Time will tell whether the next pope will follow in Francis’s footstep and permit the continuation of liberal Protestant policies. It’s up to the men who will be gathering in the Sistine Chapel in the coming weeks. As a Catholic friend once said to me about the last papal election, the Holy Spirit never errs. But, he added, the same cannot be said for the College of Cardinals.

The era of Francis is over, and it is time to start the postmortems on his tenure. Throughout his time as pope, Roman Catholic critics of Francis typically prefaced their remarks with an acknowledgment of his strengths: his care for the poor, his stand on abortion, his clarity on transgenderism. He was certainly solid on these matters, as one would expect any Christian with a basic catechetical knowledge of the faith to be. Yes, one might say, the pope was Catholic. But in other areas, he was more problematic.

Intellectually, he was always going to be lackluster compared to his two predecessors. It’s hard to measure up to the author of Love and Responsibility and a man who could discuss the problems of European culture with Jürgen Habermas. But this should have prompted Francis to place the intellectual project of Catholicism into the hands of serious thinkers. Instead, he appointed Victor Manuel Fernández to head the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The position once held by Joseph Ratzinger, scholar of patristics and author of The Spirit of the Liturgy, is now held by the author of Heal Me with Your Mouth and Mystical Passion, which includes lurid ramblings about the theological significance of orgasms. It is as if Aquinas had been succeeded by Johann Tetzel.

Francis’s equivocal actions, or lack thereof, in the matter of Marko Rupnik were disturbing. Rupnik, the producer of what can best be described as creepy religious kitsch, stands accused of the most lurid sexual crimes. Expelled from the Jesuits in 2023, he was still officially listed as advisor to the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2024. Intentional or accidental? Neither speaks of a leadership concerned overmuch with the victims.

Francis made little secret of his disdain for conservative U.S. Catholic bishops, promoting instead the cause of those who most faithfully represent the spirit of the age. Archbishop Charles Chaput’s work for the people of Philadelphia, his writings for the wider Christian world, and his role in hosting the World Meeting of Families in 2015 should easily have merited a cardinal’s hat. It never came, and Francis accepted without hesitation his pro forma letter of resignation on his seventy-fifth birthday.

Read More