The College of Cardinals has elected an American, Robert Prevost, to the papacy. He becomes the head of a church that is in recovery from the whiplash of moving from the tradition-minded and intellectual Benedict XVI to the progressive and emotive Pope Francis. He undertakes the job at a difficult time. Francis has left undone many of the reforms his cardinal electors chose him to implement. Those include the needed imposition of a final and consistent practice for handling priestly-abuse cases. And a cleanup of the Vatican’s finances, which are not just in a parlous state from an accounting perspective but are much diminished, leading to an ecclesiastical pension crisis. These aren’t exciting jobs but necessary administrative ones that only the pope with the help of his curia can do.
But there is another urgent, and perhaps unwelcome, task for the new pontiff. The greatest service he can give the church, and to restore true Catholic faith, is to take it upon himself to begin dismantling some of the accretions on the cult of the papacy. In many ways, the attempts of popes to use their powerful authority to change the church are already draining away the mystique and power of the office.
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