The next pope could be even ‘worse’ than Francis. Let’s hope so

For a diverse religion with 1.4 billion followers and centuries of history, the Catholic Church left by Pope Francis has a clear identity in the West as a default protest movement in the vacuum left by the retreat of moderate “compassionate” conservatism.

Within hours of Francis’ death, the decade-long attack on his papacy was renewed. MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, flung from the far right into the centre by today’s reverse political centrifuge, posted on X: “Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.” Seriously.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

Australia’s MAGA-be George Christensen wrote that Francis’ was “one of the most divisive and destructive papacies in modern history”, radically “modern” for statements such as his 2018 interview, when reportedly he said: “There is no hell; sinful souls simply disappear.” Seriously? (The Vatican later claimed the pontiff had been misquoted.)

Francis’ heresies included calling for action to save the planet; for priests to baptise the children of single mothers; for accepting the fact of homosexuality; for calling Christians “hypocrites” if they turn their backs on refugees. He supported innocent victims in Gaza and he called repeatedly for a ceasefire. As for racial inclusivity, see if the church could last five minutes without diversity. The only common ground he held with the ascendant right was his opposition to abortion. One of his last sufferings was to tolerate an Easter visit from J.D. Vance, characteristically resembling an entitled Ivy League student, bristling with ignorance and arrogance, coming back to lecture Europe for failing to follow the shining light of the MAGA faith.

The church had spent centuries fighting rationalism, but those who attack Francis as the “woke Pope” are believers in newer religion, personality cults calling for blind belief in their infallible messiahs. In December, America’s tangerine leader and his prophet Elon Musk attended the re-opening of one of Catholicism’s centres of worship – Notre-Dame de Paris – checking the time before leaving at the earliest possible moment, uncomfortable with any signs of divinity to compete with their own.

As luck had it, I was in Notre-Dame on the last day of Pope Francis’ life, pondering how the world’s Catholics were adapting.

People pray inside Notre-Dame cathedral where a poster of Pope Francis was installed after the pontiff’s death.Credit: AP

The devout didn’t have far to look to see the world changing around them. Swirling around the solemn 10 o’clock mass was a cyclone of rubber-necking tourists showing that a phone camera knows no icon other than the selfie and that literally nowhere is sacred or safe from becoming a backdrop to an Instagram reel. Then there were the Catholic-adjacent or Catholic-curious, like myself, who came to see the reopened cathedral and hear the organ play and the Gregorian choir sing (Five stars!).

The Pope’s death brings into sharp focus the clash between organised and organic religions: between traditional institutions and the clamour of new dogmas, from consumerism to Trumpism. Popes and bishops no longer command rulers to colonise the globe or fight their protestant neighbours. Even an edifice as awe-inspiring as Notre-Dame, with €700 million of French public money given to its rebuilding after the 2019 fire, is a place where, at its centre, the humble and mournful seek solace and the underdog goes for strength.

The Easter mass message, delivered in Latin and French, was a Francis-inflected encouragement: if you look down on other people, it should only be to help them up. Simplicity and humility are the colours of the protest movement that Francis left behind. This version of religion can’t help but be political when other voices are too scared and intimidated to take up the mantle of opposition. It will long be remembered that the first public figure with the courage to speak truth to Donald Trump was a bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde, the (female, Episcopalian) Bishop of Boston.

In Australia, Anthony Albanese asked for and got a day’s pause from electioneering to pay respect to Francis. It’s easy to forget how suddenly and completely Christian sectarianism vanished from Australian life. For almost two centuries of colonised Christian Australia, sectarianism split communities, political parties, professions, families – everything. For an Italian-heritage Catholic prime minister to uncontroversially stop a campaign to mourn a pope’s death would have been unthinkable. When this changed, almost overnight around 1980, our most important division became one of our least important. It’s inspiring how quickly a society can decide to be better. We should recognise, from time to time, the ways in which the present is a vast improvement on the old days.

Donald Trump stares at French President Emmanuel Macron at the re-opening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in December.Credit: AP

As religious belief has declined, fighting for relevance in a secular society has helped the churches. Sadistic and autocratic Catholic priests and nuns, having been stripped of the institutional power that protected them, have given way to individuals practising the key Christian message of humility.

Towers of power have been reduced to quiet, emotional sanctuaries. Even in Notre-Dame, bereft believers are left in peace to pray for their lost. Standing beside me, a woman begged one of France’s highest priests to bless her rosary beads. As cheery as a family grocer, he did so without a second thought. European history has been carved out of the flesh of religious wars. Priests now help the small people pick up the pieces.

My fellow-travelling atheists are quick to dismiss all this as manipulative mumbo jumbo, often with categorical judgmentalism that comes across as, for want of a better word, fundamentalist.

I don’t think you have to believe a word of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah or the Baghavad Gita to respect their potential for good in a world dominated by strongmen cults, manipulating their followers with such powerful pseudo-religious certainties that millions of committed American Christians believe they have elected a man singularly blessed from heaven. Francis was indeed divisive, if standing up for humanity against a weird personality cult is what it means. Only authoritarians see “divisive” as a dirty word.

It was reported this week that among young British people, Catholicism is more popular than Anglicanism for the first time since (presumably) the last Catholic monarchy hundreds of years ago. Pope Francis was doing something right. As a champion of the underdog, the Vatican has helped connect the developed and developing worlds, sewing immigrant communities together more harmoniously than most governments.

You don’t have to be a believer to see that traditional churches have more experience in our most pressing social issues than the manufactured belief systems that are using the very worst mumbo jumbo, inquisitions and tests of faith that modern religions have left behind.

The conclave of cardinals might now emulate art and, like Conclave the movie, elect (spoiler alert) another compassionate champion of the weak, another “woke pope”. Poor George Christensen feels this is inevitable, because Francis “stacked” the conclave “with ideological clones – men who share his vision of a ‘synodal’ Church, pluralistic, progressive and allergic to clarity. The next pope may be even worse”.

In the absence of moderate conservatism, the Vatican has been thrown into a conflict it didn’t ask for: against absolutism. Let’s hope the conclave finds a pope even worse than Francis.

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, an author and a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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