Papalization or Personalization?

As the papacy has taken a more pastoral turn since the election of Pope Francis in 2013, an approach taken up by Pope Leo XIV since his election last year, many conservatives have suddenly decided that not only is the papacy too powerful but the popes are displaying too much personality. That’s a marked shift from the ultramontanism that had characterized their approach since 1978 when John Paul II was elected and turned out to be a champion of their agenda, and a global celebrity to boot. His popularity was evidence of his sanctity, and if John Paul said it, you had to obey it. Not anymore.

The latest example of this about-face is a column by a retired Swiss bishop and longtime traditionalist, Bishop Marian Eleganti, OSB, who saw Pope Leo’s recent meeting with Patti Smith, the “godmother of punk” and a fellow Chicago native, as emblematic of “the Petrine ministry in decline.” Bishop Eleganti sees all such audiences, as well as papal press conferences and travels and anything not vetted and published in a formal bull, as unworthy of the papal office and harmful to the church and the faith. “The popes have become all too human in the exercise of their office,” Eleganti complained. “It is their personality, not their office, that now takes center stage.”

The bishop’s lament was naturally taken up by conservative Catholic media as the latest opportunity to remind the pope to get in line. It’s not the pope’s personality that matters; it’s ours. Yes, John Paul was a globe-trotting media star who was photographed with the likes of Bob Dylan and innumerable other public figures while jet-setting around the world. But that was different. “Truth be told—Benedict, Francis, Leo—they don’t have that same charisma. We just have to be honest,” as EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo put it. “It’s silly,” he said, “that Leo ‘looks just like Matthew McConaughey in white.’”

Frankly, there are plenty of us who wouldn’t mind being compared to Matthew McConaughey. Maybe Leo is one of them. But to give Raymond his due, popes have indeed become celebrities of a sort, and if that can be a force of effective evangelization, it also raises genuine concerns if they are viewed as demigods. Several developments combined to create the current dilemma. One is that in the nineteenth century, when popes were exiled by Napoleon or isolated by the nascent Italian state, the Roman pontiff became a rallying cry for the growing and globalizing Catholic population. For the first time, most Catholics knew the pope’s name. The rise of mass media in the twentieth century furthered the pope’s fame, and the decision by Paul VI in 1964 to emerge from internal exile and travel the world as a modern-day Paul rather than sitting on the throne like the successor of Peter amplified that dynamic even more. John Paul II turbocharged the entire papal celebrity-industrial complex to the point that at his death he was eulogized by one of his collaborators as “pontifex massmediaticus.” It was meant as a compliment.

Adding to this celebrity status was the length of John Paul’s papacy, and the fact that his conservative cheering section in the West made obedience to every Vatican utterance the measure of what constituted a Catholic in good standing. John Paul was the longest-serving pope, and the last word, or so we were told.

The election of Francis was an unexpected shift from that rightward tilt and a reminder that popes are not clones. They are actual people with distinct natures and different approaches, and they have always been celebrities of a sort, with personalities to match, for good and for ill. For every Gregory the Great we can point to a Julius II. Some popes you love, some not so much. What you can’t do is turn a pope back into some kind of robotic icon who only regurgitates footnoted paragraphs from the Code of Canon Law. It never worked that way, and moreover it is contrary to the historic shift toward seeing the Supreme Pastor as a true pastor and not simply a monarch issuing edicts.

John XXIII, a.k.a. “Good Pope John,” started the shift on his election in 1958. John met the press and gave affecting speeches to the crowds and captivated the world by coming across as a real shepherd, “a Christian on St. Peter’s Chair,” as Hannah Arendt famously described him. It’s not always as easy as it looks. If in days past cardinals vied to be pope, nowadays they dread the idea of such a possibility. Not only are the responsibilities crushing, but navigating the varying distances between one’s personality and the duties of the Petrine office under the glare of modern media can be agonizing. When Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Montini, was once struggling with a difficult decision, a longtime friend asked him what Montini would do. The Holy Father answered, “Montini non esiste piú” – Montini is no more. We can do better by embracing the humanity of the popes and their vocation as pastors.

At his election in the sixteenth century Leo X remarked, “Now that we have attained the papacy, let us enjoy it.” Shortly after his election in the twenty-first century, Leo XIV spoke of “a huge learning curve ahead of me.” In a sense we are all learning. This can be difficult, but it is healthy. Realizing that popes come and go is the best antidote to either hyperpapalism or dismissive individualism. Ironically, the synodality movement that so many conservatives deplore is a helpful corrective to the overly centralized church they now distrust. And when conservatives pine for a papacy that emphasizes Christ rather than the pope, I would agree with them. Popes meeting with odd celebrities and ordinary people in the way that upset Bishop Eleganti so much is, in fact, what Jesus did, and in fact what most pastors do.

David Gibson is a journalist and author and director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University.