Letters from Rome 2025, No. 8—The Papal Interregnum

This will be the last in the papal interregnum series of Letters from Rome 2025.

The conclave to elect the 267th bishop of Rome will begin tomorrow with the Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff. In the afternoon, the cardinal-electors will process from the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace to the Sistine Chapel, where they will take their conclave oath, hear an allocution, and take a first vote. Assuming that first vote is not decisive, the electors will take two votes each morning, and two votes each afternoon, until a two-thirds majority is achieved, thus electing the 267th bishop of Rome.

Another Letter, or perhaps even Letters, will follow, once the white smoke has wafted over St. Peter’s Square and the new pope has made his first public appearance on the central loggia of the Vatican basilica.

Many thanks are due to the authors of this series, who wrote penetrating essays under intense deadline pressure—and did so pro bono ecclesiae. Thanks, too, to Larry Chapp, whose ongoing “Roman Diary” enlivened these letters with insight and wit.

Above all, heartfelt thanks are due to the distinguished Catholic journalist, editor, and author Francis X. Maier, who solicited most of the essays, edited them, and prepared the text for publication. His work has been both indispensable and invaluable. 

Let us pray for the cardinal-electors and for the Church, remembering that our works, like our days, are in his pierced hands.—XR II  

---

Carnal and Holy, Sacred and Profane

by Francis X. Maier

---

The Basilica of San Clemente is one of Rome’s treasures. It’s also a metaphor of the city itself. The upper church, dating from the twelfth century, is a stunning mix of mosaic and early Renaissance frescoes. But it’s merely the surface crust of a deeper and more complex experience. Below is the original basilica from the fourth century, with Byzantine and medieval frescoes ranging from the eighth to eleventh centuries. And below that is a series of Roman buildings from the late republic and imperial eras, including an altar to Mithras, the god of a popular mystery religion especially widespread in Rome’s legions. At the very bottom is a channel dating back to an early Roman water system.

Today’s Rome has layers as well. But they’re of a different sort. The city’s surface is a riot of carnality: gelato stands; restaurants; shrieking sirens; impossible traffic; body to body mobs of confused tourists, pious pilgrims, and professional beggars; cheesy religious article stores; a Capuchin crypt adorned with the bones of dead monks; Carabinieri with effusively overdone uniforms; the fashionista shops of Via Condotti; the Colosseum, Baths of Caracalla, and endless ruins amid the Jubilee Year’s portable toilets, scores of Christian churches, thousands of clergy and religious, and nonstop modern hustle. 

Federico Fellini, the greatest director of his generation, captured the city’s complicated soul in his brilliant half-memory, half-dream film Fellini’s Roma—including an imagined, unforgettably weird sequence keyed to an ecclesiastical fashion show.

Beneath it all, Italian life goes on. And there, the picture is less entertaining. The United States has a large Italian-American community with a deep and positive impact on the nation’s public life. American attitudes toward all things Italian are correspondingly warm. But they’re also largely ignorant of Italy’s problems on the ground. As of 2023, nearly 10 percent of Italy’s population lived in poverty. Unemployment was high. Economic growth was slow. Gross public debt stood at 138.2 percent of GDP. The overall birthrate is very low. At the current pace, today’s population of roughly 59 million will drop to about 46 million by 2080, even with immigration. The result is an aging population. And that has economic consequences. Italy now depends heavily on foreign workers, of whom about 53 percent identify as Christian and 30 percent as Muslim.

Current patterns on the religious landscape are also negative. Nearly 80 percent of Italians identify as Catholic. But between 2001 and 2022, church attendance fell from 36.4 percent to 18.8 percent. Regular, active church practice now sits at 15 percent. The decline—in Italy, at least—is especially sharp among the young. This has obvious implications for the future. With the flight of Christians from the Middle East, Jerusalem has become a kind of theme park for pilgrim tours. Something similar is not impossible for Rome. Barring a revival of Catholic confidence and zeal, the Vatican could easily, one day, become an island of pious memories in an ocean of unbelief. 

All of which has relevance for the conclave, which begins tomorrow. We live in a proud but broken world; a confused mix of the carnal and holy, the sacred and profane. Others have already named elsewhere what we truly need: We need a bishop of Rome who can marry personal simplicity with a passion for converting the world to Jesus Christ; a leader who has a heart of courage and a keen intellect to match it; a man utterly confident in, and faithful to, the Word of God, the Church, and her teachings.

So I’ll conclude with a very specific model of that fidelity. One that has particular relevance to our time and—I’d suggest—to each of the cardinal-electors as priests. I’m a sucker for history because it’s a great teacher. I talk a lot about the Reformation because, while our world today and the world of the Reformation era are profoundly different, they also share some striking similarities: political and social turmoil; big changes in technology that reshape how we learn, think, communicate, work, and believe; and a pattern of ambiguity and battles within the Church herself. Names from the Reformation era like Thomas More and Erasmus are widely known. John Colet, the priest and scholar, not so much. But I want to focus on Colet for just a moment. His love for the Church and her mission speaks directly to our age and this conclave.

Colet was born in England in 1467. He arrived in the middle of a fifteenth century that began with the chaos of three simultaneous and competing popes. The century was marked throughout by bitter political conflict. It ended with a corrupt Renaissance papacy. Colet was ordained a priest in the late 1490s. He began his ministry during the papacy of Alexander VI—one of the worst popes in a two-thousand-year line. None of this pushed Colet away from the Church. But it did anger him in the same way Christ dealt with the moneychangers. Google the words “John Colet, 1512 sermon.” You’ll be taken to a homily that he gave to English Church leaders just a few years before Luther posted his ninety-five theses. Five centuries later, it’s still a fierce critique of ambition, corruption, and indifference among Church leaders, and a barn burner on the urgent need for Church renewal. Nobody listened. 

But here’s the real reason I mention Colet.

Colet had an abiding love for the clarity and zeal of St. Paul. In 1497, and barely thirty years old, he gave a series of lectures at Oxford University on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. His lectures still have remarkable power. They speak directly to us and our Church leaders, here and now. 

And here’s why: The Rome that St. Paul describes in his epistle, especially in the first two chapters, is strangely familiar—the malice, the confused sexuality, the vanity, hypocrisy, strife, and idolatries. Paul’s purpose in writing his epistle to the young Church in Rome was very simple: How should Christians live in such a place—the pagan capital of a pagan empire? Most first-century Romans viewed Christianity as an ugly superstition. Many saw it as a threat to public order and welfare. And if we think that our modern political leaders are disappointing, the early Christians of Rome had Nero.

Colet had a special love for Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good, and acceptable, and perfect.”

The heart of John Colet’s life and ministry, in a time of widespread confusion and deep corruption, was his call to repentance for sin, conversion of heart, a passionate evangelical witness, and a life of choices and actions that radiate God’s love and the truth of the gospel. Colet saw this as the only source of enduring reform and renewed Church life—the only answer to the crises and failures of his own time—and the essential task of what he called a “divine reformation” of Church and world, beginning again from a personal encounter with the foundations of the Christian faith. 

The same applies to the world we face today. So for whomever emerges from this conclave as our next Holy Father, may God give him the wisdom and strength to live and lead accordingly.

Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church.

---

Larry Chapp’s Roman Diary—May 6

As we approach the conclave, the rumor mill in Rome is in full swing with news outlets reporting the “frontrunner” as this or that cardinal. Some say it is Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines, others insist that it is the Italian Parolin, and still others are claiming that the inside track goes to the French Cardinal of Marseille, Aveline. Confusion mounts further when one goes to dinner with various folks here in Rome who say Cardinal Erdo of Hungary has a chance or that maybe it will be a long shot candidate like the Italian cardinals Pizzaballa or Zuppi. There is also now a late surge of speculation that it might be Cardinal Robert Prevost, born in Chicago but who spent many years as a missionary in Peru. He also heads the powerful Vatican dicastery responsible for the appointment of bishops. Finally, some wonder if it is not time for an African pope and the name of the Congolese Capuchin, Cardinal Ambongo, the head of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, is mentioned often.

What does all of this speculation show? It’s not a stretch to say that, in reality, nobody really knows who the next pope will be. Therefore, those news outlets that begin their reporting by saying, “our inside Vatican sources tell us . . .” should be taken with a huge grain of salt since those “sources” may not, and likely do not, know anything specific beyond rumors and the standard gossip making the rounds. The journalistic pressure to publish something—anything—almost guarantees that a curial official’s opinion, elicited during dinner on the Borgo Pio, after too much wine and grappa, is simply a nugget of gossip that the reporter then inflates into “my sources say . . .”

The politics of the situation also needs to be considered since the opinions of many curial types in the Vatican are often just their wish for a particular candidate, whom they hope to boost by “leaking” something to the media. Some are not above releasing allegedly damaging information on a cardinal whose candidacy they wish to hamstring. Such information is often unsubstantiated but released all the same in the knowledge that journalists are desperate for anything that can be used as a juicy lede.

Furthermore, all of these journalistic speculations are hampered by the fact that this appears to be one of the most wide-open papal elections in a long time. And this wide-open quality to things is a direct result of the fact that Pope Francis appointed many cardinals from parts of the globe that have never had a red hat before (Mongolia, for example). Francis also did not call the cardinals together in Rome with any frequency. This has added to the confusion since many of the cardinals simply do not know each other. One assumes therefore that this “getting to know each other” is part of what is going on in the pre-conclave meetings. Nevertheless, how much can you learn in a week about other cardinals with whom you do not share a common language and whom you may only converse with briefly? This is a factor of enormous weight in my view, since such ignorance of the field of candidates by the cardinals might lead them to elect someone “safe” who is a known commodity, such as Cardinal Parolin. 

But in all of this, one thing and one thing only is certain; to wit, that in a few days we will have a new pope. And one hopes by that point that the assembled cardinals will have set aside the intrigue and political maneuvering and voted for a man they simply thought is the best person for the job, regardless of age or national origin. 

And that brings me to the real point of this small essay. It’s simply this: Stay calm and pray. If a pope is elected you do not like, just sigh and remember that “this too shall pass.” Or, alternatively, if a pope is elected you do like, just smile and remember that “this too shall pass.” Furthermore, we should always remember that the focus of the Church is Jesus Christ crucified and risen, and not the pope. And from where I sit, one of the salutary things about the Francis papacy is that the very discontent he created among so many conservative Catholics has disabused them of a false and pietistic elevation of the pope to a level of exaggerated importance. Popes come and go, some are good and some are bad, but they all eventually “go.” 

I hasten to add that by this I do not mean to diminish the important role played by the successor of Peter. It is precisely the Petrine office that has kept the Catholic Church from becoming the fractured reality of Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. We need a strong papacy and a strong pope to thwart the many centrifugal forces that threaten to rip the Church apart and to send her members, scattered willy-nilly, to the four winds.

Nevertheless, it is a calm sobriety that we need now. The past twelve years have created deep divisions in the Church and those divisions need healing. But that is a healing that the pope cannot do by himself. He needs all of us to cooperate. And when I say we need a calm sobriety I mean, given whomever is elected, that we should not prejudge him based solely on media accounts of where he supposedly stands on controversial ecclesial matters. 

Finally, St. Pope John XXIII is alleged to have prayed every night before retiring, “Lord, it is your Church. I am going to bed now.” Perhaps that is a prayer, apocryphal or not, that we should all adopt during these tumultuous days. 

Larry Chapp, a retired professor of theology at De Sales University in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is the host of the Gaudium et Spes 22 podcast and the co-founder of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Harveys Lake, Pennsylvania.

---

What We Need Now

by Noelle Mering

---

Record numbers of young adults came into the Catholic Church on Easter weekend. The statistics are regionally mixed, but they confound the cynics. In France, over 17,000 catechumens were baptized during the Easter Vigil, marking a 45 percent increase in adult baptisms compared to the previous year and the highest number since records began in 2002. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles welcomed the highest number in a decade. Other U.S. dioceses report 24 percent increases in young adult baptisms compared to 2024. The United Kingdom saw a similar surge. 

Then, on Easter Monday, they learned that Pope Francis—the 265th successor to Peter, but the first pope that they understood to be theirs—had died. A reflection on what the Church needs in its next papacy should consider this remarkable return of many young people to the faith.

What is striking is not only the number of young people entering the Church, but that they have done so after being formed—indeed, malformed—by a culture that relentlessly promised them a liberatory, god-like autonomy, warned them of the “oppression” and “bigotry” of the moral law, and raised them with a dogmatic rebellion to tradition. 

Previous generations could at least compare such revolutionary promises against some living memories of a different moral and spiritual order. In contrast, many of these young adults have known little else, and what they did know was easily enveloped and disintegrated by technology. The dogmas of the cultural revolution for them could often be indistinguishable from reality itself.

Despite this saturation, many came to realize their reality was not real. This generation came to the Church not in ignorance of her demands, but in full awareness of them—and in defiance of the “wisdom” of the age. It could be argued that this is just another sort of rebellion. Perhaps for them, watching their grandmothers chant in response to abortion restrictions, “We will not go back!” made coming into the Church look positively cool. That is certainly possible. 

It is also the case that the truth is quite simply compelling. We are made for it; it does not just appeal to our intellect but awakens our deepest longings. Amid a landscape that frames bodily disfigurement as liberation, the truth of the Church might seem like a wide-open door from inside a prison cell. Why would they not walk through it?

There is also good reason to think a number of these conversions are not just an escape but an encounter, and one that often begins with real rigor. “They are reading their way into the Catholic Church,” a priest friend told me, someone deeply engaged in young adult conversions for decades. “They are seriously studying the writings of the earliest Church Fathers and discovering both to their dismay and eventually to their delight that what was from the beginning, from the day of Pentecost on, with all its both glorious and sordid history, is the Catholic Church of today. And they are seeking entry. They want the true body and blood of Christ. They want the security and the universality of the one, holy, Catholic, apostolic Church.” Praise God. 

Even as many young adults are finding their way into the Church, many others are being swept further into the fragmentation of the age. In my current work, I examine the growing phenomenon of young adults severing ties with their parents, going “no contact” not over abuse or betrayal, but over ideology. 

A common refrain among those who have severed ties with their parents is this: “I didn’t choose to be born.” Because their parents made the decision to bring them into the world, they argue, any obligation in the relationship rests entirely on the parents—not on the child, and not even on the adult child. The implication is that their own life is not a blessing but a burden. The response to their life then is not gratitude but grievance. This represents a direct rejection of the Fourth Commandment: “Honor your father and your mother.” Notably, it is the only commandment that comes with a promise, “that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” Implicit is a corollary societal and spiritual warning. 

There will always be repackaged ways of telling people that their lives have no meaning, that they are a burden, that people are disposable, replaceable. The family, the teachings of Mother Church, the spiritual fatherhood of the papacy and the priesthood, our invitation to divine filiation, all form a grand, romantic, cohesive, sublime vision directing us to unity—first with Christ and then with one another. It is a vision that does not need to be repackaged; it carries inexhaustible truths that can whisper or roar into the interior of the soul. It is the very best news.

Social dynamics of conversion and collapse are always present to varying degrees, but this Easter, in many ways, felt like an inflection point. The Church can respond to both groups of young adults with the fullness of Church teaching, not delivered sheepishly but like a true shepherd. The converts need encouragement and formation to deepen and direct what has begun. The people outside of the fold who are vulnerable to predation and despair need to see that what the Church stands for is profoundly for them and unapologetically against what is consuming them. The witness of Jesus Christ, reflected in the person of a Holy Father, can meet every soul at every stage. 

We ought not squander the moment. What we do not need are self-conscious, curated messages that fragment the faithful into demographic niches, infantilizing some and alienating others. The same Good Shepherd who calls each sheep by name also wields the rod against the wolves and searches tirelessly for the lost with clear knowledge of the mortal dangers that await them until they are found.

Noelle Mering is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, author of Awake, Not Woke, co-author of the Theology of Home book series, an editor at TheologyofHome.com, and the author of an upcoming book on the politics of estrangement for Forum.

---

Addressing a Moral (Doctrine) Dilemma

by Carl E. Olson

---

I can think of numerous problems the next pope should—in my fallible opinion, of course—face and address. I will focus on just one: The next pope, in some form or fashion (an encyclical would be good), needs to demonstrate how Amoris Laetitia can, if possible, be reconciled with Veritatis Splendor.

I’ll add this question: How is it possible that Pope Francis could write a 60,000-word apostolic exhortation on family, marriage, and the nature of essential moral acts and never once quote or mention St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical on the Church’s moral teaching, conscience, and numerous related matters? Especially when more than a few moral theologians and other serious observers have pointed out tensions, and possibly even contradictions, between the two?

And, backing up another step or three: Does the Church still believe and teach what the Catechism of the Catholic Church states about the Sixth Commandment (paragraphs 2331–2400), notably on chastity, fornication, homosexuality, conjugal fidelity, procreation, adultery, and divorce? It’s not a flippant question, since the (in)famous eighth chapter of Amoris Laetitia appears to undermine, or even oppose, some of the direct and clear sections in the Catechism. It certainly muddies the waters.

And it’s difficult to deny that Pope Francis often muddied the waters when it came to the Church’s teachings on sexuality, notably regarding “irregular unions” and homosexual “relationships.” Some, including Fr. James Martin, S.J., who enjoyed the special favor of the late pontiff, openly advocated changes to the Catechism’s teachings that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” And the prominent Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., opined not long ago: “I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching [on homosexuality] is no longer true” and, “I think it’s time we make a fundamental revision of the doctrine.”

The usual ploy, commonplace over the past decade, is to lament the “complexity” of modern life, point to an amorphous “development” in morality, and to wax about the conscience in the supposed light of “concrete realities.” So, for example, the April 30th America essay “Pope Francis and the future of Catholic moral theology” by Bryan N. Massingale, S.J., [noted also in Larry Chapp’s Roman Diary here—ed.] refers to “many bishops” who long for “developments” that are “more respectful of the complexity of human life and of our evolving knowledge of the human condition.” Pope Francis, insists Massingale, was not preoccupied “with an issue—like homosexuality” but instead “urged theologians and the whole church to look at the person.” And, of course, we’re told that “a conscience rightly formed within the tradition may, in good faith, peacefully discern a course of action that responds to concrete realities in ways the church’s general teaching cannot fully anticipate.” In other words, moral doctrine should conveniently bend in the twenty-first-century wind.

Can that be reconciled with Veritatis Splendor, the Catechism, and the Church’s entire moral tradition? I think not, but those who disagree are vocal, were supported or at least tolerated by Francis, and claim there is no going back. (Massingale, by the way, wrote at length in 2022 about “coming out” on Outreach, the “LGBTQ Catholic Resource” site created by Fr. Martin.) This will, I believe, have to be addressed in the next pontificate. 

When four cardinals—Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, Walter Brandmüller, and Joachim Meisner—sent a formal request to Pope Francis, in September 2016, with five questions, or “dubia,” about interpreting chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, they highlighted a crack that has now become a chasm. I say “highlighted” because they did not create it; they simply observed its existence. And with good reason. “We have noted,” they stated matter-of-factly, “that even within the episcopal college there are contrasting interpretations of Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia. . . . [W]e want to help the Pope to prevent divisions and conflicts in the Church, asking him to dispel all ambiguity.”

Here are three of the dubia questions: 

• [D]oes one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor n. 79, based on Sacred Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church, on the existence of absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts and that are binding without exceptions?

• After the affirmations of Amoris Laetitia (n. 302) on “circumstances which mitigate moral responsibility,” does one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor n. 81, based on Sacred Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church, according to which “circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good or defensible as a choice”?

• After Amoris Laetitia (n. 303) does one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor n. 56, based on Sacred Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church, that excludes a creative interpretation of the role of conscience and that emphasizes that conscience can never be authorized to legitimate exceptions to absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts by virtue of their object?

Note that I did not say, at the start, how Veritatis Splendor can be reconciled with Amoris Laetitia. This is because, first, Veritatis Splendor is a biblically rich and theologically cogent encyclical in keeping with (and defending) the Church’s traditional moral teaching. And, secondly, it came prior to Amoris Laetitia, which, as an apostolic exhortation, has a typically lower degree of authoritative teaching. 

A common whine of recent days has been that the “magisterium” of Francis cannot and should not be changed or challenged. Never mind that many of Francis’s most ardent interpreters have been happy to ignore or attack the teachings of John Paul II. This is no surprise, as the incoherence and contradiction found in the words and actions of Francis are too often considered a feature, not a bug. The next pope will have to address this messy moral situation, aided by my and many others’ modest prayers. 

Carl E. Olson is a prolific author, theologian, and the editor of Catholic World Report.