrer’ le voyage qu’il avait effectué préalablement en Arménie), au Bangladesh (où il a soutenu la cause des réfugiés musulmans Rohingya, persécutés par les extrémistes bouddhistes) et en Turquie.”
“Que se taisent les armes!”
En 2021, François est le premier souverain pontife à visiter l’Irak où Jean-Paul II avait souhaité se rendre en 2000, avant d’en être empêché par Saddam Hussein. Le pape révèlera dans ses mémoires avoir échappé durant ce voyage à deux tentatives d’assassinat. Dans L’Express, l’historien Pierre-Jean Luizard analyse les dangers d’instrumentalisation de cette visite :
“Dans la communauté chiite, on a assisté à plusieurs tentatives d’instrumentalisation de la visite du Pape, faisant croire que l’on défend les chrétiens alors que rien n’est fait sur le terrain, au contraire. De son côté, par ce voyage, le pape avalise malgré lui le communautarisme à l’oeuvre en Irak. il y a un grand risque de le voir tomber dans le piège du communautarisme, ce que cherchent ses interlocuteurs.
Il y a en effet deux grands absents dans cette visite : un représentant des Arabes sunnites et un représentant du mouvement de contestation. Il n’a peut-être pas eu le choix, mais cette visite pourrait alors être récupérée par des politiques qui sont éloignés du discours humaniste du pape. Il n’a face à lui que des interlocuteurs qui ont sécularisé la religion pour en faire une arme politique.”
Un apôtre de la cause environnementale
En mai 2015, la publication de l’encyclique Laudato si’ (Loué sois-tu), fait l’effet d’une révolution. Le pape François, très sensible à la préservation de la planète qu’il qualifie de ‘maison commune’, y développe pour la première fois la notion d’écologie intégrale. Dans L’Express, Valentin Ehkirch et Baptiste Langlois se demandent si François est le premier pape vert.
“Si l’encyclique Rerum novarum a marqué le début de la doctrine sociale sur les questions ouvrières et de justice à la fin du XIXe siècle, Laudato si’ a ouvert un nouveau champ en déclarant que la justice sociale ne peut pas s’exonérer de justice écologique’, analyse Laura Morosini, directrice Europe de Laudato Si’, un mouvement environnementaliste et chrétien né de cet appel.
François serait-il le premier pape vert? La question, ainsi posée, agace le frère Thomas Michelet. ‘Tous, chrétiens compris, s’extasient comme s’il était le premier à parler d’écologie’, soupire le vice-doyen de la faculté de théologie de l’université pontificale Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, qui a consacré un ouvrage à la relation entre les souverains pontifes et l’écologie. La pensée papale sur le sujet perlait déjà dans les réflexions et écrits éparpillés de Jean-Paul II ou Benoît XVI, rappelle-t-il. Mais François a marqué un changement majeur dans la mise en lumière de la crise climatique et la manière d’en parler -‘un génie de la communication’, reconnaît le dominicain.”
Le Figaro, 22 avril
L’éditorial d’Étienne de Montety : «François, le pape qui voulait réparer l’Église»
Le Saint-Père est mort ce lundi 21 avril, à l’âge de 88 ans. Son pontificat fut long et riche d’initiatives, de textes, de déclarations. Il reviendra aux historiens d’en dresser le bilan, tant la profusion en rend la lecture difficile.
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Le pape François s’est éteint le matin du lundi de Pâques, comme s’il avait voulu mener l’Église jusqu’à la Résurrection avant de rendre l’âme. Son apparition la veille avait frappé les observateurs. Le souverain pontife était visiblement au bout de ses forces.
C’est peu dire que l’élection de Jorge Mario Bergoglio, survenue le 13 mars 2013, avait surpris. Qu’on y songe : un pape non européen, le premier depuis le VIIIe siècle (Grégoire III, un Syrien), adepte du style informel (il négligea durablement les appartements pontificaux, leur préférant la modeste maison Sainte-Marthe). Et, surtout, l’élu se trouvait dans une situation inédite : la coexistence avec son prédécesseur d’illustre mémoire, Benoît XVI, si différent de lui, qui venait de renoncer à sa charge.
En choisissant son prénom de pape, François se plaça d’emblée sous le patronage du saint d’Assise, apôtre de la Création et de la paix, à qui avait été confiée une mission : « Répare mon Église. » Ce fut l’idée maîtresse de ce pontificat.
Celui-ci fut long et riche d’initiatives, de textes, de déclarations. Il reviendra aux historiens d’en dresser le bilan, tant la profusion en rend la lecture difficile.
Ce progressiste était aussi un classique qui ne dédaignait pas les élans iconoclastes
Ainsi, il s’attela vigoureusement à la réforme de la curie, plaidant pour la collégialité synodale. Mais cet homme jovial gouverna aussi d’une main de fer (le choix des cardinaux qui éliront son successeur porte largement sa marque). De magnifiques encycliques (Laudato si’) ou des exhortations inspirées ont été brouillées par des propos prononcés dans un avion ou dans des interviews, laissant l’impression, outre que sa communication était mal maîtrisée, qu’il donnait des directives ambiguës sur des sujets inflammables (divorce, homosexualité, ordination d’hommes mariés). Sur bien des dossiers, pourtant, sa parole prolongeait l’enseignement de ses prédécesseurs. Il dénonça lui aussi, et sans mâcher ses mots, la dérive économique et philosophique contemporaine, résumant la misère moderne d’un mot choc : « culture du déchet » , autrement dit abandon des pauvres, rejet des enfants à naître, des personnes en fin de vie.
En bon jésuite, François employait souvent une méthode d’action déroutante pour les fidèles, lançant des pistes, usant de la casuistique (le cas par cas) : pour ainsi dire une pastorale du « ballon d’essai », parfois aussi difficile à comprendre que son aversion pour le rite traditionnel.
Comment le résumer ? Ce progressiste était aussi un classique qui ne dédaignait pas les élans iconoclastes.
D’emblée, François avait rêvé à voix haute d’une Église qui se préoccuperait des « périphéries existentielles ». À une humanité blessée il voulait qu’elle apporte pleinement la consolation et l’espérance. Cela commença par une visite spectaculaire sur l’île de Lampedusa, suivie d’innombrables appels en faveur des migrants errant en mer : nos prochains. « Duc in altum » : le disciple suivait le Maître. Ses voyages aussi montrèrent une singularité apostolique : au programme, Mongolie, Kazakhstan, Irak, etc., mais l’Allemagne ou son Argentine natale furent délaissées. Et, les Français s’en souviennent, à Notre-Dame de Paris il préféra Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, Marseille et Ajaccio. Ce Latino devenu romain observait de près la Méditerranée, il la voyait comme un creuset de bien des enjeux civilisationnels contemporains.
Est-il parvenu à « réparer » l’Église ? Du moins cet homme à la voix prophétique s’est-il efforcé de secouer énergiquement une maison qu’il jugeait assoupie : une situation à laquelle l’infatigable veilleur de Dieu, même affaibli, ne s’était jamais résigné.
The New York Times, 22 avril
Francis and the End of the Imperial Papacy
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Pope Francis, who passed to his reward on the morning after Easter at age 88, was a version of the liberal pope that many Catholics had earnestly desired all through the long reign of John Paul II and the shorter one of Benedict XVI — a man whose worldview was shaped and defined by the Second Vatican Council and whose pontificate sought a renewal of its revolution, a further great modernization of the Catholic Church.
In one way, at least, he succeeded. For generations, modernizers lamented the outsize power of the papacy, the anachronism of a monarchical authority in a democratic age, the way the concept of papal infallibility froze Catholic debates even as the world rushed forward. In theory Francis shared those concerns, promising a more collegial and horizontally oriented church, more synodal, in the jargon of the Catholic bureaucracy. In practice he often used his power in the same way as his predecessors, to police and suppress deviations from his authority — except that this time the targets were dissenting conservatives and traditionalists instead of progressives and modernizers.
But just by creating that novel form of conflict, in which Catholics who had been accustomed to being on the same side as the Vatican found themselves suddenly crosswise from papal authority, Francis helped to demystify his office’s authority and undermine its most imposing claims.
That’s because the conservatives whose convictions he unsettled were the last believers in the imperial papacy, the custodians of infallibility’s mystique. And by stirring more of them to doubt and disobedience, he kicked away the last major prop supporting a strong papacy and left the office of St. Peter in the same position as most other 21st-century institutions: graced with power but lacking credibility, floated on charisma without underlying legitimacy, with its actions understood in terms of rewards for friends and punishments for enemies.
Two rebellions, in particular, illustrate this shift. The first is the continuing resistance to the pope’s attempt to suppress, in the name of Catholic unity and the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, the faith’s traditional Latin Mass. After Vatican II in the late 1960s, when Pope Paul VI remade the church’s liturgy, he commanded enough deference that he was able to swiftly consign the Mass that every Catholic in the world had grown up with to the modern equivalent of catacombs — to church basements, hotel rooms and schismatic chapels.
Whereas when Francis attempted a similar suppression, reversing the permissions granted by Benedict, only his most loyal bishops really went along, and the main effect was to stir resistance and complaint, garner new media attention for the old Latin Mass and increase traditionalism’s cachet among younger Catholics.
The second notable rebellion was among the bishops, after the Vatican’s tentative move toward allowing some kind of blessing for same-sex couples. That was the last of Francis’ explicit liberal moves, his attempts to use traditional authority in the service of progressive goals. And it became a case study in the limits of papal power — because it provoked a notable refusal from the African bishops, the conservative church of the developing world rejecting the progressivism of the developed world, which forced Rome to retreat into defensive ambiguity.
Since I was so often critical of Francis’ governance, allow me to read these shifts in providentialist terms. The strong papacy was created by two great 19th-century forces: the technologies of rapid travel and communication that made it easier to centralize decision making in Rome and the loss of Catholicism’s political power, which made secular governments lose interest in exerting their influence over internal church governance. It has been unmade gradually by a different set of modern changes, from the invention of the birth control pill to the rise of the internet — with the aftermath of Vatican II and the agony of the sex-abuse crisis as particular accelerants.
What Francis did, by unraveling the attempted doctrinal settlements of previous popes and unsettling conservatives like me, was add another accelerant to the process, bringing us more quickly into a landscape of institutional weakness, even impotence, that we probably would have reached eventually even under more conservative popes.
That weakness is bad for the governance of Catholicism, for the ability of bishops to offer moral guidance and hold secular leaders to account, for the sense of doctrinal unity that is supposed to define the Roman church.
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But it has also opened up other possibilities for Christian and Catholic witness. When I look around at the recent stirrings of religious interest in the Western world, the conversions and potential conversions, what’s notable is how the great culture-war debates of the past 50 years seem to have receded and how little the longstanding patterns of liberal revolution and conservative resistance seem to matter for the current moment.
In the Catholic case, people aren’t suddenly becoming Catholic because of things the pope has done or said, but they also aren’t rejecting Catholicism because they reject papal edicts or desire doctrinal change. Instead the manifest weakness of Catholicism as an institution, the breakdown of the lines of authority and deference, has seemingly made it easier for some people to consider Catholicism as a religion, a way of life, and to find their small doorway in.
So maybe the kind of deconstruction that happened under Francis, though not exactly in the way that many liberals hoped, was providentially necessary to make this landscape possible — a landscape in which authority will eventually need to be rebuilt but, for now, one in which certain impediments to the Christian message seem to have been removed.
Francis’ election was made possible by the resignation of Benedict, itself a modernizing gesture by an otherwise conservative pope, suggesting in its own way a demystified papal office, more corporate than paternal.
As an admirer of Benedict and a critic of Francis, I bitterly regretted that decision; as an observer of the larger pattern of recent history, I wondered if in setting down his burden prematurely, Benedict had set some strange new age in motion.
But whatever the truth of that intimation, it is very important that Francis did not resign, that he let himself die in the office, very much in public, making his weakness manifest, even to the very last. Whatever his choices meant for the institutional role of the papacy, he played the paternal role of Peter to the end. May God bless him for that, and may Francis rest in peace.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/opinion/pope-francis-catholic-church-weakness.html
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 avril
Zum Wirken von Franziskus: Die Antwort, die der Papst schuldig blieb
Im Vergleich zu seinen Vorgängern wirkte Franziskus fast wie ein Revolutionär. Aus Sicht vieler Katholiken hierzulande hat er aber zu wenig verändert. Auf seinen Nachfolger wartet eine schwere Aufgabe.
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Kein Papst in jüngerer Zeit hat zu Beginn seines Pontifikats derart große Erwartungen geschürt, dass sich in der katholischen Kirche Grundlegendes verändern werde, wie Franziskus. Die Kardinäle wählten den damals schon 76 Jahre alten Jorge Mario Bergoglio im März 2013 zum Nachfolger von Benedikt XVI., weil der Erzbischof von Buenos Aires einen Wandel versprach: Der erste Papst, der sich nach dem heiligen Franz von Assisi benannte, stand für eine „verbeulte Kirche“ ohne Klerikalismus. Für eine Kirche, die ihre vornehmste Aufgabe nicht darin sieht, die Gläubigen mit dem moralischen Zeigefinger zu erziehen, sondern ihnen Hoffnung und Trost zu spenden. Römischen Zentralismus und vatikanische Selbstherrlichkeit lehnte der Jesuit ab.
Aber was hat Franziskus in seiner zwölfjährigen Amtszeit tatsächlich verändert? Was bleibt nach seinem Tod jenseits eines bloßen Klimawandels in der Kirche? Misst man ihn allein an seinen Vorgängern, dann könnte Franziskus als Revolutionär erscheinen. Er hat die Kirche wieder zu einem Raum gemacht, in dem mit Freimut über Zukunftsfragen debattiert werden kann, ohne den vatikanischen Bannstrahl fürchten zu müssen: über den Zölibat, über Weiheämter für Frauen, über eine größere Mitbestimmung von Laien und den Umgang mit Homosexuellen. Das wird kein Nachfolger rückgängig machen können.
Auch Franziskus hat Frauen das Weiheamt verwehrt
Noch im Pontifikat von Benedikt XVI. hätte sich kaum jemand vorstellen können, dass Frauen je an einer Bischofssynode im Vatikan teilnehmen und sogar stimmberechtigt sein würden. Undenkbar gewesen wäre auch, dass eine Frau eine vatikanische Behörde leitet, wie dies seit einigen Monaten der Fall ist.
Aber ein Papst wird nicht nur an seinen Vorgängern gemessen. Aus der Perspektive vieler Katholiken in Deutschland und in anderen Ländern, die in einer gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit leben, in der Gleichberechtigung als selbstverständlich gilt, wirken diese Veränderungen marginal. Nimmt man die Hoffnungen als Maßstab, die in Deutschland mit dem „Synodalen Weg“ verbunden waren, fällt die Bilanz des Pontifikats anders aus: Auch Papst Franziskus hat Frauen nicht zum Diakonat zugelassen, wie es die Würzburger Synode schon vor fünfzig Jahren forderte.
Ebenso wenig war er bereit, ein nationales Gremium zu erlauben, in dem Laien und Bischöfe in Deutschland über zentrale kirchliche Fragen auf Augenhöhe debattieren, wie es die Mitglieder des Reformprojekts „Synodaler Weg“ forderten. Auch die oft beschworene Abkehr vom römischen Zentralismus war allenfalls halbherzig. Als die Bischofssynode für Amazonien sich für die Zulassung verheirateter Männer zum Priesteramt aussprach, setzte sich Franziskus ohne eingehende Begründung darüber hinweg.
Ein Reformpapst?
Überhaupt legte Franziskus nicht einmal Wert auf kollegiale Arbeitsformen im Vatikan. Das Kardinalskollegium und die vatikanischen Behördenleiter versammelte er kaum je zu Beratungen. Aller Rhetorik zum Trotz pflegte er einen autoritären Regierungsstil.
Andererseits muss man auch diese Frage stellen: Wie realistisch war es überhaupt, anzunehmen, dieser Papst könnte in wenigen Jahren die katholische Kirche in die Moderne katapultieren, selbst wenn er das gewollt hätte? Dies umso mehr, als sich schon bei vergleichsweise geringfügigen Reformen, wie der Zulassung zur Kommunion von geschiedenen Katholiken, die in zweiter Ehe verheiratet sind, starker Widerstand artikulierte.
Franziskus war gewiss kein Reformpapst in dem Sinne, dass er von vornherein ein bestimmtes Vorhaben im Kopf hatte, das er dann zielstrebig durchsetzte. Ihm ging es vor allem darum, unumkehrbare Prozesse anzustoßen, die zu Veränderungen führen, ohne dass vorher schon das Ergebnis absehbar wäre. Ein solches In-der-Schwebe-Lassen wird sich Franziskus’ Nachfolger nicht mehr erlauben können. Zu groß sind die Herausforderungen, denen sich die Weltkirche gegenübersieht.
Die größte davon ist wohl die, auf die Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen in der Weltkirche angemessen zu reagieren. Während in Deutschland und einigen anderen Ländern eine Kirche, die Frauen von der Priesterweihe ausschließt, kaum mehr vermittelbar ist, ist in vielen afrikanischen Ländern eine Kirche kaum vermittelbar, die praktizierte Homosexualität akzeptiert. In anderen Ländern, die von Krieg oder Armut gezeichnet sind, interessieren solche doktrinären Fragen nicht. Diese Fliehkräfte und Gegensätze auszutarieren, ohne dass sie die Kirche zerreißen, wird eine der schwersten Aufgaben des neuen Papstes sein.
Franziskus hat zwar wiederholt geäußert, es müsse nicht alles in Rom entschieden werden, die Ortskirchen sollten mutig voranschreiten. Er ist aber die Antwort darauf schuldig geblieben, was konkret einheitlich geregelt werden muss und was nicht. Diese Antwort muss nun sein Nachfolger geben.
The Guardian, 22 avril
Pope Francis brought an outsider’s eye to the papacy – even if healing the church’s divisions was beyond him
He will be remembered as one of the great communicators of Christian faith, with a focus on justice, ecology and humanity
Full text:
Just three days before he was admitted to hospital for bronchitis in February, Pope Francis delivered a strongly worded message to the US about Donald Trump’s attitude to migrants. In a letter sent to the country’s Roman Catholic bishops, he made clear that he completely disagreed with Trump’s mass deportation plans for illegal migrants. “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”
The sentiment was not only reserved for Trump. Throughout his 12 years as pope, Francis, who died this morning at the age of 88, focused on the dignity of people, especially those viewed by others as outsiders – whether migrants, prisoners, whom he often visited, or LGBTQ+ people. “Who am I to judge?” he famously said when asked about his attitude towards gay men and women, a remark that contrasted starkly with his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who once described homosexuality as a tendency “ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil”.
This focus on outsiders stemmed in part from Francis’s own experience. He grew up in Argentina, about 7,000 miles from the Vatican, and was the child of migrants, whose family arrived in Buenos Aires in 1929, seeking a new start after scraping a living in rural Italy. It was this that caused him to joke to the crowds in Rome’s St Peter’s Square, on the night of his election in March 2013, that the cardinals had gone to the peripheries to find a new pope.
While these experiences shaped Francis’s thinking, so did the gospels. He became one of the great communicators of Christian faith, chattily expounding like a parish priest to pilgrims attending his general audiences in St Peter’s Square. He would finish reciting the Angelus prayer there on Sundays with a “buon pranzo” – have a good lunch – and rarely wore traditional red shoes or white trousers, complaining they made him look like an ice-cream seller. He abandoned the apostolic palace for a simple room in the Casa Santa Marta, a residence used by bishops and cardinals visiting Rome.
This style forms a major part of his legacy. Francis was a pope who wanted none of the pomp of a papacy. But there was substance underlying this, too. His concern for those most affected by economic hardship, war and politics, and the tide of refugees sweeping through Europe and America, was matched by his empathy for those uprooted by the climate crisis. His concern for the planet – what he called “our common home” – was rooted in a reverence for God’s creation. His most radical encyclical, or teaching document, Laudato si’, was published in 2015, putting forward scientific and theological reasons for protecting the planet from climate breakdown. He would often give his visitors a copy – including Trump, in 2017.
Despite his focus on justice, ecology and poverty, there were dissatisfied rumblings about his papacy inside the church. When the cardinals gathered in Rome to vote for the successor to Benedict XVI after his sudden resignation in February 2013, they wanted a reformer who could shake up the management of the church’s finances. Francis swept away the old guard of cardinal overseers, and set up his own team of clerics and lay experts, after revelations of mismanagement of the Vatican’s own finances emerged.
He also attempted to change the way the church dealt with priests involved in child sexual abuse. His changes began well, but floundered as details emerged of clerics to whom Francis himself seemed to have been too lenient. Some of those who supported the Argentinian felt frustrated that the church moved too slowly.
Conservatives in the church were most outraged by Francis’s approach to morality, particularly his decision to urge parish priests to decide on individual cases as to whether divorced Catholics who remarried should receive communion. After this, his fiercest opponents published an unprecedented document – a dubia, or expression of doubt, about his teaching. They showed similar disdain for his more recent proposal, published in 2023, that outlined the possibility of blessings for same-sex couples.
But liberals were frustrated, too, particularly by his refusal to countenance women becoming priests. True, he appointed several women, albeit almost entirely nuns, to key Vatican positions that were previously always occupied by men. That marked huge change, as did his recent synods, which gave lay participants at the synod gatherings – the representatives of ordinary Catholics in the pews – equal discussion and voting rights with bishops and cardinals.
Now, as the door to the pope’s room is ritually sealed, and his personal papal ring he has worn for the past 12 years is snapped in two, there will be speculation as to who will follow him. Francis will have played his part in shaping the church in his image. Of the 138 cardinals eligible to vote in the next conclave to elect a new pope, 110 are Francis’s personal picks.
Whoever is elected next, and whatever version of Catholicism they preach, the church needs someone who understands how to use the contemporary media to reach out to the world, whether on social media, in a televised interview, or through a letter critiquing the US president. Whatever else a pope has to be today, he must be a great communicator. And if the pope has that gift, then he can be not only shepherd of the world’s Catholics, but someone who speaks to people of all faiths and none. There were times when Francis did appear to have that talent.
As to the Catholic church itself, given the divisions that constantly threaten to overwhelm it, living up to the old papal title of pontifex – bridge – is an almost impossible task.
Catherine Pepinster is a former editor of The Tablet, the Catholic journal
The Economist, Book Review, February 14
Chapter and (re)verse : How did the Catholic church go so wrong?
Jesus Wept. By Philip Shenon. Knopf; 608 pages; $35 and £30
A little-remembered gathering might have changed everything, a new book argues
Full text :
The moment when Pope Pius XII’s nose fell off was awkward, both because the pope’s body had been put on public display and because the embalmer was none other than Pius’s own doctor. Many had been suspicious of Pius’s choice of medic: he was, they felt, a quack. Pius ignored them. A pope, after all, is infallible.
Pius might have been. His doctor clearly was not. Quickly Pius’s skin turned blue-green. Then it ruptured. Then his nose fell off. The smell became so bad the body had to be covered in cellophane. A Swiss Guard watching over the corpse collapsed.
Pius was buried in 1958. But the suspicion that something was rotten in the Vatican remained. It still does, argues a new book by Philip Shenon, formerly a reporter for the New York Times. To critics the Catholic church, which claims over 1.3bn followers, is irony incarnate. It was founded by a man who advocated poverty; yet its last pope, Benedict, wore filigree gold crosses and tailor-made shirts at several hundred dollars a pop. The Catholic church long declared homosexuality a “depravity”, yet a study published in 1990 estimated that perhaps a fifth of American priests were gay. It is run by celibate men, yet its priests find time to rule, in Latin, on everything from whether one should use condoms (non) to whether masturbation is a sin (ita vero).
What it did not find time to do was to stop the abuse of children by Catholic priests. A church founded by a man who instructed his followers to “suffer little children” is therefore now better known for making children suffer: in France alone an estimated 200,000 children were abused by priests between 1950 and 2020.
This much is familiar. But Mr Shenon chronicles these failures through the history of the last seven popes, which is unusual. Medieval histories make much of popes, with good reason: bad popes are good copy. The classmates of Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), who died in 2022, used to play a parlour game: who was the worst pope? Was it Sergius III, who assassinated his predecessors, or Alexander VI, who held orgies at which prepubescent boys jumped out of cakes?
Modern histories pay less attention, for many reasons. Partly it is because popes matter less. Partly it is practicality: many Catholic documents are locked away not merely in Vatican archives but also in Latin (yet another barrier). The exception was statements on the cold war, which were drafted in French because Latin lacked a term for “nuclear war”. It has since been coined: bellum nucleare.
It is also a matter of taste: secular, modern histories tend to focus on secular, modern powers and on rulers whose reach is geographical rather than spiritual. Popes may also be ignored because they sometimes seem so silly. They wear dresses and funny hats. They travel in a popemobile. Until relatively recently the pope’s minions included two men whose job it was to follow him and fan him with ostrich feathers.
Besides, the Vatican is tiny. It has a population of just 600-odd citizens. It does not have an army (and certainly no arma nuclearia); instead it is guarded by Swiss Guards, with their toy-soldier pikes and plumed helmets. The entire place is a mere 108.7 acres. Many Legolands are larger.
But this toy-town is no game. Though its bureaucracy might not be as riveting as misbehaving medieval popes, it matters. At the heart of the book is an ecumenical council, which convened in the 1960s, at the behest of a liberal and reformist pope, John XXIII, to consider “updating” the church. It was known as Vatican II. To non-Catholics, that title sounds slightly comic: a film sequel, not serious theology.But it was deeply serious. Had it succeeded it would have revolutionised the church’s attitudes to everything from birth control to divorce, homosexuality and heresy.
It did not. John died. The reforms that followed were footling, not revolutionary. Latin mass was ditched. New musical choices were allowed. As Tom Lehrer, a satirist, observed, Catholics could now “Do whatever steps you want if/ You have cleared them with the pontiff”. Though, as Mr Lehrer said, if the church “really wants to sell the product”, its reforms should have gone further. This gripping and damning book shows how, over the course of the next five popes, they did not. It is a long history, well summed up by the shortest verse in the King James Bible that forms this book’s title: “Jesus wept”. ■
https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/02/13/how-did-the-catholic-church-go-so-wrong
Le Point, 24 décembre
Christophe Dickès : « Nous devons beaucoup au christianisme »
ENTRETIEN. Dans un essai, le journaliste et historien prend la défense d’une Église catholique attaquée de toutes parts. « Le Point » ouvre le débat.
Extraits:
La renaissance réussie de Notre-Dame de Paris, les succès populaires des voyages du pape François, récemment encore en Corse, ne sauraient masquer les réalités. Engluée dans une crise systémique, confrontée aux scandales sexuels et aux abus de pouvoir, attaquée pour sa rigidité dogmatique et son manque de souplesse face aux avancées des temps, l’Église catholique a besoin d’avocats. En voici un, et un bon.
Dans un essai vigoureux, avec profondeur de champ, Christophe Dickès, auteur de nombreux ouvrages sur l’histoire du christianisme, dresse l’inventaire des progrès de civilisations inspirés par une religion ancestrale. « Pour l’Église, ce que le monde lui doit », clame en titre ce livre-plaidoyer publié aux éditions Perrin, portrait à contre-courant d’une institution féconde.
Le Point : Pourquoi ressentez-vous le besoin de ce plaidoyer pro domo pour l’Église catholique aujourd’hui ?
Christophe Dickès : Depuis près de quinze ans maintenant, je travaille sur l’histoire du catholicisme et je m’aperçois que la majorité des gens entretiennent une vision très négative de l’histoire de l’Église. On la réduit le plus souvent à une forme d’obscurantisme et au fameux triptyque : inquisition, croisade et misogynie latente. Or, il existe un fossé entre ces perceptions et les réalités décrites par la recherche historique. Il ne s’agit pas ici de nier le mal que des hommes d’Église ont pu faire dans l’histoire (abus de pouvoir, abus sexuels, scandales financiers…), mais de valoriser aussi ce qu’ils ont fait de bien. Or, qu’on le veuille ou non, l’apport des hommes et des femmes d’Église à notre société est considérable.
Notre perception du temps et la façon dont nous l’organisons, l’écriture et les langues, l’accès aux soins dans les hôpitaux, les universités, mais aussi notre droit international ou notre conception de la guerre qui se doit d’être « juste », l’humanisme par-dessus tout… Nous devons beaucoup au christianisme sans que nous le sachions vraiment. C’est cet héritage que j’ai souhaité mettre en valeur. (…)
Or, l’histoire de l’Église est victime de l’ignorance ambiante que l’on retrouve dans beaucoup de sciences humaines. De plus, il existe toujours une forme d’anticléricalisme qui nie cet héritage et présente le passé de l’Église sous un mauvais jour. (…)
Prenez le rôle des catholiques pendant l’Occupation : tout un mouvement historiographique explique désormais qu’il ne faut plus parler de « catholiques résistants » mais de « résistance catholique », ce qui lui donne une dimension bien plus importante qu’elle n’avait jusqu’à présent. Or, nous gardons l’image d’un clergé fidèle au Maréchal Pétain – ce qui est vrai en grande majorité – en niant cependant son rôle humanitaire dans la défense des juifs. (…)
L’Église est en soi une force de contradiction. Selon l’Évangile de saint Jean, elle doit être « dans le monde » et non « du monde ». Ce qui signifie qu’elle peut se confronter aux évolutions sociétales. Ce n’est pas qu’elle ait du mal à prendre en compte ces évolutions : en acceptant les changements sociétaux, elle prendrait le risque de changer ce qu’elle est et ce qui fait son identité propre. Quant au social, elle a été incroyablement en avance sur son temps puisqu’elle est à l’origine du système hospitalier ouvert à tous, tel que nous le connaissons aujourd’hui. Au IVe siècle, alors que l’Empire romain se convertit, Basile de Césarée fonde en Orient ce qu’on a appelé plus tard les basiliades. (…)
Vous voulez redonner de la fierté aux catholiques ?
Le cardinal Bustillo, que l’on a vu sur toutes les télévisions au moment de la venue du pape en Corse, n’utilise pas ce terme, mais évoque le « patrimoine méconnu » qu’on doit apporter au monde. Ceci sans arrogance, mais aussi sans complexe. L’Église doit agir sans complexe parce qu’encore une fois, elle sera incapable de sortir de la crise sans un état d’esprit positif : la crise ne doit pas paralyser l’Église, elle doit la faire grandir, la rendre meilleure. Et puis si le christianisme et l’Église ne possèdent pas une dimension positive, à quoi peuvent-ils bien servir ?
Benoît XVI était très attaché à cette question. Il expliquait que si le christianisme disparaissait, des pans entiers de vie disparaîtraient eux aussi. À l’heure où nous parlons, dans plusieurs pays du monde, l’Église est effectivement la seule force d’espérance pour beaucoup de populations. Elle encadre à la fois des structures scolaires, éducatives ou encore hospitalières avec un dévouement héroïque. Notre laïcité française a malheureusement tendance à l’oublier. (…)