For Catholics who cherished Pope Francis’s relentless defence of the dignity of migrants and minorities, the footage of his deeply awkward meeting with JD Vance on Easter Sunday made for unsettling viewing. During his 12 years in St Peter’s chair, Francis railed against Christian complicity with “America first”-type nationalist movements across the west. Here, looming over him on what turned out to be the eve of his death, was the White House embodiment of the insular, bullying politics he spent so much energy fighting against.
What now? The pope “from the ends of the earth” will be laid to rest on Saturday in an unadorned tomb in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore basilica, after a funeral attended by about 50 heads of state and 130 delegations from around the world. Progressives inside and outside the church will hope that encounter with the US vice-president was not an ominous portent.
Theantipathyshown by US Catholic conservatives towards Francis has been virulent, extreme and, at times, close to schismatic. Arch-traditionalists and historicantagonistssuch as Donald Trump’s religious cheerleader, Cardinal Raymond Burke, will see the coming papal conclave as an opportunity to stage a full-blown counter-revolution in the Vatican. How Vance and the Maga movement’s other swaggering Catholic blowhard,Steve Bannon, would love that.
After a decade in which secular western politics has drifted steadily to the authoritarian right, could Rome now take the religious version of the same route, rolling back Franciscan reforms such as the introduction of blessings for same-sex couples? The answer is probably not. But it is not by any means certain that Francis’s progressive legacy is entirely safe.
In order to promote the outward-facing spirit of his papacy, and reflect his conviction that the global south should carry more weight and influence in 21st-century Catholicism, the first Latin American popeensuredthat the cardinals choosing his successor will be the most diverse group in church history. A prolific record of 108 new appointments included red hats for bishops and archbishops in 25 countries that had never boasted a cardinal before.
Many of the relative newbies from Africa and Asia are unknown quantities in Rome, and to each other. Some hail from episcopal sees that are well off the beaten track within their own countries. This influx from what Francis called “the peripheries” will make an always unpredictable voting process still more unreadable. But it also represents a significant recalibration of ecclesiastical power away from the rich west.
Such a rebalancing does not necessarily translate to an automatic boost for progressive forces in the conclave. On issues relating to sexuality, “gender ideology”, abortion and the family, many African and Asian prelates have more in common with the “illiberal Christianity” of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. There may be some interesting coalition-building to come between the churches of the global south, and the conservative Catholic representatives of post-communist central Europe.
Anti-Francis theological hardliners could benefit from that. But a more globally representative electorate means that to become “papabile”, a candidate will surely need to share the late pope’s focus on global inequality, the rights of the poorest nations and the climate emergency. A less western conclave should equally guarantee continuing empathy with the fate of millions of migrants on the move, in a world of harder and harsher borders.
In the medium term, Francis’s empowerment of the laity and the grassroots of the church will also complicate any back-to-the future restoration project. The “synod on synodality” was burdened with a terrible name, and liberal-minded Catholics have been severely disappointed by a lack of progress on issues such as female deacons. But by convening this vast deliberation on the future of the church – in which women voted for the first time alongside clerics on the way forward – Francis cunningly embedded a more open, inclusive culture at the heart of Catholicism. That momentum will be difficult for a new pope to uproot and defy.
In truth, though, for all the premature speculation over papal runners and riders, the post-Francis future can only be viewed through a glass darkly. In Robert Harris’s novelConclave, a terrorist attack in Rome sets the stage for a defining choice between a Trumpian cardinal eager to roll back the clock and take on Islam, and a Christlike peace-loving rival from the global south, who will eventually choose the papal name of Innocent. The prospect of a similarly clearcut and satisfying narrative unfolding in May, as an unusually large gathering of 135 cardinal electors contemplate their options, is remote.
Against a backdrop already transformed by the impact of the second Trump presidency, the moral stakes for the world’s largest Christian church are intimidatingly high. Francis was afierce criticof the global economic culture that legitimised the restless, amoral profit-seeking of capital, as it sought to undermine every human, environmental and territorial limit to its ambition. His papacy of “the peripheries” was in part dedicated to championing the interests of those forgotten and left behind by such a model.
But amid the ethnocentric, nationalist backlash to globalisation, which in parts of the west was often associated with a spurious defence of Christian heritage, he was also called to defend the suddenly endangered postwar architecture of international law and universal human rights. As a new authoritarian era apparently takes shape, in which raw power is allowed to undermine democratic and legal norms, the late pope’s English biographer, Austen Ivereigh, hascompared the challengeshis successor will face to those facing the papacy of Pius XI 100 years ago.
Francis’s gut response to the growing crisis was to champion a spirit and ethic of catholicity, in the widest sense of the word. This radically pastoral approach was encapsulated in his repeated insistence that the church he led should be open to “todos, todos, todos”. But that missionary advocacy of inclusivity applied to the secular world as well. In February, it formed the substance of his extraordinary indirect rebuke of Vance, after he had the temerity to cite Catholic doctrine on love as a justification for summary deportations and cuts to US international aid.
In his coruscatingletterto US bishops, which would become the last major intervention of his papacy, Francis wrote: “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.” That act of witness should be the starting point of the next pontificate, if the Catholic church is to fulfil its true vocation in the age of Trump.
Julian Coman is a Guardian associate editor