The Isolation of Pope Francis

 While Americans have been paying attention to the political election season, events in the Catholic Church have moved very fast, and are moving faster still.  In the last two months we have seen:

- The Pope drove his former Number 2 (Cardinal Angelo Becciu) out of respectable Church life

- Several criminal investigations are revealed or started involving senior Vatican officials and financial officials regarding financial transactions Becciu had control over.  If you believe Becciu, these deals were done with the knowledge and blessing of the Pope.  (whatever that may or may not entail.)

- The Pope released an instruction regarding who can start religious communities, in yet another shot across the bow at the German Church that he is getting a little fed up with their years of rebellion.

- The Pope took punitive steps against an elderly Polish Bishop credibly accused of abuse, in what is almost certainly not going to be the last in that country.

- In a dramatic reversal of fortune, the Pope kinda blew up his curial reform this week, by defanging a lot of the power in his own Secretariat of State.  Its immense financial control (that was meant to go with other sweeping powers) was greatly reduced, as the Pope largely adopted the same reforms that Cardinal Pell proposed (and he rejected) in 2013, a process that began Pell's ouster in the game of court intrigue in the Vatican. The Secretariat of State was long seen as Becciu's primary protector, and rumors swirl that Becciu acted in concert with him on many of those arrangements now under question.

- The Vatican has announced it will finally be releasing the long awaited "McCarrick" report, or, if you prefer the soulless bureaucratic legalese typical of the Vatican, the  "Report on the Holy See’s institutional knowledge and decision-making process related to former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick."

There will be a lot of discussion about what each of these individuals moves do and don't mean.  What I'd like to propose is that they point to an increasingly isolated Pope, a man who, after years, is being forced to take actions he has stubbornly refused to do, because he now has no choice.  The first myth to dispel is that this is business as usual.  Something is clearly on the horizon, something the Pope is desperately trying to get out in front of and manage.

The various financial scandals are almost entirely his own fault.  It must be noted, Cardinal Pell outlined a series of reforms to prevent precisely the situation the Pope currently finds himself in.  Pell examined a financial system that was ripe for corruption and abuse.  He proposed a series of reforms that would greatly reduce that risk.  The Pope rejected those reforms, and then sidelined Pell.  This was before Pell's accusation, conviction, and then reversal regarding sexual abuse.  The Vatican's ability to participate in international finance with ease is now at risk, requiring these reforms which feel less like part of an overall plan, and more a panicked emergency response.

The situation with Germany is again mostly of his own doing.  While Rome and Germany have been in tension the last several decades, they believed Francis was going to be the pope who helped them accomplish a revolution.  The Pope, at best playing politics, took no steps to discourage that thinking, and encouraged quite a bit of it.  He now finds himself unable to put that genie back in the bottle.  The Germans feel, not without merit, that Francis owes them his pontificate.  Francis feels, not without merit, that he is the Bishop of Rome, and nobody's puppet.  The Pope could have put a stop to this earlier with decisive action.  Now that window for action has passed, and he's mostly engaging in a desperate series of interventions and emergency instructions, trying to keep the situation from Germany erupting into a full blown schism.

Finally, the issues of sexual abuse, and Theodore McCarrick in particular, are again his own fault.  McCarrick was quietly forced out of public ministry by Pope Benedict, and placed under what amounted to a permanent interdict as punishment for his canonical crimes.  A punishment Francis unmistakably lifted, even if it is believed for a good reason.  The Pope honestly probably reasoned McCarrick was an old man whose ability to harm the Church was passed, and besides, he could use McCarrick to craft the greatest legacy of any pope in centuries:  a deal with China.  That, like everything else, blew up in his face.  While the case of McCarrick casts a rather poor light on the last two pontificates, it is no doubt a black eye on Francis, especially since he denied any knowledge of the abuse (a claim nobody believes and something he will almost certainly have to walk back, at least implicitly, this week), and allowed it to be perpetuated by his courtiers (chief among them the head of the Congregation of Bishops) that McCarrick wasn't even actually suspended for abuse, something he knew was a lie.

The revelation of McCarrick's abuse was always going to be a scandal.  Yet they could have pointed to McCarrick's suspension from ministry, his forced exile from public life, and the Pope's desire to continue to enforce those decrees, except for the fact Pope Francis himself intervened to end that.  Nobody believes McCarrick would travel around the world after all those years of exile without Rome's knowledge, blessing, and invitation.  It is almost certain that the report released this week will avoid answering the hard questions about the Pope's knowledge complicity in this whole affair.  To the extent he is forced to accept blame, he will no doubt deflect it upon others as much as possible, as any leader would do in a crisis.  Yet this report is again being released because Francis has no choice.  It would have to be released eventually, and dioceses in America are rapidly going bankrupt.  Withholding accountability on McCarrick, even a half-hearted accountability, is not sustainable for the long run.

All of this points to the isolation the Pope currently finds himself in.  He is isolated on potential moves he can make.  He has been attempting to manage each of these crises the past several years, and has failed to manage all three.  Leadership that would have been welcomed at first is now almost certainly viewed as desperation.  The allies he has have also been substantially reduced.  Due to the fact he is still Pope, he will not have many open critics in the clergy.  Yet he has fewer and fewer defenders, and that list shrinks by the day.

I write this not with a sense of glee, but of sadness, and a bit of sympathy for the Pope.  I firmly believe that, in healthier times, he would certainly not be a great pope, but he would not be a terrible one either.  Yet we do not live in healthier times.  We also have a pandemic raging through the Church, one in which he has managed quite well so far, all things expected.  Its going to be increasingly hard to effectively stand up for the pastoral care of souls during this pandemic, a cause Francis has made dear to his heart.  It will be difficult mostly because he himself has made it difficult.

This is why prayer for the Holy Father is necessary, even more so this coming week.  His role in his own ensnarement is true enough, but we can all think of a time where we caused a bad situation to rapidly deteriorate, and the weight it put on us.  Now multiply that weight by the spiritual care of a billion souls.  Maybe now, at this late hour, the Pope will make the turn he should have made at the beginning:  to the Lord in prayer, that He give him the courage to carry out, even at this late hour, what is necessary.