LETTERS FROM ROME—2025
The Papal Interregnum # 5
Edited by Xavier Rynne II
2 May, 2025
NOTES ON THE REAL ROMAN CONVERSATIONS
By George Weigel
Rome is always rife with rumors, never more so than during a papal interregnum, and the run-up to Conclave-2025, which begins on May 7, is certainly no exception. It’s maddening, amusing, and sometimes even informative to listen to the rumor mill, which is perhaps even more volatile than ever in this cycle thanks to that turbocharger of ill-informed nonsense, social media. Yet amidst the cacophony, some major themes have emerged from the first three days of the cardinals’ discussions in General Congregations.
The Vatican is in a financial crisis. Annual operating deficits are in the high eight figures and beyond that lies a very large, unfunded pension liability. Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a member of Pope Francis’s Council of Nine Cardinals, gave a forceful and alarming report on these matters Wednesday. How this will eventually affect the candidacies of cardinals in positions of Curial oversight as this fiasco unfolded remains to be seen. But the revelation of the magnitude of the problem probably did not – and certainly should not — help their causes.
While the first task of the pope is to be a vibrant, compelling witness to Christ, it has become painfully obvious over the past two pontificates that an effective pontiff must a/ have serious managerial chops or b/ know how to draw around him men and women who do. The question of administrative competence touches the Vatican financial crisis, too. The pope need not be a skillful money manager or investment consultant. But he had better be able to find people who are, put them to work, and then back them to the hilt when the inevitable resistance comes from the Curial bureaucracy. This did not happen in the pontificate just past. It must happen in the pontificate to come.
In sum, there seems to be an emerging consensus that the autocratic and idiosyncratic style of governance characteristic of the previous pontificate should be replaced by a more stable, orderly, consultative style of papal leadership. For popes to govern by motu proprio is as disruptive and often counter-productive as presidents governing by executive order. Orderly process isn’t everything; but it is something, and that something is important, not least in a pope getting the best out of his collaborators.
That the Church needs to be unified doctrinally, in its moral teaching, and in its pastoral practice if it is to be effective in evangelization would seem to go without saying. And indeed it has been said this past week. Disagreement, of course, centers on what the precise contours and content of that unity are. But it has been said, as it should, that in discussing this question, the experience of the living part of the world Church – as in Africa – should get priority attention.
The ongoing sexual abuse scandals continue to wound the Body of Christ and impede its mission. The next pontificate must address this far more vigorously that its predecessor, which left the Rupnik case hovering like a dark cloud over this present interregnum. It has likely not been said quite so bluntly yet; but no candidate for the papacy who does not have a clean balance sheet on handling sexual abuse cases in his diocese or religious order ought to be considered.
There is still considerable disagreement over what it means to be a “synodal
Church.” Cardinal Mario Grech, the Synod’s general secretary, spoke volubly and at some length about this but the very meaning of “synodality” remains thoroughly muddled. At least in some cases, the newer local churches seem to appreciate “synodality” because it means that their voices are heard, which is sometimes not the case when older or wealthier local churches dominate the discussion. So score one for “synodality,” if it means broadening the conversation about the Catholic future.
On the other hand, as seems to be the case in some quarters, if “synodality” (especially when lived through such manipulative processes as the “Conversations in the Spirit” through which Synods 2023 and 2024 slogged) means that nothing is settled in the Catholic Church, that everything is up for discussion, and that there are no authoritative teachers in the Church but only equal voices, then “synodality” means turning the Catholic Church into a Friends Meeting House with 1.4 billion members. Which does not seem what Christ intended. The latter form of “synodality” is also perceived in these discussions as a blind behind which all sorts of doctrinal, moral, and pastoral mischief can, and sometimes does, flourish.
Of course, it has been pointed out that, if “synodality” means that the pastors of the Church should listen to the people of the Church in order to lead more effectively, parish, diocesan, and national structures of consultation and collaboration already exist, and very few people in the Church, especially the people doing the real work of teaching and sanctifying, are eager for more meetings.
As the late Father Richard John Neuhaus once observed: “If, post-mortem, you are in doubt as to where you have landed, if you hear a voice saying ‘Form into small groups and discuss X,” well, you should no longer be in doubt.”
Some were concerned that, in this papal interregnum, the voices of the new cardinals from what Pope Francis called the “peripheries” would be muted, because the new cardinals would be reticent, given their assumed unfamiliarity with the Roman scene, which can at times seem like a wilderness of mirrors. That has not been the case. The new cardinals from the peripheries do not speak with one voice, but they speak and the insight, commitment, clarity, and candor of many of them has been appreciated. They are meeting with others outside the General Congregations, and they are taking the temperature of the situation while gauging the capacities of their brother cardinals.
They are not in a rush. While some veteran cardinals seem eager to get on with the electoral business at hand, find a solution, and go home, the newer cardinals seem not to share that view. They want to continue to get to know the cast of characters in this interregnum, and their push for extending the General Congregations through May 6 proved successful. That determination to be deliberate and not rush to judgment seems likely to flow over into the conclave itself, as it should. But on that, we shall see.
OSV News made a useful and striking – although, on further review, not really surprising – observation in a recent story: this will be the first conclave at which every voting member will have been ordained a priest after the Second Vatican Council. So in that sense, Conclave -2025 is the first truly post-conciliar exercise in electing the Bishop of Rome. That fact does not flatten the electoral landscape, however, because among Conclave-2025’s electors the competing interpretations of what Vatican II intended and meant, which were clearly identified by Pope Benedict XVI in his address to the Roman Curia at Christmastime 2005, remain, well, in competition. Was Vatican II a council of renewal and reform in continuity with tradition, aimed at revitalizing the Church for mission? Or was the council intended to, in effect, reinvent Catholicism anew? That councils have no authority to change the essential constitution of the Church as given it by Christ is not well understood in some sectors of the world Church which regard Vatican II as marking a rupture with the past or a “paradigm shift”. That councils have no authority to reject divine revelation and the dictates of human reason is another way of putting the problem less sociologically and more theologically.
What does seem true here these days is that there are no out-and-out Vatican II rejectionists of the Taylor Marshall sort. There are deep disagreements over the implementation of the Council; some might suggest that, in respect of some parts of the world Church, Vatican II was a failure, because its misinterpretation led to dissolution rather than renewal. But no one, without my range of hearing at least, is saying that the Council was a terrible mistake, or an invalid exercise. And it should be noted that the living parts of the world Church are those that have embraced Vatican II as authoritatively interpreted by John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Going back to those General Congregations, they surely would have been enriched by the presence in the College of Cardinals of the Major-Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych and father of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk. His Beatitude leads a martyr Church which has suffered greatly since the barbaric Russian invasion of February 2022: its people bombed, murdered, and forbidden to practice their faith in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine; its priests tortured and killed; its churches destroyed; its children kidnapped and brainwashed. But the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has never broken faith with its people, with their country, or with Rome. And, as too often in the past, Rome in recent years has seemed less that fully appreciative of that heroic fidelity, adhering stubbornly to a now manifestly absurd notion: that the ecumenical road to Constantinople runs through Moscow, and so Russian Orthodoxy must be treated with kid gloves. With Moscow and Constantinople now having broken communion with each other, that always-implausible roadmap has now disintegrated.
I have known many senior churchmen in my life, beginning in those sixth-grade days when I served Mass for Cardinal Lawrence Shehan of Baltimore, who celebrated in a sing-song Latin – I am now dating myself! – that remains firmly lodged in my aural memory bank. Of all the great Catholic leaders I have known, I would put Major-Archbishop Shevchuk in the first rank. He is a man of deep faith and piety, which sustain an almost preternatural calm; he is learned; he is politically shrewd; and he has a compelling public presence. It is nothing short of scandalous that this heroic leader of the largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches was passed over for the cardinal’s red hat ten times. That should be swiftly remedied in the first consistory of the next pontificate. Did the failure to bring Sviastoslav Shevchuk into the College of Cardinals involve a tacit veto exercised by Moscow? If so, then the next pontificate has even more reason to rectify a grave error of its predecessor.
Meanwhile, His Beatitude came to Rome in time for Pope Francis’s funeral, in which he participated with other Eastern Catholic leaders in the moving “Supplication of the Eastern Churches” at the end of the service, when a mesmerizing Greek chant from the Byzantine Liturgy’s Office of the Dead rang out over St. Peter’s Square. Major-Archbishop Shevchuk has remained in Rome until the public inaugural Mass of the new pope, who should listen to him very carefully, just as cardinals are in these days – even if , alas, outside the General Congregations.
George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethic s and Public Policy Center and the author of thirty books, including The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (Ignatius Press).
ON THE URGENCY OF CONCRETE CARE
By Pia de Solenni
Over the past three pontificates, I’ve seen the office of the papacy manifest a special grace of attracting souls even when the pope himself lacks other competencies. John Paul II masterfully took the Church to the world and contributed immensely to the Church’s scholarship. I lost count of how many people I’ve met who changed their lives upon seeing him. I recall a classmate in Rome who was not a practicing Catholic when he had seen John Paul II at a distance some years before. Seeing the pope awakened in him not only his faith but also his vocation to the priesthood.
When the cardinals elected Benedict XVI, naysayers predicted that fewer young people would show up for the rottweiler pope at World Youth Day and that the General Audiences would not be as popular. Instead, record numbers attended both and the stories of conversion abounded, many of them resulting in a new generation of religious and priests.
With Francis, even larger crowds came to papal events and Masses. He appeared unconcerned when his statements were taken out of context or caused confusion. Like John Paul II, he seemed to know that images impact the world tremendously. From the beginning of his pontificate, when he returned to his pre-conclave lodging to pay his bill and pack his things, to his solo appearance in front of St. Peter’s for the extraordinary urbi et orbi blessing during the pandemic in 2020, and finally his farewell this past Easter Sunday, the world needed to see him. Like his predecessors, I have met people whose hearts he deeply touched just by his physical witness, Catholic and non-Catholics alike.
Catholics see the pope as Jesus Christ’s vicar on earth, the same Jesus who is the way, the light, and the truth (Jn 14, 6). The three recent popes’ front facing witness brought countless people to experience the love of Jesus. Actions speak louder than words. At the same time the Church and the world need more than physical images of outward gestures. We need more than clear teaching. We need to see a well governed Church, one that stewards all its assets strategically and carefully, precisely for the salvation of souls. Despite the unique charism that the papacy bestowed on each man, all three popes failed to govern the Holy See in a way that reflects Christ as the way, the truth, and the light. Benedict XVI inherited the work that John Paul II left, only to resign when he realized he would not be able to do it. Francis, elected as a reformer, nevertheless failed in key areas.
In many ways the lack of a sustained sense of urgency reminds me of the naivete of the aristocracy in Europe a century ago. Somehow many of them thought that the real world would not catch up with them. No need to steward resources, finances, and power. Those had been theirs for the taking and always would be. Besides they were still able to provide beautiful images…
Similarly, we have a Church that struggles to manage its assets, fund the pension plan for Vatican employees, and govern its clergy (particularly in the area of sex abuse). After synods and various gatherings, Church leadership still does not seem to realize that it does not have the influence it had before global social media forced transparency.
In 2010, after the sex abuse crisis exploded in Europe, I attended a conference at which a high-ranking Vatican official responded to the crisis by saying, “The Church has weathered many storms. She will weather this one.” He never offered a specific plan for addressing the problem. For all the documents, talks, conferences, and legal settlements, some serial clergy (and episcopal) abusers like Fr. Marco Rupnik appear to have received protection from Francis even after the Jesuits (their own shared order) cast him out. He continues to be a priest in good standing, traveling and working, while yet another investigation is underway in the Vatican. (Part of the problem lies in the fact that the official Church still struggles to see adults as victims of clergy sex abuse.)
Under Francis, the Vatican’s financials only worsened once his designate for financial reform, Cardinal Pell, returned to Australia to face what have since been determined to be false accusations of child sex abuse.
The Vatican’s pension fund provides a glaring example that directly impacts its own employees. In 2015, the fund had a reported deficit of €1.5 billion. Recently, The Pillar reported “virtually nothing” had been done to implement reformative measures. The report included a proposal to develop a 1,000-acre site on the outskirts of Rome into a tech hub with residential offerings. No action was taken until 2024, almost ten years later, when Francis designated the entire 1,000 acres for solar panels, as if a competent team of lay professionals could not have designed an energy efficient community that would have served many human needs, funded the pension, and provided green energy.
Many journalists have documented the shortcomings of the Vatican in all these areas – governance, finances, and sex abuse. Sadly, too many of these failings remained unchanged under Francis.
I’m grateful to our recent popes for their public witness and teaching, but we need concrete actions. Starting with Genesis, before the fall, these actions are biblically mandated. God commands humanity “to cultivate and keep the earth,” that is to govern and steward the earth as co-creators. Jesus models and instructs the disciples in earthly governance. When Jesus elicits Peter’s confession and makes him our first pope in Mt 16: 18-19, he gives him the power to govern matters that impact both earth and heaven. In John 21: 15-17, when Jesus tells Peter to feed and care for his flock, he does not suggest an ambiguous spiritual concern for his flock, but an instruction to care concretely for the faithful. We see this beginning to be applied and worked out in the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters of St. Paul where the early Christian community wrestles with governance, finance, and all that is required to support a community in this life for the next.
The fact that our most recent popes have largely failed at these earthly tasks confirms the tremendous challenge facing the next pope. But unlike the aristocracies of the past, the Church does not have the luxury of failing, thus raising the bar for the new pope.
While I know that the next pope won’t be perfect (he will be a flawed human being like the rest of us), he will face challenges that will require tremendous resources. Almost 60 years after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, it is time for a holy pope who is qualified to utilize and oversee lay expertise that can help him to govern the Church, steward her assets, and care for the people God has entrusted to him – all of humanity and its surrounding creation. These are matters of justice, not faith. In fact, in the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great, a holy man, was yanked from his monastery to become pope precisely because of his administrative skills. Without both supernatural and natural means, no pope can hope to even begin this tremendous challenge. The papacy of Francis only confirmed for me that we have all the resources necessary if we have a pope who is ready to utilize them.
Pia de Solenni, SThD, is a moral theologian who serves as vice president of corporate engagement for IWPCapital.com. In 2022, she collaborated with the Vatican to publish an approved English translation of its first ever public consolidated financial report. She also served as the chancellor of the Diocese of Orange and represented the Holy See at the Organization of American States for several years.
TURNING OUR ATTENTION BACK TO CHRIST
by Jayd Henricks
The funeral of Pope Francis was a global affair, with religious leaders, heads of states, and faithful attending from around the world. It was a reminder of just how unique the Church is as a universal institution. Nothing compares to it. No other institution commands such international attention.
As I walk the streets of Rome this week, the universality of the Church becomes even more obvious. The multitude of languages heard on any street around Saint Peter’s is a reminder that the common parish church is part of something vastly bigger. My parish is part of a much larger mosaic that makes up the Catholic Church. And that “bigness” is not so much the size and reach of the institutional Church but the commanding presence of Jesus Christ who reaches into every culture, every geographic space and, ultimately, every heart. There is no universal Church without the universal presence of Christ himself. This can easily be lost when we look at the Church as a collection of news events, but the faithful know there is something and Someone much more significant involved.
As Catholics we rightly have a devotion to the Holy Father, every Holy Father, and when he’s gone something important is missing. An interregnum, however, reminds us that the Church is Christ’s, not Peter’s. The dignity of a pope derives from his role as the vicar of Christ. The office of Peter has no dignity of its own beyond that which comes from Peter’s Lord.
I was struck by the crowds entering Saint Peter’s Square on Divine Mercy Sunday. The Church had just buried Pope Francis the day before, yet there was no indication that the faithful gathering for Mass were without a foundation for their faith. The joy of the young people and the energy of the crowds spoke to something more than Rome as the place of Peter. Rome is first and foremost the geographic home of the mystical body of Christ. Rome perhaps cannot be understood, as GK Chesterton noted, without understanding the papacy, but the papacy cannot be understood without knowing Jesus Christ.
While we mourn the loss of Pope Francis, we do not mourn the loss of hope because Jesus Christ lives. The Vatican is not the fullness of the Church. The Church includes her hierarchy but is more essentially the full body of believers who their profess their faith in Christ, in the Trinity, in the sacraments and in Catholic teaching. But it all starts and ends with Jesus Christ. To allow Church institutions, including the papacy, to eclipse him is a danger we need to resist. These days of interregnum are a time to turn our attention back to Christ as the real head of the Church.
And so, as we await the election of a new pope, we nonetheless always have the Lord. He alone is the one who gives meaning to our faith.
Yesterday I was in a neighborhood church here in Rome. I happened to be there when the workers carried out a ladder and removed a very large portrait of Pope Francis. They solicited my help because of my height. When I returned to my pew to finish my prayers, the very temporal nature of each and every pope compared to the presence of Jesus in the tabernacle struck me. We are a creedal faith but one that believes in a person who remains with us for all time. Whoever the next pope might be, we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus who remains with us always.
Jayd Henricks is the former executive director of government relations at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He now serves as the president of Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal.