Honeymooning, social popes, and passing time
The Friday Pillar Post
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Happy Friday, friends,
Pope Leo XIV continues to win near-universal acclaim as we enter the second week of his pontificate.
He’s being hailed and lauded from across the ecclesiastical spectrum. It’s a surprise especially, coming out of what looked set to be one of the most divided and potentially divisive conclaves in generations.
While these are still early days, for now he’s looking a lot like what the Church was perhaps really praying for, even if few people were aware he was who they meant.
Of course, there is a lot on the new pope’s desk, and a lot of it that simply won’t wait long for Leo’s attention — we’ll be talking more about those in a bit, and covering them into next week.
But in the meantime, everyone seems to be enjoying the honeymoon period of the new pontificate.
Every speech, homily, photo-op, and wardrobe choice of the Bishop of Rome is attracting rave reviews, and being hailed as in some way calculated to inspire and encourage each specific person watching.
That is good. We should all lean into and enjoy this. Sure, it’s (hopefully) going to be a long pontificate and the honeymoon period isn’t going to last forever. But for right now and as long as it lasts we should, all of us, collectively revel in what is a genuine sense of communion in the global Church.
Sure, as journalists, our job here at The Pillar is to keep an objective weather eye on what’s going on, and it isn’t our role to bring you boosterism and fan service. But I consider it an equal part of the job to try to leave my work at work — you better believe that when I knock off for the day, I am, at present, happy about the pontiff.
As successor of Peter, the pope is the visible sign of unity — of the catholicity — of the Church. Our common joy shouldn’t be dismissed as superficial or ephemeral, it’s a grace of the moment.
Be open to it.
Now, here’s the news.
The News
Chaldean patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako has denied giving a controversial media interview in which the cardinal allegedly disclosed details of the papal conclave, including the claim that one cardinal accidentally submitted two ballots in a round of voting.
Cardinal Sako appeared to give a live TV interview by phone on May 9, in which he discussed the conclave, and the accidental extra ballot.
But he told The Pillar this week that the interview never happened, and claimed that an Iranian-backed militia was spreading misinformation about him to cause a social media maelstrom that has engulfed the cardinal since soon after the conclave concluded.
This is a strange story, and frankly one it’s hard to draw obvious conclusions from — though in that sense it is of a piece with much of what we have been tracking at the top of the Chaldean Church in recent years.
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Pope Leo XIV will formally inaugurate his pontificate on Sunday. We’ll bring you coverage of that as it happens, of course.
But while Leo is the Supreme Pontiff, occupant and personification of the Holy See, and sovereign of the Vatican City State, what about Robert Francis Prevost, American citizen?
Does he still have to file tax returns to the IRS? Can he still vote? Can the pope run for president?
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As Pope Leo does get to work, one of the first things in his in-tray is likely to be resolving the case — and enormous public scandal — of former Jesuit Fr. Marko Rupnik.
But after years of obfuscation and delay in the case, there’s plenty of scope for Leo to let the wheels of justice finally turn freely and still exercise his own discretion in some matters:
“As the diocesan Bishop of Rome, he can make clear that while Rupnik remains incardinated in a Slovenian diocese, he does not enjoy the faculties of Rome, nor permission to exercise ministry of any kind there.
In fact, the pontiff could even prohibit Rupnik from residence in Rome, where he is said to remain in close contact with his community at the Centro Aletti, mandating instead domicile and actual residence in the diocese which saw fit to incardinate him.”
Leo could also lead by example and order his own Dicastery for Communications to stop using Rupnik’s art in Vatican press materials, and even back moves to see the disgraced, previously excommunicated, accused serial rapist’s work covered up while the case is adjudicated.
A big signal could be sent, as JD notes, by the pope encouraging his own Augustinian order to cover up Rupnik installations at its mother house — works that were installed during then-Fr. Prevost’s time as superior.
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Also on Pope Leo’s desk, and hardly less urgent, is the roiling liturgy war in the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.
As the new pope, Leo will have to make a choice about whether to get involved, or not, and how. And none of the options are easy or risk-free.
And anything Leo does, or doesn’t do, to heal the rift at the heart of the second-largest Eastern Catholic Church will be watched with keen interest not only by Syro-Malabar Catholics, but the patriarchs of other Eastern Churches.
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Amid the joy of welcoming a new pope, a true Chicagoan no less, I paused in these pages last week to lament that he is a Sox fan, not a Cubs man.
Fair is fair, not everyone at The Pillar shared my disappointment, and in his dispatch this week, Edgar Beltrán covered Leo’s White Sox fandom and its connection to Edgar’s own roots, and why he thinks it should qualify the pope for honorary Venezuelan status.
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The U.K. government said Tuesday it was not considering any exceptions to a new mandatory reporting law, including in for sacramental seal of confession.
It said: “The duty will apply to all individuals undertaking relevant activity with children, including within religious and faith-based settings. There are no exceptions on the basis of where disclosures are received, including confessionals.”
As you might expect, U.K. Catholics are raising the alarm.
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One of the more complicated stories which has been bubbling away in the Church in Spain these last few weeks is the fate and future of a massive memorial to the country’s Civil War.
The Valley of the Fallen was, as Filipe d’Avillez explained this week, meant to be a monument to national reconciliation. Instead it has become a perennial political battleground between the political left and right, and the Church and the Spanish state.
A new compromise on the site was agreed last month, preserving the site’s Benedictine monastery and landmark mountaintop cross, but downsizing the basilica, giving over part of the building to a new museum.
So, what is it all about? And why does it matter so much?
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The effects of social media on our civil discourse, and on ourselves personally, is, I think, part and parcel of the technological challenges of the moment highlighted by Pope Leo in his choice of name.
In his Pillar Column this week, Stephen White considered the specific effects it has on and for Catholics.
As he notes, “having constant access to the latest Roman scuttlebutt or curial gossip tends to draw our attention away from the parts of the Church where we actually live: our own parishes and dioceses. And, let’s be honest, our interest in what’s going on elsewhere in the Church isn’t always wholesome.”
Of course, “the Christian is never really impotent in the face of distressing news; prayer is always a healthy and efficacious response,” as he points out. Though it seems likely that “most Catholics who spend time wading through the less edifying reaches of social media aren’t primarily looking to fill out their list of people and problems to bring to our Lord in prayer.”
What, then, is the Christian response to so much unChristian discourse, and what is the place of evangelization in the era of doom scrolling?
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When we launched our Pillar Columns page just over a month ago, we wanted to clear a space for the kind of smart, faithful, independent Catholic discourse which we’d seen growing up naturally in our comments sections already.
But the project, as far as I was concerned, wasn’t just to add a new flavor to our coverage of Church affairs. I hoped we’d get to read just plain interesting stuff on all manner of topics, written well by the best writers.
As Jeff writes, in the age of streaming and Spotify, the gap between viral hit and total obscurity, raging success and penurious labor of love, has never been narrower or deeper.
This is the weekend read — and playlist — you didn’t know you wanted, but believe me you do.
The Pillar is going to Rome! Join Ed and JD this December for a Jubilee Year Pilgrimage, focused on the sites sacred to Pope Leo XIV.
Sign up before it’s too late!
Social popes
In and amongst the flurry of announcements and moments of will-he, won’t-he in Pope Leo’s first week, there was a brief second where it looked like the papal account on twitter.com might be discontinued.
All of Francis’ old tweets went into archive mode, and there was speculation Leo might go analogue on us. In the end, it wasn’t to be. The @pontifex account relaunched afresh, and the new pope has been tweeting away, just as Francis and Benedict did before him.
But, in the brief moment when it wasn’t clear what was going to happen next, I started getting a little enthusiastic about the idea of the pope simply walking away from social media. Because why not?
What, in the end, does a papal account on Twitter or Instagram bring to the world?