Let us start from the premise that no one other than intimates of Pope Francis has any idea what the new pope is going to do. Let us further agree that 95% of the editorial outpourings on the subject at this early point, probably including this one, are flimsy conjecture produced under duress of urgent request for comment, no matter how unqualified the writer (completely so in this case), to predict anything about the new pope with confidence.

A few things are certain: The vast crowd in St. Peter’s Square and down the Via della Conciliazione should afflict the credibility of those who claim the whole process is a medieval trumpery of no relevance to anything. As the secular leadership of most countries fumble and dissemble through economic bungling, squalid misfeasances and the infantile rites of partisan squabbling and back-biting, the papacy becomes more and not less important.

This role will be amplified as long as the Holy See is effectively the only serious source of criticism of religious oppression, especially, though far from exclusively, the oppression of Christians. The mollycoddling by most governments (though not Canada’s) of Islamist religious bigotry, against Christians, Jews and free-thinkers, and of China against all religions, and of more primitive states against whatever is out of favor between internecine wars and putsches, affords the Holy See plenty of latitude to assert moral leadership.

The failure of the pundits, with a few exceptions, even to mention Argentina’s Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as a candidate, gives a clear picture of the believability, not just of the media on this subject, but of the Vatican-watching community generally. This is particularly noteworthy as it seems that there is now, as of 8:30, Rome time, last night, a uniform consensus that he was the runner-up to Benedict XVI in the last conclave eight years ago — a fact that escaped public notice until after his election on Wednesday.

Having confessed and professed my unreliability as a source of insight, and warned persevering readers not to attach much credence to my opinions, I now open my predictive kimono to reveal soon, I fear, the poverty of what is within.

Pope Francis appears to be conservative on the matters that cause the greatest strains in the middle echelons of Catholic adherence, among those who consider themselves to be Roman Catholics, but are in substantial disagreement with the traditional organization and attitude to the sexuality of the both the laity and clergy. There is no reason to doubt that he will not accept female priests, married priests other than by exception of converted clergy of other faiths, or same-sex marriage, which he has denounced in virtually infernal strictures as diabolically inspired. There is no known reason to expect him to modify official views of contraception.

On a less unambiguously upbeat note, he has a very strong pastoral background. He is relatively tolerant of homosexuality among people, but not of homosexual practices among the clergy. In recent times, there were legitimate concerns that the immediately preceding popes, either because of prolonged residence in the intellectual or theoretical cloisters of the Curia and academia (Benedict), or the impenetrable fervor of the Polish Church (John Paul II), were inadequately prompt or fierce in their response to the sexual abuse crisis. But this pope directed a great archdiocese with, as far as is apparent, irreproachable rigor.

This pope has fought a long battle in the clerical trenches in Argentina against leftist government, Peronist anticlericalism, the competitive depredations of evangelical Protestantism and the pervasive indifference of materialist contemporary society. He is completely untainted by the excesses of the military government that ruled in Argentina in the late 1970s. He knows the people. Indeed, he is one of them.

Of Italian parentage, he can at least well understand the Roman ambiance, and he knows what a popular Church can, and must, do to keep the faith and hold its following. He has won great admiration for living in a modest apartment instead of the cardinalitial palace in Buenos Aires, adjacent to the Casa Rosada where the president resides (and Juan and Evita Peron harangued multitudes almost as numerous as those in St. Peter’s Square Wednesday night). He frequently moves around Buenos Aires by bicycle and bus, and is, in person, a completely unpretentious and very well-liked man, even by those who are not co-religionists.

Now, in the suitably self-sacrificing celebratory spirit, I consent to have my hands cuffed behind my back (for the first time since I left the manacle-fetishism of official American hospitality) and be locked in position on the guillotine, with the whereabouts of the blade in the hand of unbidden events vastly beyond my knowledge. These are my predictions of what may lay ahead for this new pope.

I think the cardinals have given Francis a mandate to finish the sexual abuse crisis as severely as he judges necessary, to maintain the eligibility for the priesthood to celibate males (celibate while they are priests, in respect of any type of sex) and to continue with the counsel of perfection against contraception, with no illusions about that counsel being followed by most of the laity. In choosing Cardinal Bergoglio, they have chosen a man of unimpeachable past, intimate knowledge of pastoral realities in a great city and turbulent country, on the continent that is now (in both relative and absolute terms) the most Catholic in the world. They have chosen a man who is universally likeable and whose faith and integrity are beyond question.

Pope Francis is as strong a candidate as it is possible to find to defend the embattled ramparts of Catholic tradition. This pope is 76; if he cannot hold these doctrinal ramparts, his successor will, with no disrespect for the complexities involved, in the words of the German Army at a critical point in the Second World War, “advance to the rear.”

National Post
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