Pope Francis, Death & the Next Pope

I would say, So I want to start. I'll try and go through, you know, the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Pope Francis was elected in twenty thirteen on the heels of Pope Benedict and Pope Benedict the sixteenth had a very odd papacy, a very odd ending. Benedict was a giant. Joseph Ratzinger Benedict the sixteenth was a giant.

When John Paul the second died in two thousand and five, and this is reported from other cardinals sort of talked about that papal election, and by the way, for those who don't know the way it works in the Catholic churches, when a pope dies, this group of bishops, called the College of Cardinals, gets together. Cardinals are sort of form in name, they are the clergy of the city of Rome, and they are there to elect the new Bishop of Rome,

the person who succeeds Saint Peter. Now, in practice, the cardinals are usually senior archbishops from big cities all over the world, and then a couple of archbishops who work directly in Rome and directly help the pope in the administration of the church. So you have cardinals in what's called the Roman Curia, cardinals who live in Rome and help the pope, and then cardinals who are bishop archbishops

of big cities all over the world. Cardinal Dolan is the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Soupitch is the Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal McElroy is the Archbishop of Washington, d c. Etc. So, And sometimes a pope will be picked from some random city where he's an archbishop. Pope Francis was like that.

He had been the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Pope Benedict, on the other hand, was a pope who worked in the Roman Curia and he directly assisted John Paul the Second for about twenty five years before he was Pope. Benedict was a giant. I think we can't understand sort of the the change of what Francis's papacy represented without understanding Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul the Second before him.

Both John Paul and Benedict were intellectual giants. John Paul the Second was a giant in the fields, especially of moral theology and ethics. Pope Benedict was a giant of theology in general, systematic theology. The two men put together probably wrote like eighty books between each other. I don't think I'm exaggerating. I know Pope Benedict had written like forty books like before he was elected pope. He was one of the foremost theologians in the world. Pope Benedict

was before he was elected pope. And when John Paul the Second died, the cardinals I think they were like, well, we have an obvious choice. Do we pick Ratzinger, Joseph Ratzinger Benedict the sixteenth, or do we pick somebody else? That was the obvious. It was the gorilla in the room. It was the elephant in the room. Okay, well, he

is obviously the one singular person. Because Pope Benedict had worked directly with John Paul the Second, he had one of the most important roles within the Roman Curia, where he was overseeing doctrinal questions and helping continue to explain and defend the Catholic faith, including in very specific ethical questions that would come before the church dealing with disciplinary things.

Pope Bennett. It was Pope Benedict, both as Joseph Ratzinger the Cardinal and then as Pope Benedict, that I think did every every good thing that the Catholic Church did in response to the revelations about sex abuse crisis, the crises in the church. All of that, much of that, anyway, was Joseph Ratzinger's work, both as a cardinal and then as Pope, including ways in which John Paul the Second

I think failed to act. There's some evidence that John Paul the Second a lot of the sex abuse stuff broke when John Paul the Second was very, very elderly and had, you know, very advanced Parkinson's disease, and that he was slow to believe reports different kinds of reports of clergy sex abuse coming from the perspective of having grown up in communist controlled Poland, where the communist authorities, if they wanted to sort of detract from the moral

authority of leaders in the church, would accuse them of various forms of sexual impropriety without any basis. They would just lie about church leaders sorted to undermine their standing with the people. So JP two, Saint John Paul the Second was kind of not always very swift, to believe it, and Benedict, when he came in in two thousand and five, immediately took swift action to correct all these things. Benedict was helping bring the Church out of really what was

a very low point in the seventies. You had this very low point following what's called the Second Vatican Council. This was a gathering of all the world's bishops that happened in the nineteen sixties that resulted in a lot of changes in sort of the way in which the church worshiped, the way in which the Church was sort of presenting its teaching to the world, and a lot

of bad outcomes came after the Second Vatican Council. People argue furiously about whether Vatican Two caused all the bad outcomes. But for example, we see in the United States a huge percentage of American athletics just stopped going to church. People did not like a lot of the things that changed in the church Following the Second Patican Council, Mass attendants dropped worldwide. Priestly ordinations, which is usually a pretty

good indicator of the vitality of Catholicism, dropped enormously. And so John Paul the Second had this herculean task of, you know, cleaning out the stables of a church that was riddled with bishops who were extremely liberal, and he and Pote Benedict, I think helped with sort of this worldwide revitalization of the global body of bishops. I think bishops today and priests today are on the whole far better than they were thirty years ago. So you had

these two men who were giants, intellectual giants. Benedict, who was always had this sort of reputation in the media God's Rottweiler, and because he was German, no he was, But in reality Pope Benedict was actually this bookish, very gentle man who was very kind and went about his work as pope with enormous genuine humility, I would say so so much humility that Benedict in twenty thirteen becomes the first pope in like four hundred years to resign

the office. He just resigned. Almost every pope prior to Pope Benedict died in office. Now a lot of that is, you know, people didn't live as long in the you know, prior to I don't know twentieth century, twenty first century medicine. But Pope Benedict just decided he was going to resign.

And I think part of it was he under John Paul the second the way that you know, JP two had this very long, extended period of convalesce of illness with his Parkinson's and I think Paul Benedict thought it wasn't good for the governance of the church to have a pope who was you know, was he at a commission? Was he completely out of commission? And I think Benedict just didn't want that. So in twenty thirteen he just resigned and a very different pope got elected after him,

Pope Francis Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Uh. There's apparently a Roman saying after a fat pope a thin pope, which it's not literal necessarily, it just means every pope's different. You know what, You get something very different every time you elect a new pope, and Cardinal Bergoglio was certainly different. He didn't have the kind of intellectual standing that Pope Benedict had. I don't think even he would argue. He

wouldn't argue that. I think even he would acknowledge Pope Benedict was was a far more important thinker and a more a far more important theologian, et cetera. And he clearly had certain things he really wanted to do that I think were quite unsuccessful and led to sort of a muddled magisterium. As we call it in the Catholic Church. The magisterium means the teaching, the deposit of what you taught. Okay, comes from the Latin word magister, which means teacher or maestro.

You know, maestro comes from magister or master. Pope Francis's magisterium was complicated and not sitting very comfortably within the broader body of Catholic tradition, particularly in the area of sexual ethics. In the area of sexual ethics, Pope Francis had a document called Amoris Letitia the Joy of love is what it means. Some people rudely joke that as so the way that when a pope issues a teaching document, the title of the document is always just like the

first few words of the document. So amoris leticia means the joy of love. However, there are different ways of translating amour and leatiticia. Some rude commenters said, oh, doesn't mean the pleasure of sex. Okay, Now, that was basically what this document did. It was talking about the situation of people who are divorced and remarried. In Catholicism, our teaching is that marriage is life long and we don't

respect divorce and remarriage. The only way one can get divorced within the Catholic concept is if there's a determination that your original marriage was never valid to begin with. If one can have a declaration of nullity that your original marriage was null and void. For some reason, there were a lot of people agitating for the idea that people who are divorced and remarried and never had any sort of declaration that their first marriage was null, that

they should be allowed to receive Holy communion. Holy communion the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist, which we believe is the body and blood of Christ. Pope Francis, in this document Memoris Letitia gave this sort of ambiguous footnote saying, maybe there are circumstances where people can receive Holy Communion if they're divorced and remarried, and it just doesn't sit very well within the broader body of Catholic moral theology,

particularly the moral theology of John Paul the Second. And it's clear with something that very liberal bishops were pushing him to allow, pushing, pushing, pushing him to allow, and it just sort of sat there like this sort of

awkward It's a square peg in a round hole. Similarly, in the area of church discipline, Pope Francis very famously decided in twenty twenty one to undo the various permissions that Pope Benedict had provided for priests to offer the older right of the Catholic Mass, the traditional Latin Mass. Now you can so, Pope Benedict had said, every priest in the world can offer this older form of mass, the form of Mass that existed prior to the nineteen sixties.

There's nothing harmful about it. A lot of people like it. It allowed to have it continued to be a part of the Church's life, allows us to have a connection with our history. There's nothing harmful about it. And Pope Francis said, no, we're not doing that, and he very largely restricted how and when and who could offer this form of the Catholic Mass in a way that was very unpopular I think with many many bishops throughout the world.

In fact, many many bishops throughout the world just basically sort of ignored it and thought it was an unworkable micromanaging system, Like priests had to personally write to Rome to ask if they could have permission off from Mass

once or something. Bishops would have to write Rome, hey, can we allow one Latin Mass to happen at Saint Peter's parish in Valparaiso, Indiana, or you know, something like that, And again it seemed like it was something that was driven by left wing ideologues within the Vatican who hated

the old Mass who I don't know why. I guess they wanted the modern right of Mass to be this sort of whole theological revolution that completely changes what we believe as Catholics, which is not what the modern right of Mass should be. I would hope that the Catholic faith is the same today as it was one hundred years ago, as it once two hundred years ago, as it was three hundred years ago, as it was two thousand years ago. I mean, that's genuinely what I believe.

So he has also, in various ways antagonized different groups. One of the big ways in which one of the big reasons Pope Francis was elected was this idea that he would reform the Roman Curia, that basically the apparatus of bishops and priests who help the Pope in the Vatican,

to reform the way in which that works. There had been a scandal of someone leaking the pope's private documents under Pope Benedict, and I think it's a mixed bag of whether people think Pote Francis actually accomplished that there was this desire to reform the financial state of the Vatican. At first, Pote Francis appointed Cardinal George Pell from Australia to do all kinds of auditing work. Cardinal Pell was

getting somewhere, and then Cardinal Pell gets sidelined. Cardinal Pell was hit with one of the most patently ridiculous claims of sex abuse, and I genuinely mean that. I think his claim was ridiculous, and he was ultimately vindicated in court and the court found that unanimously. No, he did not engage in that, but it derailed his I think really excellent efforts to help with an audit of Vatican finances, and the Vatican is in terrible financial shape right now.

But Francis also did some good things. He issued an excellent document that was very clear, called Dignitas Infinita, which very clearly and concisely condemned gender ideology and all of its expressions, transgenderism, gener is, transgender, all the whole panoply

of transgender issues. However, about six months prior to that, he had ordered one of his new cardinal appointees, an appointee that a lot of people, a lot of bishops, were not thrilled about, to issue some document about the possibility of blessing gay persons, blessing gay couples, not not their union, but the couple, the two of gay people together, which seemed like it was an attempt again by left wing theologians who want gay marriage to be recognized by

the Church and want some sort of halfway house in to say, oh, well, priests can give blessings to gay couples. And after that document was issued by the Vatican, there was a total uproar. The bishops of Africa said, abso flippin' we're not even sure what this is saying, but we are absolutely not doing this, and both Francis pretty much totally backed down. And I think that this might be the legacy that I don't know how successful to

France's papacy was. I think in comparison to the giants that were John Paul the Second and Benedict the sixteenth, I don't know that Francis will stand at their levels. It's not to say he's a terrible person. I think he wanted to reach out to people he viewed his marginalized, divorced and remarried people, to have them feel like they're part of the church in some way, people who have same sex attraction but want to be part of the church. He wanted them to people he viewed as put upon,

like migrants. He wanted to express care for them. But in so doing, I think he just wasn't the clearest kind of moral theology, ethics thinker, and so I think his papacy sits in this very awkward place historically, and a lot will be determined by the next pote when we return. More thoughts on Pope Francis. This is the John Gerardy show on Power Talk. You know. One last

thought on Pope Francis. One of the big aspects of his papacy that he pushed and again is a thing where it's unclear how stable this will be, was his idea of quote synodality. Throughout the Francis papacy, he would hold these things called synods s yno d synod, which was basically a gathering of a group of the world's bishops to discuss something or other. Pope Benedict had done these, but John Paul the Second had done these synods every

couple of years. That was basically a gathering of bishops to talk about some specific topic. They would meet, they would talk, they would issue some document, and the Pope would have a document that he wrote after the fact, and it was usually very low stakes. You know, no

one was really too hyped up about them. Francis's synods were, especially early in his papacy, the subject of huge scrutiny, huge media attention, he had a whole senate about this idea of persons who are divorced and remarried and whether they should receive communion, and people yelling at each other during the Senate, and manipulation of the process to make sure that talk about divorce and remarried people was in the final document, and changing the rules of the last

all kinds of intrigue and stuff like that, And eventually Pope Francis kept doing these synods where every basically every liberal in the Church was trying to use these synods as some forum for instituting some new liberal desired outcome, to the point where Pope Francis had a I'm not making this up a synod on synodality where we were talking about the process of having synods in the church and how important it is this thing that is is not really an essential thing, that we Catholics don't even

think it's an essential thing. So and I think the response of a lot of bishops throughout the world to it has been not a ton of enthusiasm that this is the greatest idea in the world. So it's another thing where if a new pope is elected who is not crazy about such an idea does it all go away? I mean, it was this huge cornerstone project of Francis's entire papacy, but it's not clear to me how popular

it really is among the broader body of bishops. And ultimately, over time the synods became more and more sort of moderating because well, you have to have African bishops there, and god knows they're they're all a bunch of right wingers. They don't want any big changes. So anyway, I thought it was it's interesting the way in which you have these cardinals. While Francis is alive, you have these cardinals. Oh, the citidelity is an essential feature of the Catholic Church,

and it's here. Well, you know, one pope dies and that can change, and it will be very interesting to see. All Right, when we return, I'm going to talk about some of the guys who might be elected the next pope. We'll see that's next on the John Girardi Show. All right, I'm going to go through a list of cardinals who might be elected the next pope. All right, Now, there is no guarantee that anyone on this list is in fact going to be elected pope. One of the funny

things about the process of papal elections. So the way it works, the cardinals are, for the most part, senior bishops who run big cities. Who are the bishops administering a large diocese as we call it, basically the unit of organization that oversees all the churches of a city or a region. So for example, Bishop Brennan is the Bishop of Fresno, which includes everything from Livingston up north to Bishop in the South, Okay and Barstow. So you

have two kinds of cardinals. You have cardinals who are senior archbishops in big cities around the world. So for example, the Archbishop of New York is a cardinal. The Archbishop of Chicago is a cardinal. The Archbishop of Washington, d C. Is a cardinal. I think Houston has a cardinal. Los Angeles had a cardinal for years, but for some reason Francis never made Archbishop Gomez a cardinal. And then you have some cardinals who work directly in the Vatican, live

in Rome and they assist the pope. So there are two hundred and fifty two cardinals in the Catholic Church. You only get to vote if you're under age eighty. I forget if the line is when you turn eighty you become ineligible or when you turn eighty one. But anyway, of the two hundred and fifty two cardinals in the Catholic Church, one hundred and thirty five of them are eligible to vote. So the Pope is almost certainly going to be picked from that group of one hundred and

thirty five cardinals who are of voting age. Presumably you don't want to elect a pope who's over the age of eighty, So that's the group. So how old is the pope going to be? Probably about seventy that's my guess. Maybe late sixties, early seventies. The last two popes have been actually a good bit older than that. Pope Benedict was seventy eight when he was elected Pope. Pope Francis

was seventy seven when he was elected. Pope. Popes live a lot longer now than they used to, So you might have a pope then I might be a little too early, maybe a pope around age seventy five. So and part of that is I don't know that the cardinals are crazy about the idea of a twenty eight year long a thirty year long papacy. John Paul the

Second was a real outlier. He was only I think he was like fifty eight or fifty nine when he was elected pope, and you know, consequently he wound up serving nineteen seventy eight to two thousand and five, so I think about twenty seven years. It's not clear that the pope that the cardinals want another pope who's going to live that long, So probably you'll get a pope

a little older. The funny thing is that literally any single Catholic man can be elected pope, and it's happened before that someone who wasn't even a priest got elected pope. Mostly that happened in like you know, the Middle Ages and stuff, and then the guy would be ordained a priest, and then ordained a bishop and then made a pope. But in all likelihood, one of the one hundred and thirty five cardinals who are picked to elect the pope will be chosen as the next pope. So I have

here a list. I don't know who published this stupid thing, but it's there's one name on it that's completely stupid, but the others make sense. So I'm going to use this list as sort of who do people think are the leading candidates to be the next Pope. I'll give you some of their names and a little bit of their backgrounds. So the first name on the list is stupid. It's Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, whom I really like. He's the

former Archbishop of Genoa, Italy. He's a great man and it would I think would have been a great pope in prior years. The problem is he's eighty two years old. I don't know who put this list together. Probably they're sort of Italian centric, and Cardinal Bandangasco's a very significant figure in Italian catholic in the world of Italian Catholicism, but he's eighty two years old. He can't even vote

for Pope let alone. I highly doubt he's going to be elected Pope, so that's probably not happening all right. Cardinal Matteo Zupi Cardinal Zupi is currently the Archbishop of Bologna in Italy. He had been an auxiliary bishop of the City of Rome before that. He's very close to Pope Francis. Francis has utilized him as his personal envoy to Ukraine for trying to help broker different peace talks in Ukraine. Unclear how successful he's actually been in those ventures.

He's thought to be a bit more of a moral theology liberal. He was very friendly though, and open to people who wanted to celebrate the older Latin right of Mass. He's thought to be more of a liberal Pope. Cardinal Robert Sarah spelled like Sarah Sarah, but I guess it's pronounced Sarah. He is from Guinea, the country of Guinea, and he worked in the Vatican as the chief Bishop in charge of overseeing the liturgy the church's public worship. He is a huge proponent of the old Latin Mass.

He's seventy seven years old, which frankly is a I think he's seventy seven. He's either seventy seven or seventy eight. Pope Francis was seventy seven when he was elected, but Benedict was seventy eight when he was elected. Cardinal Sarrah is thought to be the leading conservative or the most conservative person, sort of the desired person for the most conservative people. If Cardinal Sarrah was elected Pope, I would

probably cry, okay, like with happiness. He's extremely conservative. I think he's actually personally, very holy person, a very pious person, and he's a pretty deep thinker. He's written several books that I've that I have. I think he studied, he did a lot of biblical theology study. I think in Jerusalem they have like a biblical institute there that he got like two master's degrees from there. So I would

love if Cardinal Sorah was elected. He's seventy seven, but he's a healthy seventy seventy, skinny as a rail, looks like he's in great shape. So I'm I mean, that would be the best case scenario in my eyes. Cardinal Luis Tagle, he's a former Archbishop of Manila. He has sort of bopped around in different jobs in the in Pope Francis's curia, Cardinal Tagle was sort of thought to be like early on, he was thought to be Pope Francis's anointed successor, like not annoying, not literally annoys I

recognized with the Catholic Church, you might think that's literal. No, Pope Francis obviously really liked him early and he kind of seemed to have fell fallen out of favor with Pope Francis. He had a more important job and kind of got kicked to a less important job. He's only let's see, how old is he. He's only sixty seven, so in pope year, that's pretty young. So you could be looking at a twenty year papacy with him. Do the College of Cardinals want a twenty year papacy? Seems unclear.

He kind of had a real sort of media profile. Cardinals don't seem to like people who are flashy. He's a very smart guy, sort of thought to be a little bit more liberal. He had been made a cardinal under Pope Benedict, so, but some people think he's more aligned with sort of Pope Francis's ways of thinking. He studied in the United States. He got a doctor in theology from Catholic University of America. So I don't know.

I think he's a little too young, a little too flashy, sort of lost favor under Pope Francis, So I don't think that's happening. All right, I'm gonna go a little faster here. Cardinal Pietro Pauoline, he might be one of the leading candidates. He's currently the papal Sectioncretary of State, and I think he's been sort of trying to position himself as less kind of chaotic than Pope Francis, but kind of aligned with his more liberal thinking. He's sort

of an institutionalist again, he's the Secretary of State. Not not clear though, how great he's been in relations with other countries. One of the very popular candidates to write and think and talk about is Cardinal Pierre Battista Pizza Bala. Yes, that's actually his name. He has the most Italian name of any cardinal ever, Pierre Battista Pizzabala. Yes, his name is Pizza Bala. So he is the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the main Roman Catholic bishop in Jerusalem. So it's not

a very large diocese. Not too many Roman Catholics in Jerusalem and in Israel basically, but there's a significant number there. And Cardinal Pizza Bala has sort of stood out for his sort of presence and his desire to help assuage the Israel Palestine conflict. He actually offered himself. He said that he would willingly exchange himself in exchange for the hostages that Hamas took. On October seventh, he made that offer to Hamas to exchange himself for some of the victims,

which was a very sort of noble thing. He is himself a former Franciscan. He was a Franciscan priest before he was made a bishop, and he's a very intelligent man, seems very conservaive. A lot of Conservatives actually really really like him. Another cardinal that I really like is the Archbishop of Utrecht or Utrecht, I don't know how you pronounce it in the Netherlands, Cardinal villem Ike. I really like him. He's actually a former he was a doctor.

He was a medical doctor. He was an internal medicine doc before he became a Catholic priest. And he's a great bioethicist. He's very much kind of aligned with Pope Benedict. He reportedly pushed Pope Francis to issue what I think was the best sort of teaching document of the Francis papacy. This was the document about transgenderism. It touched on transgenderism along with a number of other issues. That was really clear. And I think Cardinal Ike would be a great pope.

I really hope. I mean, if he were elected, I would be quite happy. The Archbishop of Sri Lanka, Malcolm Ranjieth is another possibility would be our first sort of South Asian pope. Ever, we've had popes from like Asia minor like you know, Roman, Roman controlled Turkey, but I believe, but I don't think we've uh, you know, had a pope from you know, South Asia before. He used to be in charge of the church's sort of liturgical office

or or he sort of oversaw liturgical things. So he's had experience in Rome, he's had experience as a diocesan bishop, I think, and overseeing some very hairy stuff in Sri Lanka. Relations between Catholics and non Catholics there are dicey, So I think he would also be a great pick as pope. So who is the most likely pick? Hard to say. I think the most likely pick it could be someone completely not on that list. Okay, that's I. You know, John Paul the Second when he was elected, was completely

to left field. Nobody knew who he was and basically nobody knew how to pronounce his name. Apparently, one of the funny stories about John Paul the Second was that Billy Graham had happened to had met to have met him. Billy Graham happened to have met him before he was elected pope, when John Paul the Second was the Archbishop of Krakov in Poland, and so Billy Graham was on TV or something and was like the only person who knew how to pronounce his name. His name was pronounced

Voi tiwa, but it spelled wojtyla. So anyway, Billy Graham was like the only person in America who knew how to pronounce the new pope's name. John Paul the Second was completely out of left field, a pope from behind the iron curtain, totally unexpected fifty eight years old, not when anyone thought Boe Benedict, on the other hand, was totally expected the obvious successor to John Paul the Second, so much so that apparently some people had nicknamed Cardinal

rat singer John Paul the Third. So I'm not exactly sure. I think it could be one of the people on this list, but we will see when we return. Jd Vance just can't catch a break. Next on the John Girardi Show, jd Vance just can't catch a break. So Jade Vance. First, he meets with Ohio State with the national championship team because he's an Ohio State grad and

he holds and drops the national Championship trophy. Then literally literally yesterday, he meets Pope Francis, he has an audience with Pope Francis, and Pope Francis dies the next day. Maybe it's him, Maybe he's the problem. Good Lord, I will say though, for Jadvan jade Vance is a recent Catholic convert must have been. I mean, that's gonna be experience. He's never gonna forget to go to the Vatican for Holy Week to get to meet Pope Francis like the

day before he died. Quite the thing for Jdvans, I'm a little envious. That'll do it, John J already show see you next time on Power Talk