MORE quickly than expected, we have a new Pope. He was not one of the favourites.
He was in the reckoning last time, but the Vaticanistas barely had him in their reckoning this time, namely Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a 76-year-old Argentinian, Pope Francis.
His age is a surprise. He cannot be anything other than a transitional figure, a man elected partly to sort out the Curia and bequeath his successor with a better functioning governing structure, one that is not, in the words of our Taoiseach, "elitist and dysfunctional".
The election of a South American pope also indicates how important that part of the world is to the church. A third of the world's Catholics live there, more than in Europe.
When he appeared on the balcony (looking uncannily like Pius XII) he was dressed simply in white, and not in the more colourful robes of previous popes when they first appeared to the world. This suits his chosen name. Will simplicity and humility be a mark of his papacy?
No man in recent times has taken up the office with a greater weight on his shoulders, a weight the retired pope, Benedict XVI, in the end found too big a burden.
It is challenging at any time to be pope.
This is a particularly challenging time.
Quite apart from the challenge of secularism in the West, the persecution of Catholics and other Christians in many countries, the advance of evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism in the traditionally Catholic countries of South America, Pope Francis must deal with the legacy of the child sex abuse scandals and a Curia that is badly in need of reform.
It is vital that no trace of the child sex abuse scandals can fairly and reasonably be attached to the new Pope. We must not find that decades ago he mishandled a child abuse case when in a more junior position in the church as happened in the case of Cardinal Sean Brady.
He must continue what started when Pope Benedict was still in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, namely the clearing out from the priesthood of what Benedict described eight years ago as the "filth" that has so badly damaged the reputation of the church.
He must also make the Curia, that is, his bureaucracy, fit
for purpose. Quite apart from reports of financial corruption at the
Vatican bank, there are many reports of infighting and disunity in the
Curia.
Any organisation will descend into
infighting if there isn't a strong figure at the helm who says this is
the direction in which to go. Benedict may have been a good teacher and a
great intellectual, but he was no governor.
Pope Francis
has to be a good governor, or he must appoint as his number two man,
that is as Vatican secretary of state, a good governor. If he does not
do that, he will not be able to exercise his office properly and it will
prove too great a burden for him as it did for Benedict in the end.
What
do we in Ireland need and expect of the new Pope? Obviously we want
what all Catholics want, namely a man who, in the words of the
Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, "reminds us of Jesus".
A
man who calls himself Pope Francis immediately calls to mind the most
well-loved of all Catholic saints, loved because he reminds us so much
of Jesus.
But more narrowly we need the new Pope to give
us good bishops. We need here in Ireland new and fresh leadership, a
generation of bishops who are not tainted by the scandals or are worn
down by them.
We need here in Ireland even more than we
need from the Bishop of Rome, a generation of bishops who know how to
communicate the Gospel effectively in a way that makes as much sense to
modern ears as possible.
Will Francis know Ireland
sufficiently well to take an informed interest in it? Surely his
attention will first be drawn to South America.
The new
Pope will inevitably disappoint those who expect sweeping doctrinal
reforms in the shape of women priests or a change in the teaching on
sexual matters, things that are of much more concern to us here in the
West than they are in other parts of the world.
We
probably also want Pope Francis to visit Ireland, to complete the visit
of Pope John Paul II, to go to the North as the queen visited the South.
We will want him to apologise in person for the scandals so as to help give the church here a fresh start and to give the new Irish
bishops he will soon appoint a fair wind.
This is what we want, and
hopefully it is what we will get, but no doubt we will have to wait in
line while he visits his native South America first.