Letters from Rome 2025, No. 7—The Papal Interregnum

On the Eve of a Conclave of Great Consequence:
Some Reflections

by George Weigel

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While some of the cardinal-electors have been living in various venues around Rome, the entire electorate will have moved into the Vatican by Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Thanks to the unprecedented number of electors, and to Pope Francis’s idiosyncratic decision to live in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guest house (a decision that cost the Vatican money in lost rental income and intensified the security problems of the Vatican police and the Swiss Guard), the electors cannot all fit into the Domus; much of the second floor, which the late pope gradually took over, has been sealed off, as mandated by the apostolic constitution governing the interregnum and conclave. So the majority of electors will be housed in the Domus, with a smaller group housed in an older Vatican facility. This is not a good situation, and its recurrence could be prevented by the next pope returning to the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace—and then inviting the international press in for a visit, in order to show the world that it’s a middle-class Italian home, not some opulent Xanadu.

During the past week of General Congregations, there have been a few examples of what some regarded as subtle campaign speeches. No one seems to understand why certain cardinals (typically voluble) are allowed three interventions while others struggle to get five minutes to say their piece. After one brave new cardinal asked Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the Dean of the College who chairs these sessions, “Have you ever heard of name tags?”, the cardinals, many of whom admitted at the outset that they didn’t know each other, finally got a form of identification that would allow them to engage each other by name. At least one cardinal was misidentified on a screen while making his remarks. 

Those problems notwithstanding, there have been many serious interventions during the General Congregations. Those addresses, and the tsunami of commentary that has followed the death of Pope Francis, have raised some questions on which I’d like to comment briefly.

⇒ In the General Congregations, some cardinals have urged their brethren not to rush to judgment in the conclave; others want to reach a quick decision and leave. It’s understandable that men of a certain age, who have just had a rigorous Holy Week and Easter in their dioceses, are not eager to remain away from the comforts of home for an extended period. Still, it might be remembered that as recently as 1978, during the elections of John Paul I and John Paul II, the cardinal-electors lived in truly miserable conditions, especially during Conclave I of 1978. 

Then, they were housed in makeshift “rooms” jury-rigged throughout the Apostolic Palace; some were sleeping on cots; sanitary facilities were inadequate and chamber pots were in use; it was infernally hot (two future popes, Karol Wojtyła and Joseph Ratzinger, took a walk one night in the Cortile San Damaso to escape the heat—and began a conversation of great consequence, thus proving that temporary discomfort can give birth to long-term good results). It was to avoid such situations of eminent misery that John Paul II built the Domus Sanctae Marthae, which is perfectly comfortable, if not the Four Seasons Vatican suggested in parts of the film Conclave. 

The newer cardinals seem to welcome the idea of a conclave that takes its time. Their voices should be heeded. In many cases, the veteran, more elderly cardinals have this one great service left to do for the Church. I pray that they take the time to savor it, while letting the Holy Spirit dictate the pace of their deliberations. 

⇒ The idea that criticism of the Vatican’s China policy under Pope Francis is essentially an American concern has been circulating, and some observations on that are in order.

First, the current policy, which allows the Chinese Communist party the leading role in proposing bishops, violates Canon 377.5 of the Code of Canon Law, which put into legal form the teaching of the Second Vatican Council in its Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church: Governments are not to be involved in the appointment of bishops. De facto canonical illegality (which undercuts the rule of law throughout the Church) should be of concern to everyone. 

Second, critics of the policy fully understand that the Holy See must often deal with unsavory governments. The challenge is to deal with those governments in a strategically prudent way that does not make the situation of a hard-pressed local Church more difficult. The present China policy does not meet that challenge. 

Xi Jinping’s policy of the “sinicization” of all religions in China is a recipe for the slow-motion destruction of religions: hence, in the Catholic case, the mandated replacement of religious images (like the Stations of the Cross) in churches with portraits of Xi and displays of his sayings. 

Moreover, the Chinese regime has blatantly broken the agreement it first made with the Vatican in 2018, most recently by arranging the “election” and installation of a new bishop during this papal interregnum—during which no bishops can be appointed, since an episcopal mandate must come from the pope and at that moment there isn’t one. (There was only one candidate on the “ballot,” to boot.) It should not be of concern to Americans only that a great power consistently reneges on its agreements with the Holy See, while seeking to subordinate all religious practice to a totalitarian state with an atheistic ideology. 

Third, thoughtful critics of the current China policy have made clear that their concerns are essentially evangelical: that is, the policy is not aiding the evangelization of China today, and is likely going to be an impediment to evangelization in the future. When the Chinese communist regime goes into the dustbin of history, as all communist regimes eventually do, China will be the greatest field of Christian mission since the Europeans came to the western hemisphere in the sixteenth century. Comparative advantage in that vast missionary field will not lie with those identified with the previous regime, but with those who did not kowtow to it—thus demonstrating the firmness of their conviction that Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord. 

⇒ Interventions in the General Congregations have generally focused on internal Church matters, such as the imperative of financial reform; the need to return to less autocratic papal governance; different understandings of “synodality” and its relationship to the authority of bishops in the Church; and so forth. This is entirely reasonable. Still, one hopes that, in private conversations and group meetings “off-Broadway,” so to speak, the cardinals are coming to recognize that they are choosing a pope amidst a great cultural crisis: a crisis that threatens civilization itself. And that is the crisis in the very idea of the human person.  

This “anthropological crisis,” in which chromosomes make no difference and personal willfulness is all, has already caused untold suffering. It has led to a widespread deterioration in mental health. It has made it difficult to form lasting friendships, including the unique form of friendship that is marriage. It has corrupted medicine, science, law, and education. It has set loose the totalitarian temptation in old democracies, as when homeowners in the United Kingdom are told that they may be criminals if they pray in their homes for women in crisis pregnancies, if their homes are too close to an abortion clinic. (I am not making that up.) And as more than one of my fellow-authors in these pages has noted, the anthropological crisis has had a devastating effect on Catholic moral theology, as theologians of the Church of Perhaps eviscerate classic Catholic understandings of what makes for happiness and human flourishing, by conceding vast amounts of moral ground to woke sexual and gender agendas.

The Catholic Church is one of the few institutions in the world with both the intellectual vigor and organizational capacity to challenge wokery’s rejection of the biblical concept of human dignity and destiny, and to help heal the many victims of the life-distorting notion that everything in the human condition is subject to alteration by our wills—no matter how disoriented our wills may be. The next leader of the Church must be a man who can speak, with conviction and compassion, the biblical truths about who we are (creations, not accidents); where we came from (a loving Creator); how we form authentic community (of which the Church is a “sacrament,” according to Vatican II); how we live worthily (by self-gift, not self-assertion); and what our ultimate destiny is (eternal life, not oblivion).       

Reflection on Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel during the conclave may help focus attention on all this.

⇒ Fr. James Martin, S.J., perhaps the Church’s premier advocate for what he calls “LGBTQ Catholics,” recently wrote about the “fears” that many of those with whom he is in contact have about the conclave and its possible outcome. No Catholic should want any other Catholic to live in fear of, or fear about, the Church. Christ, after all, promised that he would be with us always, and it is an essential work of charity and Christian solidarity to remind each other of that. 

It is good, however, to recognize that there are other fears abroad in the Church—and they deserve consideration from the cardinal-electors.

There is the fear that a lack of clarity about Catholic doctrine, moral teaching, and pastoral practice will lead Catholicism down the road to oblivion paved by Liberal Protestantism over the last two centuries. 

There is the fear that mercy and truth, charity and truth, will continue to be falsely juxtaposed in some Catholic circles, with tacit approbation from some Church leaders.

There is the fear that some will continue to misconstrue the Second Vatican Council as the moment in which the Catholic Church was called by John XXIII to reinvent itself: which was the last thing on John XXIII’s mind.   

There is the fear that Church unity will be misunderstood as the unity of an ongoing conversation in which all opinions are considered equal and nothing is ever settled, rather than the unity in truth that Christ bequeathed the Church.

There is the fear that the Vatican’s voice will continue to be muted, as it has too often been in the past twelve years, in situations where the Catholic community is being brutally persecuted.  

There is the fear that the plague of clerical sexual abuse, especially in Latin America, will not be taken as seriously as it should be by the cardinal-electors, and that the records of potential papal candidates in handling these grim matters—in which souls have been gravely wounded and evangelization seriously impeded—will not have been sufficiently vetted. 

There is a fear that serious Roman reflection on the urgent life issues will be further jeopardized, if the John Paul II Institute on Marriage and the Family at the Pontifical Lateran University continues to engage faculty who challenge or dissent from settled Church teaching and the Pontifical Academy of Life continues to appoint members who claim that the Dobbs decision of the United States Supreme Court (which rejected the claim that there is a constitutional right to abortion) was morally flawed because it did not take into account a woman’s right to “autonomy.”

So there are many fears abroad in the Church. 

The Yugoslavian dissident Marxist Milovan Djilas, a brave man who challenged the Tito dictatorship, once said that Pope John Paul II was the only man he had ever met who was entirely without fear. It was a moving tribute, but the formulation may have been a bit off. John Paul II did not so much live without fear as beyond fear. And he could do that because he was completely convinced that the Lord Jesus had taken all human fear upon himself when he mounted the wood of the Cross, where he immolated that fear in the fire of divine love—thus enabling all who adhere to him and his cause to live beyond fear. Cruciform, Christocentric faith was the source of John Paul II’s fearlessness.

The answer to fear about the Church or in the Church is to turn to Jesus Christ, who offers everyone the gift of friendship with the incarnate Son of God, salvation, and eternal life—on his terms, not ours. And his terms were stated succinctly at the beginning of his public ministry: “Repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). If the Catholic Church does not proclaim and live that conversion of mind and heart, it is just another international non-governmental organization. If the Church makes that proclamation and lives that conversion, it will set the world ablaze.

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Prayer for the Election of the Roman Pontiff

O God, Father Almighty, who at the beginning of creation calmed the primordial waters by the hovering of the Holy Spirit, swiftly send that same Spirit upon your Church for the purpose of electing the Successor of the Holy Apostle Peter.

Lord Jesus, whose Body is the Church founded by you on the Apostle Peter, grant, we beg you, to defend with angelic protection and strengthen with many graces the cardinals whose task it is to elect Peter’s Successor. 

O Holy Spirit, Paraclete, flow through all the locales and dwellings of the cardinal-electors, to repel diabolical schemes, to crush external forces, to bring clarity and serenity to Your Church.

Most Holy Trinity, in your infinite mercy and according to our ineffable providence for the Church, inspire, guide, and gently urge the cardinals in conclave to give us a good and wise pope, a kindly but strong shepherd, a faithful and reverent Vicar of Christ, a praying and prudent Successor of Peter, a Roman pontiff who loves and preserves the customs of our forebears, a steadfast, pious, virile, and holy man. Amen.

George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (Ignatius Press).

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The Priority Importance of Marriage

by Mary Hallan FioRito

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Shortly before he died, Pope Francis penned an introduction to a book on marriage, written for teenagers and young adults discerning their vocations. The text of the foreword is classically Francis: homey and down-to-earth and clearly inspired by his formative years as the archbishop of Buenos Aries, where he famously rode public transportation to the chancery offices rather than using a private driver. 

Pope Francis had a gift of “saying the quiet part out loud,” when it came to human weaknesses. Yet in the book’s introduction, the Holy Father does not allow people to make excuses for themselves. Rather than saying, “Life-long love is hard, and God understands if you can’t stay married for a lifetime,” he instead acknowledges the difficulty, yet assures young people that the hard work is worth it. In the same way, St. John Paul II encouraged young people both to listen to the voice of the Lord and not to be afraid to “do whatever He tells you”; the enthusiasm for the truth makes the reader look forward to the challenge. 

But it will take more than enthusiasm to change the declining marriage numbers in the Church—a statistic that affects every other aspect of Church life and growth. Children raised in an intact family by their natural mother and father are far more likely to practice the Catholic faith as adults. Studies show that Millennials who were raised in married homes are 78 percent more likely to be regular church-goers than their peers raised in single-parent homes.

And what’s worse, data prove conclusively that children raised outside of a two-parent marriage are more likely to be disadvantaged economically, educationally, and emotionally. This is true even when compared to children raised in intact marriages in which there is a degree of conflict. 

But the number of couples getting married has fallen precipitously—marriages in the United States (both civil and in the context of a faith tradition) are down one-third since the year 2000 and a whopping 63 percent since 1970. Recent data are terrifying: Pew Research found “that relatively few Americans see marriage as essential for people to live a fulfilling life compared with factors like job satisfaction and friendship. While majorities say that having a job or career they enjoy and having close friends are extremely or very important for living a fulfilling life, far fewer say this about having children or being married. Larger shares, in fact, say having children or being married are not too or not at all important.” 

Signs of growth are often exclusively focused on vocations to the priesthood and religious life, which of course are vital for the preservation of the sacramental life of the Church. And at the same time, there is a growing interest among young adults with Catholicism. Both France and the United Kingdom saw record numbers received into the Church this past Easter, with those in the age range of 18–25 leading the way. Younger Catholics are also embracing traditional liturgy, with a significant number choosing to attend the Latin Mass over the Novus Ordo. Yet once these catechumens have entered the Church, there are scarce resources available to them to pursue a marriage vocation if that is where they are called. 

Orthodox and Hassidic Jewish communities understand the value of a good, stable, and loving marriage and consequently direct resources that reflect its importance. Perhaps the Catholic Church can learn a lesson from our “older brothers and sisters in the faith” and consider implementing the ways in which the Jewish faith community helps young adults meet and marry. 

When Jewish families practice the tradition of arranged introductions (as opposed to arranged marriages, which negate the free will of the spouses), the goal of all involved is to find compatible partners who have similar beliefs and values, as well as the shared desire to build a lifelong, stable, and happy marriage and family life.  

But the process does not end with the matchmaking; there is ongoing, structured community support, with plenty of what we would today call “peer coaching” when the inevitable strains and stresses of family life occur. 

Yet Catholic Church programs geared toward encouraging young people to consider the vocation of marriage—as well as to strengthen that vocation once it has commenced—are oddly anemic. A new focus on marriage as a true vocation, deserving of true vocational discernment and support, is necessary. 

Pope Francis concluded his book introduction by noting, 

In order to help you build a foundation for your relationship based on God’s faithful love, I have called upon the whole Church to do much more for you. We cannot continue on as before: many only see the beautiful ritual. And then, after some years, they separate. Faith is destroyed. Wounds are opened. There are often children who are missing a father or a mother. To me, this is like dancing tango poorly. Tango is a dance that must be learned. This is all the truer when it comes to marriage and family. Before receiving the sacrament of marriage, a proper preparation is necessary. A catechumenate, I would even venture to say, because all life takes place in love, and love is not something to take lightly.

A new Holy Father will face serious challenges as he assumes the Chair of Peter. Many of them can be addressed by encouraging and strengthening marriage, the vocation from which so many good things flow.

Mary Hallan FioRito, an attorney, is the Cardinal Francis George Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She lives in Chicago with her husband and three daughters. 

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From the “Pope of Mercy” to the “Pope of Virtue”

by Mitch Boersma

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Outside whatever combination of administrative and political skills might be needed from our next pope (on which I have little insight), he will inevitably settle on a core theme of missionary messages for the Church and world, just as Francis did and those before him.  

As I reflect on the key messages from the Francis pontificate, and those the Church and world need to hear most from the next pope, I am reminded of Jesus’s three instructions during his encounter with the Pharisees and adulterous woman in the Gospel of John. Together, they provide a roadmap for how the next pope could build upon the legacy of Pope Francis and speak to our modern era with a vital message of missionary fervor, one that the rising generation of believers and un-believers alike are primed to receive. 

In John 8, Jesus challenges the Pharisees that “he who is without sin among you, be the first to throw a stone.” He then turns his attention to the adulterous woman: “I do not condemn you, either.” And finally: “Go, and from now on do not sin any longer.” 

The Francis papacy will certainly be remembered for its focus on the first two messages. Less than three months into his papacy, during the plane interview heard around the world, Francis’s “Who am I to judge?” comment was (at its best) a reminder to the faithful that we too should avoid the path of the Pharisees.  

As Christ turned his attention away from the religious community and over to the woman, so too did Francis focus much of his attention on those outside the Church with a message of mercy and forgiveness. In this, he modeled a merciful Lord to our modern world, a society plagued with brokenness and desperate to experience God’s mercy and love. 

And now, after our own era of rebuke and mercy, the time is ripe for the next pope to continue down the path of John 8 charted by Francis, and joyfully challenge the wider world to rise to the occasion of Jesus’s final instruction: Sin no more. Do good and avoid evil. Change your life for the better through a life in Christ, and never look back. 

The pope of mercy has paved the way for the pope of virtue. 

The pope of virtue would encourage believers and un-believers alike to resist settling for “good enough.” The pope of virtue would challenge our modern world to turn away from nihilism and toward the pursuit of excellence and holiness. The pope of virtue would enthusiastically insist on sacramental life in Christ and his Church as the path to true happiness in this life and an eternity of joy with him in the next. 

And the pope of virtue would be delivering this message into a world hungry to receive just such a challenge. 

The evidence is everywhere, no more so than from within the Millennial generation (with Zoomers close on their heels). The explosive growth of interest in self-help books, “life-hack” podcasts, and “manliness guides” among people of this generation is an outgrowth of their inevitable search for authentic truth, goodness, and beauty after growing up in a world that taught them only of “my truth” and “your truth” and finding it lacking.

As documented by Jonathan Haidt and others, this anxious generation has suffered from a soft bigotry of low expectations. And yet they—just like all of us—feel the pull present within every human heart that they are called for something more. 

They are a symphony released from the false notion they can achieve real satisfaction by tooting and banging and strumming any way they see fit. They are desperate for the songbooks, guides, and instruction from the teachers who came before them. They want to master their instruments separately and play beautiful music together. They are ready for a conductor—one who models Christ in ceaseless love and encouragement to get the very best out of each one of them. 

The pope of virtue would pick up that baton. He already has a head-start, as the reports of surging conversions into the Catholic Church among young adults continue to mount. The vibe shift is on. Holiness is in. And the pope of virtue can lead the way. 

Mitch Boersma is the executive vice president of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., and co-founder of The Leonine Forum.

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We Need a Pope Who Loves His Mother

by Margarita Mooney Clayton

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On the Monday after Easter, when Pope Francis died, a friend who is a lifelong Episcopalian and works in prison ministry texted me to tell me that the pope had visited a prison on Maundy Thursday. I replied, “Pope Francis really found Christ in the marginalized. His desire to share the joy of the gospel with the outcast is an example for all of us.”

Over the next week, I received many messages from my Protestant colleagues and students at Princeton Theological Seminary about the pope’s death. How can we explain the fact that so many Protestant friends would listen to news from Rome?

The answer to that question, at least in part, rests on acknowledging that the Church’s teaching authority in our next pope will land on deaf, rebellious ears without a pope who publicly loves Mary, the Mother of God. 

As anyone who has children or helps to raise children knows, children cannot direct their freedom without authority. And as many of my students are delighted to learn, Catholics believe that no human being in history is holier than Mary. Mary was a mother, who, as far as we know, never had a public teaching role. Yet when Scripture calls Mary “full of grace” (Luke 1:28), Catholics believe those words are quite literally true.

I am a Catholic woman who married in my late forties and never had biological children. I earned my PhD in sociology and now teach at the Princeton Theological Seminary, the first seminary founded (in 1812) by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. I long relished competing with men for prestige, recognition, and a voice in society. But to my amazement, my Protestant students are hungry for me to teach them how Mary can be their spiritual mother. 

What explains this longing for a maternal presence in churches where, for centuries, Mary has been forgotten or minimized? Our world is one of a rationalistic faith, where faith must be “proved” by science. Many think that faith is good so long as one can change the words of the creed as needed. We live in a world of shrinking global population due to the lack of women choosing motherhood. Other women longing for motherhood never marry, or, as in my case, marry too late in life to bear a child.

At the Annunciation, Mary gave herself entirely to the Holy Spirit. She knew the Scriptures and obeyed the Father totally. She became the bodily vessel of our savior Jesus Christ. But embracing mystery, accepting total obedience, and subjecting one’s body to the perils of childbirth quite simply do not characterize our most treasured cultural values today. 

As we know from history, not all popes are holy. Not all popes are truly Catholic. Not all popes love the gospel like my evangelical friends. Not all popes live the fire of God’s love like the Pentecostals, bringing the gospel message of hope to the margins of the world today. Not all popes see the liturgy as the life of the world, like our Orthodox and many Anglican friends do. Not all popes love Mary with the devotion she deserves.

But the Christian faithful, past and present, love Mary. Unless the new pope exercises his authority as part of a living tradition to which he submits himself, he will commit a grave error (or many errors). Love for our mother Mary holds the Catholic tradition together across East and West, North and South, and every culture. 

I’d like to see a new St. Augustine become pope—someone from the periphery of the West, yet deeply engaged with the Western tradition. I loved Pope John Paul II for his powerful witness of hope against the nihilism bred by communism, and I admired Pope Francis for seeing Christ in the outcast. But it has been Pope Benedict XVI whose writings most effectively communicate the joy of the gospel to the Protestants I teach.

A formidable intellect, like that of Augustine, is an excellent foundation for proclaiming the joy of the gospel. Reading Benedict’s essays in Mary: The Church at the Source has changed my students’ hearts. Lives are shaped when we take Benedict’s words in The Spirit of the Liturgy seriously. Our new pope must see past today’s liturgical “wars” and proclaim liturgy as life for the world, as Orthodox scholar Alexander Schmemann has reminded us.

Because they reach the heart, Mary and the liturgy are the most ecumenical means of dialogue I have found. Many of our evangelical, Pentecostal, Protestant mainline, and African-American Christian friends are beginning to see that the Catholic liturgy and Catholic love for Mary are biblical, joyful, and capable of creating a foundation that lasts beyond the emotional fervor of an initial conversion. The new Great Awakening, the next ecumenical movement, must be liturgical. Mary is present throughout the liturgical year, connecting her to Scripture and leading us to all three persons of the Trinity.

Speaking privately to people about why they are turning to Christianity, or specifically Catholic Christianity, I’ve learned that many of them are hurting, lost, or alone. They are not seeking Churches with a political message of the left or the right. Many wander into church looking for healing, for a family. They long to be wounded by beauty, so that, like Augustine, they experience a conversion of the heart that sends them on a journey of ordering desires. 

I am blessed to have had a self-giving mother, but I have met many people who did not. Augustine’s conversion would not have happened without his mother Monica’s prayers and sacrifices. We badly need mothers—biological mothers, spiritual mothers, religious sisters, aunts, and women praying for other women and for holy priests, a holy pope, and a holy Church.

We need a pope who is a new St. Augustine: a charismatic figure and bold preacher like John Paul II, someone with the powerful intellect of Benedict XVI, the great heart of Francis, and a personal conversion story like Augustine—an evangelical fire inside the Catholic tradition.

We also need spiritual mothers like Monica who prayed for Augustine’s conversion. We need women imitating Mary at the foot of the Cross and at Pentecost: praying, trusting, loving, embracing, and nurturing. Mothers know what it means to give of oneself totally. Mary’s motherhood of Christ reminds us that God wants to give himself totally. Our next Holy Father must remember that to be worthy to receive God’s gifts, he must empty himself in humility before God as Mary did at the Annunciation.

Margarita Mooney Clayton, associate professor of practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, is the author, most recently, of The Wounds of Beauty: Seven Dialogues on Art and Education (Cluny Media 2022). Her forthcoming book, Remember Your Mother (Brazos), will be published in 2026. She writes about The Graced Imagination on Substack.