Today is the 9th day of the interregnum¹ which concludes the novendiales, the noven-day long mourning period to honor Pope Francis that began with his funeral. It's a time of uncertainty, yet replete with tradition and solemn ceremony highlighting the critical importance of the time as the College of Cardinals enters the period of electoral discernment to select the next pope.

Hypothetically, this process can go on indefinitely,² but will probably last less than a week. Appropriately, this Sunday's Gospel recounts Christ’s threefold charge to Peter: “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” and “Feed my sheep.” Fitting words as the Church prepares to entrust that pastoral staff to Peter’s 266th successor.

As the Vicar of Christ on earth, the Holy Father must be the one to tend to the members of the Church, the "sheep," with an unshakeable faith and an unwavering hope. Consider the life of St. John Paul II, characterized by his authenticity, uncompromising devotion to Christ, and his generous love which ignited the faith of so many people throughout the world – especially the youth. That’s the power of the papacy when exercised with virtue.

Yet virtue alone is not enough for a pope to be effective; he must have backbone.

As Peter wrote in his first epistle,³ in Christ’s sufferings we find an example that all of us are called to follow, especially those in Church leadership. The good shepherd willingly lays down his life for the sheep. I pray that, like so many of the saintly popes from ages past, our next pope will be a man willing to suffer all that’s necessary to lead our Church as Christ would – without counting the cost.

We need a saint.

Update (5/8/25): we did not get a saint

The Pillar: "Vatican congregation member allowed priest accused of child abuse to live near Catholic school."

Towards the Conclave: "Prevost and Co, anyone involved in sexual abuse should not be pope"

And like, it's so incredibly easy not to have such a terrible rap sheet.⁴ More concerning even than Prevost's own individual track record w.r.t. scandal is the fact that a College of Cardinals would select such a non-shepherd. They must know something I do not; Pope Gregory X was spitting bars when he entitled the papal bull specifying the conclave format Ubi periculum⁵: Where greater danger lies.

Burn it all down man. et ostendam tibi furcifer.

Popes & Saints⁶

Of the 266 (ish) men to hold the papal throne, 84 of them have been canonized by the church – even some of those recognized as antipopes, such as St. Hippolytus. Until the 6th century, there was a good chance that the man to don the triregnum would be venerated, beatified, and ultimately canonized. Almost all of the first fifty successors of Peter are venerated as saints, and an additional thirty popes from 500 - 1100 were canonized.

From 1294 to 1914, however, only 66 popes have joined the ranks of the anointed. Three of the four popes from 1958 to 2005 have been made saints: St. John XXIII, St. Paul VI, and St. John Paul II, with the fourth pope of this group (John Paul I⁷ having been declared venerable⁸ in 2017). Are we then in a golden age of the papacy?

Perhaps. More realistically, we're in an age of institutional image management. The "brand" of the Church (if I could be so irreverent as to commercialize the notion of perception) has undergone significant reform to meet the tumult of the times. Pope Francis' progressive measures not even withstanding, with respect to the notion of sainthood and dogma, the Church and its stipulations have undergone significant changes in many parishioners' lifetimes:

The upsurge in papal saints is occurring in the context of an explosion of saint-making under [St.] John Paul II, sometimes known as the pope of saints. While the Church designated about 300 saints from 1234 to 1978, John Paul II named 482 during his long papacy of 1978 to 2005. He streamlined the saint-making process in the 1983 revision Divinus Perfectionis Magister. Most notably, he changed the approach of the fundamental question about a person’s sanctity. In place of the darkly-named “devil’s advocate,” who reviewed the record and essentially said, “Prove that this person is a saint,” John Paul II instituted a “promoter for the faith,” who takes the stance, “Prove that this person isn’t a saint.”^9,10,11

God does not wait for the Church’s canonization process in order to decide who gets into heaven. The canonization process is to the benefit of the Church on earth—not to keep God’s records straight.¹²

Modern Martyrdom

Today’s path to papal sainthood doesn’t usually involve lions, exile, martyrdom, etc., but the sacrifice that marks a saintly pope now is the willingness to confront corruption, speak the truth, and defend the vulnerable—even against entrenched institutional power.

Absent the degree of Christian persecution which colored the 1-3rd, and 20th centuries, the nature of sacrifice that informs the litmus test for a saintly, sacrificial pope is the willingness to do the right thing in the face of institutional power.⁴ However, even JP II fell short of these yardsticks in some crucial ways. (namely, judge of character of Cardinal McCarrick, and his interest in investigating accusations made against McCarrick while he was ~the most powerful and beloved religious figure in the world) that the next pope(s) of the twenty first century must change if the Church has any hope of winning back the confidence it enjoyed under his tenure.

Faced with increasingly damning information about the availability of information at critical periods throughout some of the recent Church scandals, I –the median, trying-to-be-faithful-Catholic young person– have a hard time placing faith in the Church as an institution when its leaders continue to deviate from their aforementioned mission to lay down their lives for their sheep in the service of maintaining power, covering up scandals, and enabling abuse.¹³

You can have every theological defense for Christ’s presence in the Church and the reality that sin and the need for mercy abound in every heart. But those arguments aren’t very effective when people see the hands that bear Christ also committing the most depraved crimes.¹⁴

The Church is no stranger to scandal, nor is she a stranger to reform. But reform requires a leader that is both holy and courageous. We need shepherds. We need saints. And above all, we need men who fear no earthly backlash when called to act in the name of Christ.

Entering this conclave, I pray for a saintly pope with a backbone.

Footnotes