As 133 Catholic cardinals —including Chicago’s Blase Cupich — enter the Sistine Chapel Wednesday to begin deliberating and electing a new pope, whoever emerges as pontiff from this conclave takes on a job that has changed dramatically in the last 12 years.
On top of internal problems like fewer priests and the ongoing fallout of clergy sexual abuse, he’ll contend with wars, climate change, rising authoritarian governments and changing demographics in a church that has spread into more countries with distinct cultures. And the man who’ll be chosen as the 267th leader of the Catholic church has to hold together an unwieldy worldwide institution of 1.4 billion people on six continents.
Pope Francis, who died last month, built bridges with those historically sidelined from the Catholic church: migrants, LGBTQ people, divorced Catholics — and women — but he stopped short of altering church rules to allow for same-sex marriages, or to let women hold roles of real power or be ordained. Those questions remain for his successor.
A group considering whether women could be ordained as deacons — a position that’s a step below the priesthood and open to married men — had planned to release its findings in June, said Sr. Barbara Reid, president of the Chicago-based Catholic Theological Union.
“I don’t know what effect the death of Pope Francis will have on that projected timeline,” Reid said. “But women like me continue to hope that that open door will finish opening the rest of the way to allow the church to take that next step forward.”
She added, “there is still a lot of pain and suffering from the sex abuse scandal, and so the credibility of the church has been severely impacted by that very painful reality, and by all of the people who were who were so hurt by that, so the importance of the church being a forgiving, merciful, reconciling presence, while also being committed to protecting the most vulnerable is still one of the most important challenges.”
Even since Francis was elected in 2013, the makeup of the Catholic church has changed. The number of Catholics in the U.S. has dropped. The center of Catholicism has been moving out of Europe and North America and spreading elsewhere, fastest in Africa, a Vatican census shows. There are fewer priests and nuns worldwide —except in Asia and Africa. To reflect this reality, Francis appointed dozens of cardinals from outside Europe.
“You have Catholics all over the world who are bringing their own cultural experiences to it, and so bridging those conversations is going to continue to be a very important part of whoever the next pope is,” said Steven Millies, the director of the Bernadin Center and a professor of public theology.
The pope, as leader of the largest religious institution in the world, must be a clear voice for good.
“It is going to be critical, maybe now more than ever before, for the next pope to be someone who can speak on behalf of the vulnerable, to speak on behalf of human liberty and human freedom, and to speak against authoritarianism and those things that reject representative and constitutional government,” Millies said.
But that’s potentially complicated by division persisting in the Catholic church, Millies said.
Appointed a cardinal in 2016 by Pope Francis, Cupich enters his first papal conclave, joining four others with ties to Chicago.
“The challenge that’s before us is to really understand ourselves as being contributing to the common good in the world, and that includes being in touch with the spiritual lives of people,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times before leaving for Rome last month. “We need to make sure that we center our attention on that: How do we bring the mercy of Christ into the world and not be distracted by a bunch of other things?
“What we do is we first of all listen to the cry of the poor in the world and respond,” Cupich said.
Francis referred to the state of the world as “a world war being fought piecemeal, and where there are so many people who are fleeing poverty and violence, but also the effects of climate change,” Cupich said, “and the world needs to show mercy to those people.”
The conclave has no set duration; it ends whenever a new pope is elected with two thirds of the top secret vote.
“I cannot make any predictions, because we never really know. You always have a surprise from the Holy Spirit,” said the Rev. Stan Chu Ilo, a DePaul University professor. “But my sixth sense tells me that because Pope Francis has [much] unfinished business, that this time they might want someone within the system to finish what Pope Francis started… someone who is already a close collaborator with Pope Francis.
“I predict that what you might have is Pope Francis II.”
