Ecclesiastically, we have nothing at stake in the papal election. But culturally we Protestants do have an interest in who the next pope will be. Let’s hope he’s less ambiguous than the last.

The death of Pope Francis has captured the imagination of the wider world and perhaps inevitably raised the question of how Protestants should think about the papacy and the pending election of his successor.

In a sense, the pope has no direct significance for Protestant churches. Our churches have no analogous leadership position. Even in the world of Anglicanism, an archbishop is not a pope. He may be one who holds an historically significant post, such as the archbishopric of Canterbury, but he occupies a much more modest office in his denomination than the bishop of Rome in the Roman Catholic Church. The bishop of Rome understands himself as the successor of Peter and regards Christ’s statement to Peter—that he was the rock on which He would build His church—as the basis for seeing the pope as foundational to the unity and the authority of the Catholic Church. Famously, the pope claims infallibility.

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