Religion and politics have always been uneasy bedfellows, particularly within the three Abrahamic traditions that have dominated the Western world. When, for instance, the Prophet Muhammad first instructed the faithful to bow in the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca, it was to deliver a pointed – and, with historical hindsight, transformative – rebuke to those whose condescension towards Islam, despite the Charter of Medina, had become intolerable. (Previously the Prophet and his followers had faced the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.) Similar, albeit less literal, reorientations have marked the history of Christianity, many of them calling forth acts of astonishing political courage from otherwise ordinary men.
The translation of the Bible into English, for example, opened the door to the English Reformation, as decisively as Luther’s theses, or any other heretical European text. Tyndale’s imperishable translation was a nakedly political act, aimed at wresting interpretation of Holy Scripture away from the Pope and placing it in the hands of the merest “boy that driveth the plow.” In 1536, Tyndale went to his execution (for criticising Henry VIII’s divorce) shouting: “Lord open the King of England’s eyes.” Ironically, Henry’s eyes or, more importantly, those of his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, were already fixed on Rome; Cromwell’s plans for the dissolution of the English monasteries had already been taken shape and would soon come to pass.
Although the most sanguinary theological-cum-religious questions were settled during the following three centuries, the politics of twentieth century popes would prove no less controversial. Notwithstanding Stalin’s infamous quip about the pope’s lack of military muscle (“How many divisions has he got?”) the pontiff of Rome’s role as the moral leader of hundreds of millions of Catholics has always been more argued over than understood. The wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII, is a case in point. In 1999 the British journalist John Cornwell published a series of incendiary claims in “Hitler’s Pope: the Secret History of Pius XII.” Although Cornwell later conceded that Pius’s “scope for action was severely limited” during the Mussolini years, he insisted that Pius ought to have explained his “prevarications and silences” after the war.
Pope John Paul II’s resistance to Communism won him admiration around the world, but it did little to deflect criticism of his rigid orthodoxy on social questions like contraception and abortion. (In 1994 the Irish writer Conor Cruise O’Brien memorably quipped that ‘[h]ardly a day passes that I do not murmur to myself the prayer contained in [Francois Villon’s] “Deus Laudem”: Fiant dies eius pauci et episcopatum eius accipiat alter – ‘May his days be few and another receive his Bishopric.’”) More recently, Cardinal Ratzinger’s membership in the Hitler Youth was the occasion for raised eyebrows and fevered speculation, as was his role in coordinating the Vatican’s response to the wave of sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church.
The election of Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina as the first non-European Pope has immediately raised hopes for a new era in the Catholic church; hopes which have been further stoked by the legendary simplicity of the man himself (flying in economy class, carrying luggage, paying his own hotel bills), and his welcome evocation of St Francis – a hint that this papacy will probably address poverty more directly than his predecessors. And despite his reputation as a social conservative, the early signals from Pope Francis seem to hark back to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council which bravely admitted that “continued reformation” was necessary in the church.
Pope Francis inherits a church that faces grave challenges, not only on the divisive social questions that so provoked Conor Cruise O’Brien but also from the damage of recent scandals and the successful incursion of evangelical groups into previously unshakable Catholic territory, especially within the Americas. He appears to have had some of this in mind when he spoke of a “new evangelisation” in his opening address. Resolving any of these challenges would exhaust a man half his age, confronting all simultaneously is practically impossible. It is therefore an intriguing possibility that Cardinal Bergoglio may finesse this situation and shift the work of the church towards a renewed and long-overdue emphasis on the poor.
Cardinal Bergoglio comes to the Papacy well prepared, and his route has not been straightforward. Although he was reportedly the runner-up in the previous election, he did not appear on the mainstream media’s shortlists (nor those of the London bookmakers), and the five ballots needed to elect him suggest that his victory may have been a close-run affair. And he immediately faced the sort of grilling that a new American president might expect. Within a day of taking office the British papers were quoting a 2012 sermon that seemed to vindicate Argentine soldiers who fought in the Falklands War. Others raised hard questions about his public role during Argentina’s Dirty War, and asked whether he had done enough to protect Catholics who resisted the dictatorship.
Beyond these questions the Pontiff will also face doubts about his age (76), his health (he has one lung), and his physical capacity to lead an embattled church through necessary reforms. On the plus side, he comes from a continent that is home to more than 40 percent of the world’s estimated 1.2 billion Catholics, and he seems to have struck exactly the right notes of focused humility on assuming his great task. Either way his role in the years ahead will be inescapably political – for the alleviation of poverty cannot long avoid political questions if it is to succeed – and the reign of Pope Francis will likely be no less demanding, or controversial than the reigns of the previous two Popes.
