The new pope appears to be a big hit with visitors to the Vatican, yet he’s not generating much headline news, despite his global platform.
Does size matter? That became a hot topic among some Vatican watchers in the early years of Pope Francis’s pontificate. We are talking about the size of crowds, of course.
After the Jesuit pope was elected in 2013, he broke all sorts of records for the number of people attending his audiences, especially the Wednesday gatherings that take place in St. Peter’s Square or inside the Paul VI Hall.
But sometime around 2015 or 2016, those less enamored of Latin America’s first pope noted a drop in attendance at his events. Statistics provided by the Vatican confirmed their claims. And the people who pointed out the sagging numbers, most of them fans of Benedict XVI and naysayers of the man who succeeded him, were more than pleased to announce that the Jesuit pope’s honeymoon with the Catholic people was over. As many said, the so-called “Francis effect” was wearing off.
Pope Leo is having his own honeymoon right now. And why not? He’s been Bishop of Rome for hardly five weeks. He’s still a novelty. Nonetheless, the crowds in Saint Peter’s Square are impressive. They are actually massive! Some of that is obviously due to the Holy Year that is now in full swing. The Jubilee is flooding the Eternal City week after week with organized pilgrim groups and tourist junkets.
Many people who are part of this parade of the holy and profane are here for special Masses and audiences that were originally scheduled over a year ago to take place with Pope Francis.
Still, those coming to Rome – especially Catholics – are clearly enamored with Pope Leo. And they don’t seem to be the type of “true believers” who would shout “Viva il Papa” even if a chimpanzee in a white dress were to appear at that famous window overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Believe me, such people do exist!
Obviously, it’s too early to say whether Leo will continue to attract such huge crowds after the Holy Year and the novelty of the first US-born pope comes to an end, but there is good reason to believe that his pontificate could have real staying power.
At the very least, Catholics seem to be genuinely taken up with him. Perhaps it’s because he has been sticking to the Catholic script up till now, tending to emphasize prayer and spirituality without delving too much into political issues.
He also has a disarming personality that exudes warmth and gentleness, which likely reassures some folks. Relatively trim and somewhat short in stature – and starting several years younger than the pope who came before him –he has already begun to put his own personal stamp on the Roman papacy. In the coming weeks and months, people around the globe will be watching to see how that all unfolds.
Shoring up his base
One of the early moves that Pope Leo has made – quite deliberately, it seems – has been to reestablish trust and confidence among the people and institutions that all popes before him have had to rely upon. These include lay people and clerics who work in Vatican City, the Roman Curia, and the Vicariate of Rome (that is, the offices of the diocese of which the Roman Pontiff is bishop).
Many of the staffers and officials at these various entities often felt snubbed and underappreciated. Francis could be extremely hard on the people who worked for him, even though he believed he was holding no one to a higher standard than himself. Many priests, for example, felt unfairly accused of – and even humiliated by – his stinging and mantra-like attacks on clericalism.
Many Vatican employees who enthusiastically welcomed his election in 2013 soon grew despondent and bewildered by the way he seemed to dismiss or refuse to encourage their contribution to his mission.
No greater example of this is the communications experts who run the Holy See’s media operations. In a meeting with them some years ago, the pope accusingly asked, “Who listens to you, who reads you?”
Pope Leo has used his first weeks in office to meet with all these different groups of collaborators, in a sense, mending the fences that Francis broke or badly damaged. The new pope met with employees of the Curia, Vatican City and the Vicariate – many of them low- to mid-level clerics and lay people – on May 24.
“Popes pass, the curia remains,” he told them, almost as if to assure them that things would be at least somewhat different in his pontificate.
On June 10, he met with apostolic nuncios, the priests and bishops who serve as his ambassadors around the world. “I deeply believe… your role, your ministry, is irreplaceable,” he told them during one of the few times he has spoken off the cuff.
“The Church would be unable to give many things if it were not for the sacrifice, the work and everything that you do in order to enable such an important dimension of the great mission of the Church to proceed, and precisely… in the selection of candidates to the episcopate,” he added.
Leo’s words of confidence to the papal diplomats were extremely important, as was the luncheon he held with them afterward. Both gestures could be seen as an overture to men that Pope Francis, although he made them indispensable collaborators in launching his pontificate, eventually alienated by pursuing some of his own personal “foreign policy” goals.
A prime example of this was his position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was not entirely in line with the Holy See’s traditional way of dealing with such issues. In fact, Francis often made policy decisions that left the papal diplomats feeling uneasy.
Finally, Leo met with the clergy of Rome on June 12. The takeaway line of that gathering was the following: “I would like to help you, to walk with you, so that each of you can regain serenity in your ministry.”
The keyword in this phrase is “regain,” a subtle acknowledgment that many of these priests did not feel OK or serene in their ministry during the 12 years that Francis was pope. Fans and admirers of the late pope might find it surprising that Leo would feel the need to shore up his base, as it were, among those in Rome who worked (or were supposed to work) closely with his predecessor.
The late pope was, without a doubt, deeply loved by many Catholics around the world. However, his popularity among non-Catholics and those without any belief was legendary, a fact that made Church traditionalists – for whom he was no “darling” – bristle.
Not exactly breaking news
Pope Francis made it extremely clear from the very start of his pontificate that he did not want a Church that was confined to the sacristy, but one that went out into the world and was not afraid to get its hands dirty by dealing with the messiness of real issues and the lives of real people.
One way he accomplished this was by consistently using his bully pulpit to address these issues and people, challenging the world’s conscience to confront injustice, care for the poor, immigrants, and the environment, and to end wars across the globe by eliminating the instruments of war.
Francis made headlines every week, often every day, with heart-wrenching appeals, bold gestures, and eye-popping off-the-cuff remarks. This tickled the fancy of many secular journalists and earned him a place and the daily headlines of newspapers, television shows and social media.
Thus far, Pope Leo has not found his way to the media spotlight, either by his own intention or because of his lack of charisma. He has made only generic appeals for peace around the world and has largely shied away from any topic that could be considered even remotely “political”.
While reporters could almost always create an interesting news story out of something that Francis said at his Wednesday audience or Sunday blessing, it’s been slim pickings in Leo’s still-fledgling pontificate. Of course, that could change at any moment. But don’t count on it.
Whether this will mark the return to a healthier ecclesiology where the Bishop of Rome is no longer the center of attention and the sole voice of the Church is still an open question. But don’t count on that either. Given the enthusiastic crowds wildly cheering for the new pope in these early days of his pontificate, it seems to be more about the issues and topics he is actually discussing.
A certain type of devotional Catholic may find that interesting, but the world’s media? Not so much.
With thanks to Union of Catholic Asian (UCA) News and Robert Mickens, where this article originally appeared.
