The Elderly Pope’s Final Push?

July and August used to be downtime at the Vatican. That changed in 2013 after Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was elected Bishop of Rome. The Argentine Jesuit, now best known as Pope Francis, immediately broke the custom set by his predecessors and did not take a summer holiday. That meant that no one else in the Roman Curia was allowed to slacken the pace, either. The big papal mass on June 29, Rome’s patronal feast of Saints Peter and Paul, used to be the final act of the Vatican’s “pastoral/legislative year.” Then the popes (at least John Paul II and Benedict XVI) would usually go to the Italian Alps for a couple of weeks and, afterwards, transfer to the Castel Gandolfo papal summer residence in the hills southeast of the Eternal City until late August or early September before going back to work full time. Francis, on the other hand, has never taken a vacation. Instead, he’s traveled and has continued to work. 

This year will be no different. Although there are no big papal liturgies officially on the schedule for July and August, the 87-year-old Jesuit pope will hold an ordinary public consistory on July 1 with the Church’s cardinals residing in Rome in order to vote on several candidates he has approved to be declared saints. This is usually a pro forma meeting without any great publicity or fanfare. However, the pope’s aides announced this one well in advance. It might be a good idea to keep an eye on it, since it was during such a ceremony on February 11, 2013, that Benedict XVI surprised the world and renounced the papacy. Don’t expect Francis to do that (at least not yet), but he could use this consistory to announce some other major decision for the life of the Church. In any case, the next several months at the Vatican (or on the road) will likely bring some surprises. This period will feature an uptick of activity for the elderly pope, including the longest foreign journey of his pontificate (a September 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore), a critical month-long synod session, the opening of Holy Year 2025 and—many observers believe—yet one more consistory to create new cardinals.

The Pope Francis era is in its final stage. Given his penchant for keeping people on their toes, shaking things up and issuing (with greater regularity) conflicting and even contradictory messages, it would not be wise to wager on when this pontificate will finally be concluded. But Vatican watchers are already trying to draw up a balance sheet of Francis’ tenure as Supreme Pontiff. He certainly has brought to the fore a lot of thorny issues—the role of women in the Church and Catholic teaching on human sexuality, to name just two. Open discussion about these and a number of other items, such as obligatory priestly celibacy, were off-limits in the previous two pontificates. The fact that they are debated openly, even inside the Vatican, is extremely healthy. And very disruptive. The question many reform-minded Catholics are asking is whether Francis has been able to really change anything regarding such topics. And they rightly wonder if this season of openness will be closed down with the next pope. These are serious and worrying questions.

Francis has not actually changed any key Church structures. His long, piece-by-piece “restructuring” of the Roman Curia was not a restructuring at all. He merely opened up some of the top jobs to lay people (including women), while leaving the organizational layout almost exactly as it has been since the late 16th century when Sixtus V devised it. The Jesuit pope, right from the very beginning, said he believes the most important reform concerns mentality or attitude, not structures. Eleven years on, has he succeeded in changing the mentality in the Church? It depends on who one is talking about.

It could be argued that he made a very serious tactical mistake from the very outset of his pontificate by alienating the Church’s primary workforce—the ordained sacramental ministers. This includes those clerics who work in the Vatican. It’s hard to be good in a bad system, but there are still some very fine presbyters and bishops in the Roman Curia (and lay people in its communications sector, by the way) who were initially energized by Francis’ election. But the pope, because of his questionable “bedside manner” of publicly criticizing and even humiliating people who work for him, has demoralized and angered those who might have otherwise pushed and promoted his agenda for reform and renewal. The pope’s constant swipes at the Church’s more conservative (younger) priests and his snide remarks about “airport bishops” might play well to anti-clericalists (count me among them!) but they do not garner support from the men whom he (and we) most need to sustain our sacramental life. That is just a fact. Many of us believe that one of the most serious problems facing the Church and its future is the crop of younger priests and many of the bishops appointed in the last two pontificates. Francis has done nothing to win them to his side. On the contrary, he has baited them.

This pontificate has been dynamic and has given much hope (perhaps, at times, false hope) to many everyday Catholics around the world, and even to others who are not full members of our Church or part of the broader Christian community. Francis has been a breath of fresh air for us. But he also faces (and has even stoked) opposition, only some of which is public and openly demonstrative. How much silent opposition lurks beneath the surface? This includes the hidden and growing discomfort many of the Church’s cardinals have with his sometimes erratic governing style. In the end, it is they who will eventually elect his successor. It would probably not be wise to place a bet on the man they will choose.

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Robert Mickens has been living in Rome since 1986 and reporting on the Vatican and the papacy for nearly 35 years. He recently finished 10 years as English-language editor of La Croix International and is currently on sabbatical for Hungarian language studies.

Celebrating Juneteenth: Learn from Black Catholics on the Road to Sainthood

Celebrating Juneteenth as Catholics it is difficult to imagine any better way than to reflect on the lives of the six American Black Catholics, four women and two men, who are somewhere on the road to official sainthood. Three of them were born into slavery, and all of them had some association with its history, so to remember them on the occasion of the federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery is really a no-brainer. The litany could go something like this:

Servant of God, Mother Mary Lange, pray for us,
Venerable Henriette DeLille, pray for us,
Venerable Augustus Tolton, pray for us,
Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman, pray for us,
Venerable Pierre Toussaint, pray for us,
Servant of God, Julia Greeley, pray for us.

It surely is important for a still preponderantly white American Catholic Church to pay attention to these notable Black Catholics, and to ask them to pray for us, not so much because they are Black as because they are Catholics. Their importance lies in the ways in which their individual lives speak to our church today. None of them had an easy life. All of them were heroic. Each in turn has a lot to teach us about how to conduct ourselves today as what Pope Francis calls us, “missionary disciples.” They are not “them.” They are “us.”

My own favorite is the humblest of them all, Julia Greeley, who was a freed slave who converted to Catholicism. She lived mostly in and around Denver, working for white families and using her own limited resources to aid those poorer than herself, towing around a wagon filled with food, clothing and even firewood, and doing it at night-time to save embarrassing the recipients of her help. Her life and work have deep ecclesial significance, mostly because they strongly suggest that holiness has no essential connection to the spectacular. Like St. Alphonsus Rodriguez before her, the Jesuit who spent his entire working life as a doorkeeper, Julia Greeley testifies to the spiritual importance of the everyday.

Each of the remaining five in their different ways alert us to the close connection between heroic sanctity and the ordinary and, because they were Black, the extraordinary hurdles that each of them had to negotiate. Augustus Tolton, a former slave, became the first Black American Catholic priest. When one of his teachers recognized the young man’s possible priestly calling, however, no American seminary would admit him. Instead, he studied in Rome, returning to work in the Midwest for a few short years before his early death in 1897, where he was such a fine preacher that his small Black congregation’s numbers were soon swelled by white Catholics looking for a good homily. You can only guess how the local clergy reacted to that!

And then there was Henriette DeLille, great granddaughter of a slave, who could not gain admission to a religious community, so she used her family’s funds to establish the Sisters of the Presentation in 1842 and was their Mother Superior until her death 20 years later. Their most important work for our church today was surely that they taught slaves—a forbidden and hence dangerous commitment. And how about Pierre Toussaint, a slave from Haiti who bought his freedom in New York through years of work as a hairdresser and is the only layperson buried in the crypt of St. Patrick’s Cathedral? He was a huge philanthropist, considered by many to be effectively the founder of Catholic charities, builder of New York’s first orphanage and the first school for Black children. Or Mother Mary Lange, who 30 years before the proclamation of emancipation, founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore and a school for Black children. Her order, then and now, has a special concern for the marginalized members of society.

Last but not least, there is the only one of the six whose life was lived out in the modern world, Sister Thea Bowman, whose name is attached to residence halls at both Sacred Heart University and Fairfield University. A childhood convert to Catholicism, she went on to become an extraordinary force in American Catholic life as a teacher, scholar, writer, public speaker and outspoken critic of racism in society and the Church. She would laugh, I am sure, to be told that she is best known for a YouTube video in which her personal magnetism is demonstrated when, wheelchair-bound and dying of cancer, she got the entire U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to stand and sing We Shall Overcome!

Brave, humble, countercultural, outspoken, deeply wounded and entirely faithful to the Catholic Church, these women and men point a way forward for the American church. Each in their own way is a model of countercultural fortitude, and each is accessible to all of today’s American Catholics, Black and white, of whatever political persuasion. You set your sights on God, you look around you at your fallen world, you roll up your sleeves and you just do what has to be done. In our age, marked by hatreds of all sorts, they remind us of the power of simple human goodness. Their holiness shames every instance of white privilege. And most, if not all, of our American Catholic community have never heard of them. Shame on us!

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Paul Lakeland is emeritus professor of Catholic Studies at Fairfield University.

On Catholic Social Media and Lost Causes

As I look ahead to beginning work on another theology degree in the fall, St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, frequently comes to mind.

I am returning to school to try, in my own small way, to help shift the tenor of conversation on social media when it comes to all things Catholic. Too much of Catholic social media is a wasteland of misinformation and pitched battles between left and right, with the concept of loving one’s neighbor lost in the fray.

As Pope Francis notes in Towards Full Presence: A Pastoral Reflection on Engagement with Social Media, although we are called to be loving neighbors to each other, some of the approaches people take on various social platforms cause “pitfalls” on the “digital highway.”

While social media can be a useful tool for sharing parish information or for the Vatican to disseminate encyclicals, too many people revel in the opportunity to voice anonymously the most loathsome—and often incorrect—views not only of Church life but also Church doctrine. The things they’d be too sheepish to say at a parish council meeting find new and fiery life behind a trite account name and a profile picture of the Sacred Heart.

Would-be canon lawyers engage in arcane debates, willfully leading the gullible into thinking, for example, that receiving communion in the hand is frowned on by the Church, or that the Latin Mass is the only acceptable rite, always twisting interpretations to uphold otherwise untenable positions. Pictures are taken on the sly of mass attendees to be posted later with arch comments about dress and demeanor, with all that’s missing a caption reading, “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like this man, who wore shorts to mass.”

A priest in my diocese alarms me with what he posts. He identifies himself as a priest and uses his full name and location, I suspect because he feels his ordained status wields more clout. He takes to X (formerly Twitter) daily to rail on everything from his belief that COVID czar Dr. Anthony Fauci should be arrested to the very existence of gay and trans people, all tied up with a love of gun culture and corporal punishment. He saves particular scorn for Church hierarchy. A recent, ironic tweet talked about the decline in respect for bishops, and then labeled them “sodophile eco-witch Globalist prelates.” Quite the descriptor. I’ve known this man since we were teenagers. Always a loner—and sometimes mocked for his ultra-orthodox views—he now enjoys a seemingly unlimited audience for his terrifying take on life, all with his own priestly imprimatur.

This kind of chatter takes up far too much room in the social media world. Therefore, Catholics relying on various platforms to stay abreast of Church-related news should be forgiven if they know more about the sensational—the biting priest story, for example—than being able to speak to the content of Laudate Deum, the fall 2023 follow-up to Laudato Si’.

My response to this unpleasantness, this ugly side of Church life, is to return to school. Before writing my thesis, I’ll take as many courses—the psychology of faith, for example—to help illuminate the behaviors that upset me. I cannot sit back and criticize others or offer suggestions without ensuring I have at least some background on the topics I am addressing.

It is the spirit of the Synod on Synodality that helped me make this decision. Should you think I have an inflated sense of my own importance, I remain mindful that I am a woman engaging with an inherently patriarchal institution. But from everything I’ve read on the synod, it is a process that values the thoughts of the individual and sees the worth of conversation. Civilized discourse for an uncivilized world.

The synod has restored my faith in the Church respecting—and listening to—the sensus fidelium. While I have done a great deal of volunteering in variety capacities, I cannot recall ever having been asked my opinion on anything Church-related other than how much to charge for the annual spaghetti supper.

Today, I see offering my thoughts not just as an opportunity but, in fact, almost a responsibility, a vocation or calling. I have to do my small part to help heal a wounded Church. I hope that focused time engaged with others to think theologically about issues will help.

I want to help raise the level of the discussion so that we can listen respectfully, whether it’s to the story of the millions on the margins or the struggles and loneliness hidden behind rectory doors. We need to stop the insults and open our ears and our hearts to the possibility that there may be something to what the other says. Sometimes, the ugliest comments are actually a cry for help.

As I prepare for language exams and comb through course catalogues, I am making a conscious decision to cling to St. Jude’s other label—patron saint of desperate situations. I’d like to think modern Catholic discourse is often flawed but not irrevocably broken. I’ll be spending the next two years thinking of root causes, as well of as fixes.

 The situation is indeed desperate. But Jude is also a saint invoked when seeking healing and comfort. I suspect he’ll be hearing from me a great deal.

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Catherine Mulroney is a communications officer at the University of St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto.

A Culture of Grievance

Ours is a polarized nation and Church. Left versus right, red state versus blue, traditionalist versus Vatican II Catholics. There seems to be one commonality that crosses the usual lines: Ours is a culture of grievance.

The grievances on the right can be plainly seen. Just tune in to an evening of Fox News or watch Bishop Robert Barron interview one of his many rightwing interlocutors such as Jordan Peterson. These grievances interest me less than those on the left.

Consider the responses to Dignitas Infinita, the Vatican’s statement on human dignity, specifically the section on gender and sexuality. Most of the responses from the theological community were filled with a sense of grievance: How dare the pope sign off on a document that did not cohere with the latest theories about gender and sexuality!

Some invoked “the science.” The United Kingdom’s National Health Service recently published an extensive study of gender identity services for children and young people known as the Cass Report that concludes that the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of some medical treatments is not conclusive. Dr. Hilary Cass who led the study wrote: “While a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices.” The report recommended a ban on prescribing puberty blockers to adolescents unless they are part of a clinical trial.

The most curious thing about most of the responses to Dignitas Infinita from the theological community, however, was not what they contained, but what they lacked: theology. There were many who invoked the experiences of transgender persons. As I wrote at the time in NCR, “Experience matters, but in the making of theology, experience can never be the only thing that matters. We have canonical Scriptures. We have a theological tradition. We have an authoritative magisterium. More importantly, there is not a human alive who has not at least once made a choice that seemed obvious at the moment given his or her lived experience, but the decision turned out to be a disaster.” 

The same attitude of grievance and umbrage followed upon reports that Pope Francis has used a vulgar slur when discussing gay seminarians in a meeting with Italian bishops. At America magazine, theologian Fr. Bryan Massingale published a long complaint. There was no real engagement with the possibility that a subculture of campiness in a seminary could be problematic. Again, what was missing from the essay was much in the way of theology.

The highlighting of pastoral theology alongside other theological disciplines is one of the hallmarks of this papacy. Where are the symposia and academic conferences on the obvious tensions between pastoral theology and doctrinal teaching? Where are the studies on the relationship between the ethical visions Catholic hold and their ecclesial visions? I would venture to say that in the U.S., one of the principal impediments to a shared ecclesial vision, without which the Catholic Church cannot hold together, is our dogged insistence that our particular ethical visions are what is most important. That may work for other denominations, but it doesn’t work for the Catholic Church.

Even more importantly, where are theologians focusing on forging a Catholic culture in which grace and gratitude take priority over grievance and umbrage?

I was speaking with an employee at a diocesan chancery about their Vicar General and why he was so successful. “There are a lot of reasons, but most of all, he is a happy priest,” the staffer told me.

His comment put me in mind of a recent academic conference. I was not in attendance, but the story was related to me by three people who did. After one of the presentations, one theologian said she found it necessary to spend several classes at the beginning of each semester helping the students work through their anger at the Church. The presenter replied, “I find my students respond well to the fact that I am a happy Catholic.”

That Vicar General and that presenter are the exception, but we need them to become the rule. Here is the remedy for the divisions, and much else, that afflict the Church. The key problem for the Catholic Church is not the divide between the left and the right, but the failure of both to build a culture of grace and gratitude.

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Michael Sean Winters is a journalist and writer for the National Catholic Reporter.

A Tale of Two Churches

The incendiary right-wing remarks offered at the 2024 commencement ceremony of Benedictine College by NFL Kansas Chief’s kicker, Harrison Butker, served as a stark reminder of the deeply entrenched polarization in the Catholic Church.

The commencement speech contained a strong endorsement of the Latin Mass and a sharp criticism of bishops and priests who, according to the star athlete, did not do enough to defend the Catholic faith from secular corruption. The speech omitted Vatican II teachings on the multicultural and global dimensions of faith, the importance of engaging with culture if we are to respond to the signs of the times and the calls to social justice. In fact, the speech did not have a single mention of the poor and marginalized—with whom Jesus spent the majority of his time on Earth.

Among the many topics the speech covered, the ones that drew the most media attention were—unsurprisingly—the comments on gender and sexual orientation. Butker condemned the “demonic lies” told to women that their vocation can be lived out in pursuit of a professional career. Instead, he emphasized the roles of “homemaker,” “wife” and “mother” as the most important vocations women can pursue. He also took a quick stab at LGBTQ+ persons by criticizing pride month (evoking enthusiasm from the audience) and even inserted a Taylor Swift reference—leaving both progressive Catholics and Swifties enraged.

As I listened to his vision for Catholicism, I did not recognize the post-Vatican II Church I grew up with. In fact, for a moment I thought I was watching a scene from a certain popular dystopian fictional series on Hulu (based on a book by Margaret Atwood).

And then came the thunderous applause from the audience after the speech and I was reminded that perhaps my vision of the Vatican II Church is the fictional one.

Among many things, polarization in our Church on matters of gender and sexual orientation has been fueled by what I consider to be duplicitous activities from Vatican officials, including the Holy Father. For example, over the past year, there have been two documents addressing LGBTQ+ issues, which have somehow simultaneously created more openness to LGBTQ+ inclusion while solidifying their place in the Church as second-class members.

Fiducia Supplicans, published at the end of 2023, allows priests to bless persons in same-sex unions who together approach them for a benediction. However, these blessings are conceptualized as non-sacramental and as a desire for people in same-sex unions to live a better life despite their limitations. It discursively crafts an adverse reality for same-sex couples whereby the love they share and, I argue, the grace that flows from their union is pathologized.

Dignitas Infinita, published in 2024, synthesizes the Church’s beautiful teachings on human dignity as applicable to all persons—including LGBTQ+ people. However, the document then proceeds to craft and condemn the boogieman of “gender ideology” (which appears to be a thin veil for transgender identity). Interestingly, in a private correspondence with Sr. Jeaninne Gramick, Pope Francis appears to clarify that gender ideology does not apply to “transexuals,” leaving further questions about what the document is actually referring to, but nonetheless offering fodder for right-wing Catholics to further oppress transgender persons.

In what is perhaps to me the most offensive incident, during a closed meeting with Italian bishops, news outlets reported that Pope Francis used a homophobic slur to refer to same-sex sexual activity among seminarians. Furthermore, he asked Italian bishops to bar gay persons from entering the seminaries; which—though congruent with an earlier document he endorsed banning men with deep seated homosexual tendencies from the priesthood—is a direct contradiction to his most famous response of “who am I to judge?” that supported gay men’s vocation to be priests if they search the Lord with all their heart. In an ambiguous apology where the Vatican expressed regret for any offense, Pope Francis reiterated that the Church is for everyone.

Unfortunately, such welcome appears to me as a superficial sense of unity based on kind gestures toward the oppressed while, conceptually, we continue to think less of them and thereby perpetuate their oppression. More importantly, the result of this duplicity is a polarized Church. There are indeed two Churches—both born out of the selectivity with which Catholics embrace parts of a duplicitous message.

What is needed going forward is an attitude of humility. Catholic leaders must embrace reality: matters of sexuality remain a mystery to our Church, and we have to be careful with the messages we send. Real unity can best be fostered when we commit to joint communal discernment that stems from genuine curiosity, not when we pretend that we have all the answers.

As I have written before (here and here), my hope for the future of the Church rests in synodality, which I believe represents a new ecclesiology whereby mutual listening—especially to the marginalized such as LGBTQ+ persons—will yield new insights about our faith and our nature that can guide the Church forward together. For such a vision to take place, Catholic leaders, especially Pope Francis, need to listen to their own advice and recommit to genuine discernment in unity. 

In the meantime, I lament that both the Vatican and Mr. Butker have missed important opportunities to meaningfully unite our Church as of late.

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Ish Ruiz is the assistant professor of Latinx & queer decolonial theology at Pacific School of Religion.