I was riding back with a police officer from a welfare check when his cellphone pinged. “White smoke,” the cop said. “They picked the Pope.”
“On the fourth ballot,” I said. “Quicker than last time.”
When I arrived at my office, I turned my computer to the news and watched as the Cardinal Proto-Deacon intoned the words, “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam!”
“I announce to you a great joy,” I said, translating the words for my volunteers huddled around the screen. “We have a Pope.” Then, straining my ears, I listened as the cardinal got around to the “big reveal.”
“Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Robertus Franciscus Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Prevost qui sibi nomen imposuit Leone Decimumquatrum.”
“Who?” one of my volunteers said.
“They picked an American,” I replied, proud my rusty Latin held up. “Cardinal Robert Prevost. Now Pope Leo the Fourteenth.”
“An American?”
“Unbelievable,” I said.
When the new Pope came out on the balcony, by the way he was clasping his hands tightly in front of him, I thought he looked nervous. Then I recalled something a British cardinal said before the conclave, “Becoming pope is like a mini death.” When you become pope, life as you know it is over.
“Three days ago,” I said. “You could’ve passed this guy on the street and not given him a second look. Now his entire life has changed.”
“Why do popes change their name when they get elected?” my Lutheran volunteer asked.
“They all used their birth names in the beginning,” I said. “That’s why you had popes named Zephyrinus, Dionysus and Lando. But when a guy named Mercurius got picked way back, he didn’t want his papal name to be that of a pagan god, so he changed it to John. Eventually the tradition stuck.” Of course, being the top dog, Leo could have kept his birth name, but somehow “Pope Bob” doesn’t have quite the same zing.
I don’t speak Italian but, as the new pope addressed the crowd, I picked out the word “synodality” and his praise of the late Pontiff, Francis. I also noticed he was wearing the red mozzetta that Francis shunned when elected in 2013 and wondered if Leo was sending a message to the both the conservative and liberal elements in the church. That, although he might continue with many of his predecessors’ policies, he would be a more “traditional” than the freewheeling Francis. But that could be just me trying to read ecclesiastical tea leaves.
“Interesting he picked the name ‘Leo,’” my Catholic volunteer said, “He was a social justice pope.”
“Rerum Novarum,” I said, referring Leo XIII’s encyclical. “He wanted workers to get their fair share back then too.” I didn’t add that, in his youth as an administrator in the Papal States, Gioacchino Pecci also sicced soldiers on the Mafia resulting in a few fatalities. “But we’ll see what this pope does. I’m sure he’ll be his own man.”
When I returned home, I fired up my computer and tabbed over to comment sections of some super-conservative Catholic websites and wasn’t surprised by what I found:
He will be an awful pope.
The fix was in.
Heretic.
We’re doomed.
When John Paul II asked people to jump, the conservatives asked, “How high?” and then lambasted anyone who dissented with him as a “bad Catholic.” But when Francis said things that made them uncomfortable – like not being a slave to money, protecting the environment, welcoming migrants, giving communion to divorced couples, or being more pastoral to LGBT people – they had a conniption. But since they had said dissenting from papal edicts was intolerable, they pivoted to saying it was the pope who was “bad” or not truly pontiff at all. If that’s not a double standard I don’t know what is. But I’ve always thought it was interesting that the Jesus was crucified soon after he scourged the money lenders in the Temple. When you fuck with peoples’ money – or sense of certainty or comfort – they tend to take it badly.
Whether Leo will be a pope in the style of Francis remains to be seen, but that hasn’t stopped that decidedly odd bunch of clericalized triumphalist lay people who pine for a return to the church of the Sixteenth Century from rendering judgment. To my mind, in their pedantic obsession with the rubrics of the Tridentine Mass, tantric quoting of obscure papal edicts, playing dress up in anachronistic vestments, and their zealous lip service to the “Magisterium” and the “Deposit of Faith” they’ve turned the Church into idol engraved in Latin, far removed from the messy living, breathing “assembly” of real people whose purpose is to not only proclaim the Gospel to all nations, but to try and live it too.
When I read the transcript of Pope Leo’s first sermon in the Sistine Chapel today, I was stuck by one thought in particular. Saying that, for many people, Jesus had morphed into some kind of superhero, Leo opined, “and this is true not only among non-believers but also among many baptized Christians, who thus end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism. For people who fear messiness and uncertainty, idols are very attractive. Idols don’t ask you to go outside your comfort zone, make life changing demands, confront your bullshit, or tell you to roll up your sleeves and get dirty serving the poor and afflicted. Idolatrous thinking just turns two millennia of Christian tradition into just another set of fashionable spiritual bric a brac not far removed from healing crystals, magical talismans, or astrology.
So, it should come as no surprise that some of these Catholics, like JD Vance, twist Church teachings to advance their own particular ideologies at the expense of the very people Jesus asked us to serve. Decrying the evils of the secular world, which are often things they don’t like, understand, or jive with their cohorts’ ideology, they seek to wall themselves behind the certainty of rituals and rules, pounce on perceived heresies, proclaim there’s no salvation outside Holy Mother Church, and then bury their heads in the sand until Jesus comes back and tosses all those pesky heathens into hell.
Sorry to break it to you, but the Church has been a mess since Jesus got sucked up into the clouds two thousand years ago. To go into detail concerning the infighting, schisms, and theological and political conflicts that have raged since day one would take forever to enumerate, but the Church has never been one big happy family – which is no surprise because families are messy too. Pope Francis knew this, once saying, “In families, we argue; in families, sometimes the plates fly; in families, the children give us headaches. And I’m not even going to mention the mother-in-law.” The church is like any other family writ large – joyful, anxious, happy, resentful, selfless, dysfunctional, loving, guilt tripping, oddly bonded together, and often scared of change. The only real heresy is not to recognize this.
The word ‘Pope” come from the Latin word “papa” which means The Bishop of Rome is the “daddy” at the head of this huge wonderful squabbling mess. No wonder Leo looked nervous. When I came home from the hospital with my newborn daughter, I turned to my father-in-law and anxiously said, “What do I do now?”
“Raise her,” he replied, with a grin.
“How?” I wondered. The answer to that question, I have found, has been both simple yet unbelievably complex. Guiding Natalie through life I have looked to the example of my parents, friends who have kids, sought the guidance of experts and, truth be told, make it up as I go along. I suspect when Leo was on that balcony for the first time, looking at all those people looking to him for guidance, at least part of him was going, “Oh shit, what do I do now?” He’s a like a new father too, but I’m sure his reaction will be much like mine – relying on tradition, the accumulated wisdom of the ages, his own personal experiences, and just plain winging it. It’ll be messy. He’ll screw up, stick his foot in his mouth, never make everyone happy but, like any good dad, he’ll try his best and, like me, pray someone is watching over him. Welcome to fatherhood buddy. Now everything changes.
So, like Francis before him, I wish Pope Leo XIV well shepherding his huge, diverse, messy, and unruly flock. The dishes will fly, his kids will give him headaches and he’ll probably end up yelling, “You can’t go out looking like that!” but, in the end, I think he’ll love all his children the best he can. As long as he sticks with proclaiming the “Good News” and, like any good dad, “makes himself small” so his children can thrive, I think he’ll do a very good job.
Habemus Papam!
