Beginning now and continuing through the election of the next pope, Commonweal editors will be rounding up stories of interest from various sources—general updates from the Vatican, emerging stories, anecdotes, tidbits, profiles, and "pro-and-con" lists for different papabili. Be sure to check back here for the latest out of Rome. —The Editors
Saturday Afternoon, May 10
Leo XIV ventured outside the Vatican today for the first time as pope, visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano. Run by the Augustinians since the Middle Ages, the shrine is home to an ancient fresco of the Virgin Mother. Before returning to the Vatican, Leo stopped at Santa Maria Maggiore, where he prayed in front of the tomb of Pope Francis and the icon of the Virgin, Salus Populi Romani. He also placed a white rose on Francis's tomb.
Also today, the Wall Street Journal published a fascinating report on how the U.S.-born Cardinal Prevost overtook Italian Cardinal Parolin, the overwhelming favorite to become the next pope, during the conclave. Many of the details included in the article seem to have been drawn from what the U.S. bishops said during their American-themed press conference yesterday at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
Meanwhile, Sweden's Cardinal Anders Arborelius, who participated in the conclave, confirmed what many have already said about Leo XIV. He described the new pope as "a gentle and humble person” and “conscientious and insightful” as head of the Dicastery for Bishops. More telling, he said, “it's hard to imagine someone more different in character from [Pope Leo] than another American who has made a spectacle of himself by dressing up as the pope.”
Nevertheless, the Swedish cardinal insisted that Leo would most likely “succeed in getting the powerful people of the world to hear the gospel’s message of peace and reconciliation,” thanks largely to the new pope’s “gentle demeanor.”
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Saturday Morning, May 10
Why did the new pope choose to take the name Leo XIV? "There are many different reasons for this," he explained during his first formal address to the College of Cardinals. "But mainly because Leo XIII in his historic encyclical Rerum novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor."
He also asked the cardinals to "renew together" the commitment to "the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council." Noting that Francis, his predecessor, "masterfully and concretely" set forth this direction in his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, Leo said, "[I am] called to continue on this same path."
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Friday Afternoon, May 9
Bruce Springsteen. Don McLean. Pope Leo.
Before six of the ten U.S. bishops who participated in the conclave met with the press to discuss the election of Leo XIV, the first American pope in the history of the Church, speakers at the Pontifical North American College in Rome played “Born in the U.S.A.” and “American Pie.”
Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, the recently appointed archbishop of Washington D.C., said the nationality of the Cardinal Formerly Known as Robert Francis Prevost didn’t really factor in the conclave’s deliberations. "What surprised me was the real absence of that being a key question at all," McElroy said.
Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory, McElroy’s predecessor in D.C., noted that the cardinals “were quite aware” of the political situation in the states, but they were primarily concerned with a straightforward question: “Who among us can bring us together?”
While answering a question about the new pope's international experience, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, the archbishop of Newark, initially referred to Leo as “Bob” before correcting himself. Tobin also recalled casting his ballot in the Sistine Chapel as the outcome of the conclave was becoming clearer. He said the soon-to-be-elected pontiff held his head in his hands. "I was praying for him, because I couldn't imagine what happens to a human being when you’re facing something like that. And then when he accepted it, it was like he was made for it.”
As the world continues to learn more about Leo XIV—and what he’s made of—Commonweal editor-at-large and columnist Mollie Wilson O'Reilly joined WNYC host Brian Lehrer on his show to talk about the new pope and the direction he’s most likely to take the Church. She was joined by David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham and regular Commonweal contributor, who patched in from Rome, “via the Bronx.” Click here to listen to the forty-five-minute segment, which by the grace of God doesn't include any references to the Boss.
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Friday Morning, May 9
Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass this morning in the Sistine Chapel. In his homily, the 267th pope called for Catholics to cultivate a better personal relationship with Christ, insisting that life lacks meaning without faith. The Chicago-born pontiff spoke briefly in English before switching to Italian. “I want to repeat the words from the responsorial psalm: ‘I will sing a new song to the Lord, because He has done marvels,’ and indeed, not just with me but with all of us.”
In his homily, Leo focused on Saint Peter, the first pope, and apostolic succession, through which the Church has “preserved, deepened and handed on for two thousand years.”
A day after Leo first appeared on the Central Loggia, the world is still learning about the new pope.
Alejandro Moral, prior general of the Augustinians and a longtime friend of Leo XIV, told Vatican News that the new pope is “very balanced, very spiritual, a person truly close to everyone.” He also said that Leo “loves everyone, rich and poor alike. We [Augustinians] are very happy, because we think he will really serve the Church. We’ve been discussing this recently, and we think this will be the case.”
And the Times caught up with John Prevost, the pope’s brother, in New Lenox, Illinois, “a tidy city of 27,000 people about 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago.” Prevost said his brother has “great, great desire to help the downtrodden and the disenfranchised, the people who are ignored.” He predicted that his brother would carry on the legacy of Francis, because “they were very good friends. They knew each other before he was pope, before my brother even was bishop.”
The Times also confirmed that—like former Commonweal editor and current director of publications and media for the Archdiocese of Chicago Grant Gallicho—the new pope is a White Sox fan. (Local Chicago station WGN-TV reported that Leo regularly plays Wordle and Words with Friends.)
As the world continues to learn more about Leo, it is simultaneously getting used to the very idea of an American pope, something many said would never happen.
Commonweal contributor and renowned Church historian John McGreevy told Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein that the election of an American pope is “unbelievable.” In terms of important days in the history of the U.S. Catholic Church, McGreevy said “this is number one.”
In the Atlantic, Francis X. Rocca, who has covered the Vatican for two decades, considers what Leo’s election means for the Church and the world. The short answer: TBD.
“Today, we have a Pope,” regular Commonweal contributor Paul Elie writes in The New Yorker. “We know his given name, his background and achievements, and of course his nationality, which is sure to be the preoccupation of the commentariat in the days to come. But only now—beginning right now—will Catholics and the world find out who he is.”
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Thursday Afternoon, May 8
On the fourth ballot on the second day of the conclave, Cardinal Robert Prevost, the sixty-nine-year-old native of Chicago and former prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, was elected pope, taking the name Leo XIV.
Dominique Mamberti introduced the 267th pope—and the first American pontiff—to sustained cheers from the large crowd that started gathering in St. Peter’s Square as white smoke (fumata bianca) poured from the makeshift chimney attached to the Sistine Chapel shortly before six p.m. local time.
Leo XIV’s first words as pope were spoken in Italian: “La pace sia con tutti voi!” (“Peace be with you!”) During his address, he said he wanted the Church to be “a synodal Church, walking and always seeking peace, charity, closeness, especially to those who are suffering.”
As the new pope looked out from the Central Loggia, he became visibly moved and regularly paused to compose himself. He is the first Augustinian pope and, after Francis, the second pontiff from the Americas.
I am a son of Saint Augustine, an Augustinian. He said, “With you I am a Christian, for you a bishop.” So may we all walk together toward that homeland that God has prepared for us…. We have to look together how to be a missionary Church, building bridges, dialogue, always open to receiving with open arms for everyone, like this square, open to all, to all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love.
Born in 1955, the future pontiff studied at the Minor Seminary of the Augustinian Fathers before earning his bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Villanova in 1977. After graduating, he entered the novitiate of the Order of Saint Augustine in Saint Louis, in the Province of Our Lady of Good Counsel of Chicago.
He studied at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and then was sent to Rome to study Canon Law at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). He was ordained a priest on June 19, 1982, at the Augustinian College of Saint Monica. You can read his official biography here.
Last Thursday, we highlighted a recent Crux profile of Cardinal Prevost, which described Pope Leo XIV as “a moderate, balanced figure, known for solid judgment and a keen capacity to listen.”
We also gathered these three videos of the future pope, which we believe reveal a great deal about the kind of man he is. Click the links to view.
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Thursday Afternoon, May 8
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Thursday Morning, May 8
Six words this morning: Black smoke again, sooner than expected.
After three ballots, the cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel have yet to come to a two-thirds consensus about who should be the next pope. The cardinals, currently on a lunch break, will soon return to the chapel for a fourth round of voting.
Many are speculating that, because the cardinals moved through the morning votes at a much faster clip than yesterday’s three-hour-long session, they are close to picking the next pope, perhaps as soon as this evening local time. John Paul and Benedict XVI were both elected on the fourth ballot, on the second day of the conclave. Francis was also elected on the second day, but after the fifth ballot
We’ll learn soon enough. But an interesting detail from the Times’s running diary of the conclave—twenty-two hours and counting!—caught our attention:
An Italian cardinal, Gianfranco Ravasi, who is 82 and not voting in the conclave, said that he had been impressed by a speech from Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille, France, who has emerged as a papal contender. Cardinal Aveline, who is learning Italian, read his speech in “perfect Italian,” Cardinal Ravasi said, adding, “He only got two accents wrong.”
Before the start of the conclave, The Pilllar noted a “Spanish-led push” for the French cardinal. “Aveline’s profile could be an attractive one for those wishing to vote for someone who’s seen as close to Francis but bringing more stability to the papal office,” the site’s Vatican correspondent reported. “Moreover, Aveline has a certain reputation as theologically orthodox, and many close to him say he harbors more conservative sympathies than it seems publicly.”
It’s important to reiterate, however, that no one outside the conclave has any idea about who the next pope will be. And, as our editor-at-large Mollie Wilson O’Reilly helpfully makes clear in her recent piece for MSNBC, it’s likely that few outside the College of Cardinals have even ever heard of the man who will be soon be pope. While the cardinals get ready to return to the Sistine Chapel, she asks us to consider seven other words this morning: The next pope? You wouldn’t know him.
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Wednesday Afternoon, May 7
At 9:01 p.m. CET, more than three hours after the doors of the Sistine Chapel were closed, black smoke billowed out of the makeshift chimney attached to the roof of the chapel. The papal election, the first in more than a decade, continues for at least another day.
No pope has been elected on the first day of the conclave for centuries. And while this conclave, the most geographically diverse in the Church’s two-thousand-year history, is unique, it is ultimately not exceptional. The assembled cardinals from seventy countries will meet again tomorrow to try to decide who among them will be the 266th successor to Saint Peter.
In the hours before the black smoke appeared, an estimated thirty thousand people packed Via della Conciliazione, the broad avenue that leads from St Peter’s Square to the Tiber River, and the New York Times reported that the balconies and rooftops of buildings surrounding the Vatican were lined with people. (A flock of seagulls also made a well-received appearance.)
As the cardinals continued to deliberate inside, the crowd in St. Peter’s Square started clapping. Correspondents on the Vatican News’ live stream joked that people were trying to urge the clerics into action, something many would argue Commonweal and Commonweal Catholics have been trying to do for more than a century.
Beyond St. Peter’s Square, millions monitored events online. Among the outlets they relied upon was Pope Crave (@ClubConcrave), a Twitter account dedicated to Edward Berger’s Conclave. Run by two Harvard alumnae, the account originated largely as an ad hoc Oscar campaign for the 2024 film, but has since started offering followers a pop-culture perspective on the papacy.
Ahead of the conclave, the account’s administrators, who wish to remain anonymous, discussed their content strategy with PR Week:
“We’re going to have memes on lock depending on who the new pope is. If the new pope is good: fancams. If we're not sure about it, maybe nothing,” [one] added. “We're going to be on the ball. One of us will be awake at all times. We'll be on shifts like this is the army, except it's the conclave.”
PR Week called it the “go-to internet resource for Catholics and non-Catholics seeking information and gossip on the impending selection of a new pope.”
To each their own, we suppose. Regardless, we will be back tomorrow with more news about the conclave.
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Wednesday Morning, May 7
The cardinals attended Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff (pro eligendo pontifice) this morning at St. Peter’s Basilica. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals, presided. In his homily, he reminded the cardinal electors about what John Paul II once expressed about the awesome responsibility ahead of them—the hope that “during the hours of voting on this weighty decision, Michelangelo’s looming image of Jesus the Judge would remind everyone of the greatness of the responsibility of placing the ‘supreme keys’ in the correct hands.”
Within the hour, the cardinals will proceed to the Sistine Chapel. The master of pontifical liturgical celebrations will proclaim extra omnes, and the chapel’s wooden doors will shut. Cardinals are expected to cast the first round of ballots later today. If and when they do, the official “smoke signal” is scheduled for 7 p.m. local time, or 1 p.m. ET.
If the cardinals don’t reach a decision today, they will return to the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, when they will participate in four rounds of voting every day until a two-thirds majority agree on a candidate.
Over the past century, there have been ten conclaves, which have varied in length. The election of John XXIII took eleven ballots cast over four days, while the election of Benedict XVI required only four ballots over two days. We expect this conclave to last somewhere in between. And, though the Editors all have our guesses, none of us has any idea who will emerge out of the conclave as the next pope. No one does, which is one of the reasons why people around the world are currently experiencing “Conclave Fever.”
On the homepage, Vanessa R. Corcoran, a professor of history at Georgetown, offers readers a helpful and fascinating guide to the conclave, “the mysterious and official practice of electing a pope that has been the tradition of the Church for nearly eight hundred years.” Be sure to check it out while you wait for more updates out of Rome.
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Tuesday Afternoon, May 6
Yesterday, in our morning dispatch, we wrote about the “unofficial start” of the conclave, noting how several cardinals were spotted entering the apartment of conservative cardinal Raymond Burke, a frequent critic of Pope Francis.
This morning, after continuing our months-long Wordle streak, we read in The New York Times about the conservative power brokers gathering throughout the week to try to influence the future of the Church. Elizabeth Dias, the Gray Lady’s national religion correspondent, “reported from palaces and churches in Rome,” following a cadre of wealthy Americans who have met privately with cardinals in between the General Congregations and other pre-conclave meetings. Guests of the NAPA Institute, she writes, took advantage of a “once in a lifetime” pilgrimage for the Jubilee Year to visit Rome. They stayed at the Hotel de Russie and enjoyed a private dinner with cardinal James Harvey at the garden outside his residence. Harvey is one of the ten American cardinals with a vote in electing the next pope.
Former Catholic Herald editor William Cash wrote a similar story in the London Times. Of course, as both he and Dias note, the interregnum coincides with “America Week,” an annual American-led fundraising week for the Catholic Church, also known as “Money Week.” It seems like wealthy Americans abroad, as is their wont, are determined to get their money’s worth during their time in Rome.
CNN’s Christopher Lamb reports that two conservative Catholic journalists—an American and a Brit—are distributing profiles of papal candidates to cardinals, including where each candidate stands on same-sex blessings, women’s ordination, and the Church’s teaching on contraception, among other hot-button issues.
Lamb writes:
The report was compiled in association with Sophia Institute Press, a traditionalist-leaning publishing house based in New Hampshire, and Cardinalis, a magazine based in Versailles, France. Sophia Institute Press publishes the radically anti-Francis Crisis Magazine and in 2019 published the book Infiltration, which claims that in the 19th century, a group of “Modernists and Marxists” hatched a plan to “subvert the Catholic Church from within.”
Fortunately, the silly hours are coming to an end, and the more serious responsibility of what matters most is here.
During the twelfth and final General Congregation today, the cardinals called for the new pope to be a Pontifex, a builder of bridges, a shepherd, a master of humanity, and the face of a Samaritan Church. “In times marked by wars, violence, and strong polarizations,” the cardinals said, “the need for a spiritual guide who offers mercy, synodality, and hope is strongly felt.”
Also today: the Vatican annulled Francis’s fisherman’s ring. Entrances to the Apostolic Palace are sealed. Ballots were issued, and workers readied the “Room of Tears,” the small antechamber off the Sistine Chapel where the next pope will put on the white papal vestments for the first time.
The conclave to elect the next pope begins tomorrow.
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Tuesday Morning, May 6
On Monday, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors said it was “heartened” that discussions during the General Congregations have repeatedly focused on the issue of clerical abuse. In a widely distributed statement, the commission reminded the cardinals assembled in Rome for the conclave that “the Church’s credibility depends on real accountability, transparency and action rooted in justice.”
As Massimo Faggioli wrote in April, the abuse crisis has arisen “like never before” in preparations for the conclave. Many Vaticanologists have maintained that papal candidates should be ranked (or disqualified) according to their record of how they responded to reports of abuse. A particular defining anxiety is the possibility, no matter how remote, of the newly elected pope being “credibly accused” of abuse.
After Pope Francis was hospitalized for bilateral pneumonia, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) released its “Conclave Watch,” a database on cardinals’ records on clergy sex abuse,” in an effort to influence the election of the next pope. The organization later formally delivered complaints against six cardinals to the Vatican. The complaints, which charge each cardinal with covering up and mismanaging cases of abuse, were made under Francis’s Vos estis lux mundi, a motu proprio that establishes universal laws for reporting and investigating sex abuse. The cardinals named in SNAP’s complaint were Peter Erdo, Kevin Farrell, Victor Manuel Fernandez, Mario Grech, Robert Francis Prevost, and Luis Antonio Tagle.
Throughout his papacy, Francis tried to address the abuse crisis, building on important reforms initiated under Benedict XVI. “Francis inaugurated a cultural change, moving away from ideological and reflexive oversimplifications about the issue and the scapegoating of particular members of the Church,” Faggioli wrote in his assessment of Francis’s papacy and legacy. “Still, on the global level, different churches in different parts of the world continue to have differing views on just how to think about clerical sexual abuse and what to do about it.”
In recent weeks, during the General Congregations, cardinals have described the Church’s recent financial and clerical-abuse scandals as “wounds” that continue to fester. They have called for more awareness and greater transparency to help the Church identify “concrete paths for its healing.”
But the participation of a credibly accused Peruvian cardinal in pre-conclave meetings has upset survivors of clerical abuse and victim-advocacy groups. Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani has faced two allegations of sexually abusing minors, including a 2018 complaint to the Vatican that he’d sexually assaulted a teenage boy in confession that resulted in restrictions on his ministry by Pope Francis in 2019.
As of Tuesday morning, the Vatican has yet to issue a statement or clarification about the eighty-one-year-old Cipriani, something it willingly did for Angelo Becciu, Francis’s former chief of staff and former head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, who was accused of embezzlement in 2020 and has since forfeited his “rights connected to the cardinalate,” including the privilege of voting in the conclave.
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Monday Afternoon, May 5
At the start of the war in Gaza, Pope Francis placed a call to Father Gabriel Romanelli, the pastor of Holy Family Church, to express his concern for the parish and the other Christians living in the besieged city. For the next eighteen months, Francis called the parish almost every day—usually in the evening—to check in with church leaders and talk with some of the displaced Palestinians sheltering there.
Throughout the war, Francis repeatedly called for its end and regularly criticized Israel’s devastation of the city. In his Easter message, he lamented “the terrible conflict [that] continues to cause death and destruction” and called for a ceasefire, expressing his wish for “the light of peace” to “radiate throughout the Holy Land.”
The people of Gaza were never far from his mind. His final call to Holy Family occurred on Easter Saturday, two days before he died. The call lasted less than a minute, Romanelli told CNN, but Francis wanted to connect, to share his evangelistic gift, however quickly.
And, as we learned this morning, Francis found a way to stay connected to the people of Gaza posthumously. Before he died, he signed off on an idea put forth by the Catholic organization Caritas to convert the popemobile he used on his 2014 visit to Bethlehem into a mobile health clinic to treat ill and wounded children in Gaza. According to the secretary general of Caritas Jerusalem, the popemobile—a converted Mitsubishi donated to Francis by Palestinian National Authority president Mahmoud Abbas—will be staffed with a physician and a nurse and equipped with rapid tests for infections, suture kits, syringes, and other medical equipment.
The conversion from popemobile to medical clinic is expected to be completed this month, and Caritas Jerusalem will soon request approval from Israeli authorities to lift its blockade on humanitarian aid so it can be delivered to Gaza.
News of the posthumous popemobile follows the recently announced deal between the United States and Ukraine to split profits from Ukraine’s mineral and energy reserves. The deal, which famously fell apart following the explosive exchange between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, was signed after Trump and Zelensky sat down again at Francis’s funeral.
Recently, Victor Gaetan, senior international correspondent at the National Catholic Register, made the compelling case in Foreign Affairs that Francis’s greatest legacy was his diplomacy.
“Francis repaired relationships that had deteriorated under his predecessors and left behind a strengthened diplomatic network with access across the world,” Gaetan wrote. “His successor must now capitalize on the vast goodwill accrued under Francis to advance the church’s priorities of compassion, justice, and peace. The tools to conduct meaningful and wide-ranging papal diplomacy are at the ready. The question is whether the next pope will have the prowess to make the most of a strong hand.”
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Monday Morning, May 5
Dominique Mamberti, the senior cardinal who will announce the next pope, celebrated Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica yesterday afternoon, the third Sunday of Easter and the last before cardinals begin voting for a new pope. It was also the ninth and final Novemdiale for Pope Francis. Hundreds of cardinals attended the Mass, CBS reported, and crowds packed the pews.
Elsewhere in Rome, several cardinals celebrated Mass throughout the day in their titular churches, local parishes assigned to them when they joined the College of Cardinals.
In his homily at Saint Peter’s, Cardinal Mamberti remarked that Sunday’s gospel (John 21:1-19) was “especially fitting” because it tells the story of Jesus appearing to the apostles at the Sea of Tiberia and calling on Peter to lead them. “The mission of Peter and the apostles,” the cardinal said, “is love itself, which becomes service to the Church and all humanity.”
Earlier this morning, the Holy See announced that 179 cardinals (132 electors) participated in the tenth General Congregation, which featured twenty-six interventions on the need for a pope close to the people, the missionary nature of the Church, and service to the poor, among other themes.
The director of the Holy See Press office also noted that all 133 electors are present in Rome and they were all assigned rooms at Santa Marta and the adjacent Santa Marta Vecchia residencies, their living quarters during the conclave, which officially begins on Wednesday.
But, according to many in Rome, the conclave is already underway. Several cardinals were spotted Sunday entering the apartment of Cardinal Raymond Burke, a frequent critic of Francis who has warned that the Church is in a time of “great trial and danger.” And at least one “Vaticanista” is laying out how he believes the first round of voting will go: “The risk is that the candidates with the most votes [like Parolin or Tagle] will be blocked after the first counts.”
Meanwhile, Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is not eligible to vote in the conclave, is convinced that the papacy will “continue along Bergoglio’s line.” Previously, he said the outpouring of support for Francis upon his death, as expressed by the crowds and applause during his funeral Mass, made clear the direction the Church should head. "The people of God have already voted at the funerals and called for continuity with Francis," he said.
As many have speculated, the conclave is a referendum on synodality. But as David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, argues, this papal election is by its very nature a synodal conclave. “Traditionalists who argue that the church is not a democracy where Catholics can vote on what they like or dislike are preparing to enter the Sistine Chapel to, in keeping with venerable tradition, vote on prospective popes who they like or dislike. To elect a new pope they will have to achieve consensus with at least a two-thirds majority—which is how they vote in synods.”
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Saturday afternoon, May 3
The ninth General Congregation took place this morning.
But the story of what we thought was going to be a quiet weekend was Donald Trump’s distasteful—yet predictable—social-media post. Late last night, on Truth Social, the twice-impeached former president and adjudicated rapist shared an AI-generated image of himself dressed in the traditional vestments of the pope.
“By publishing a picture of himself masquerading as the Pope, President Trump mocks God, the Catholic Church, and the papacy,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield wrote on X. “This is deeply offensive to Catholics. He owes an apology.”
The New York State Catholic Conference, the public-policy arm for the state’s bishops, was also quick to criticize the post, writing on X, “There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President. Do not mock us.” Dennis Poust, its executive director, told The New York Times that the post was offensive. “I hope that he regrets posting it,” he said.
Michael Steele, a practicing Catholic and former chair of the Republican National Committee, wrote that the post “affirms how unserious and incapable [Trump] is,” while Bill Kristroll asked J. D. Vance, the Catholic vice president, if he was “fine with this disrespect and mocking of the Holy Father.”
When a senior correspondent at HuffPost asked the White House who signed off on the post, the official response was, shall we say, less than ecumenical.
This is not the first time Trump and Republicans have joked about the president or someone in his administration occupying the chair of St. Peter. On Tuesday, Trump told a gaggle of reporters that his first choice to be the next pope was Trump, before eventually endorsing New York cardinal Timothy Dolan. Later that day, Lindsey Graham, the obsequious senator from South Carolina, expressed his enthusiasm for “the first Pope-President” in a post on X. “Watching for white smoke,” Graham wrote, “Trump MMXXVIII!” And on Thursday, the vice president joked that “devout Catholic” Marco Rubio should also take on the job of pope in addition to Rubio’s ever-increasing roles in the administration.
The president’s most recent papal-related post came after a National Day of Prayer ceremony at the White House, which culminated in Trump signing an executive order establishing a commission on religious liberty. “We're bringing back religion in our country and we're bringing it back quickly and strongly,” Trump said during the ceremony.
RNS reports that the thirteen-member commission, which is charged with creating a report on the “foundations of religious liberty in America,” includes Trump allies Paula White, Eric Metaxas, and Franklin Graham, along with faith leaders Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron, among others.
As of Saturday afternoon, the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops had yet to release a statement about Trump’s post. And a spokesman for the Vatican declined to comment on it. Instead, the Holy See noted that 177 cardinals (127 electors) attended the ninth General Congregation this morning, which addressed, among other topics, the role of the Curia, the promotion of peace, and the desire for the next pope to be prophetic, eager to “go and bring light to a world desperately in need of hope.”
Commonweal contributor Anthony Annett was more direct. “It’s more clear than ever,” he wrote on X, “that the quality the next pope needs most is the ability to offer a moral bulwark against Trumpism." —MD
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Friday Afternoon, May 2
Streaming views of Edward Berger’s Academy Award–winning Conclave reportedly increased 3,200 percent in the days immediately following the death of Pope Francis. Movies about the pope are perennial favorites, and movies about becoming pope are even more popular, as Rand Richards Cooper pointed out in his excellent review of Berger’s “breathless” drama.
To get to the bottom of this phenomenon, PBS NewsHour invited Conclave author Robert Harris on the program to discuss “the secretive tradition of selecting a new pope,” an admittedly tantalizing angle that, like Harris’s provocative book, ultimately offers more heat than light—no matter how often Harris insists he did his own research.
Still, the film is worth checking out and not without merit: it raises an interesting question or two about the future of the Church.
As we get ready to follow the cardinals into the weekend, we’re starting to think about what we hope to watch over the next couple of days, when news out of Rome is expected to quiet down. There are plenty of options.
Episodes of The Young Pope, for instance, are available to stream on MAX. Like Conclave, the limited series starring Jude Law as a radical pontiff has enjoyed a spike in viewership during the interregnum. When it first aired, Commonweal editor Dominic Preziosi and Matthew Sittman, now the host of the Know Your Enemy podcast, discussed each episode in a series of exchanges for the website. Follow along with their conversation at home, episode by episode.
At least one editor is seriously contemplating picking out a movie from the Vatican’s list of “great films,” which the Holy See compiled on the hundredth anniversary of cinema in 1995. The list includes forty-five films, separated (for some reason) into three categories: “Religion,” “Values,” and “Art.” Before making a selection, the editor promises to keep in mind what critic Walter Kerr wrote in these pages about such neatly arranged categories: “Art without crooked lines is unnatural art—inevitably inferior art. And in its production not only the creative mind is betrayed; the Catholic mind, in its fullness, in its scope, in its centricity, is betrayed as well.”
Before the weekend is up, we’re also going to check out an ongoing forum presented by Sacred Heart University about Francis, his papacy, and what’s next for the Church. Moderated by Michael Higgins, professor emeritus and author of The Jesuit Disrupter: A Personal Portrait of Pope Francis, the forum features Michelle Loris, associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, Charles Gillespie, assistant professor of Catholic Studies, and Daniel Rober, associate professor of Catholic Studies and frequent Commonweal contributor.
Any of the above are excellent viewing options, so make yourself some popcorn (and/or a cocktail) and a bowl of lemon or mango gelato, Francis’s favorite treat.
Thank you for checking in throughout the weekend. Our coverage of events out of Rome will continue Monday morning.
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Friday Morning, May 2
Preparations for the next week’s conclave continue. After yesterday’s day off, more than 180 cardinals attended the eighth General Congregation this morning, which started with a 9 a.m. prayer and concluded three-and-a-half hours—and twenty-five speeches—later. For some cardinals, the congregation was their first. Newly arrived in Rome, they joined their ecclesiastical brethren in taking an oath to follow the norms of the interregnum, codified in Universi Dominici Gregis, Pope John Paul II’s 1996 apostolic constitution. These norms include maintaining “rigorous secrecy” about the conclave.
While no one knows how the election of the next pope will turn out, Salvadoran cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez boldly predicted a short conclave. "Maximum three days," he said. Which would be slightly shorter than average length (3.2 days) of the last ten conclaves. The papal elections of Benedict XVI and Francis concluded in two. If this trend holds, we might hear senior cardinal deacon Dominique Mamberti announce from the balcony of St. Peter's "Habemus papam" this time next week.
In the meantime, as NCR’s Christopher White joked, “Habemus chimney!” Vatican workers finished installing the world’s most famous chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel earlier this morning, connecting the smokestack to a stove inside the chapel, where each round of ballots will be burned throughout the conclave. The Vatican fire brigade will test out the makeshift chimney throughout the rest of the day.
Vatican workers are also making great progress in the chapel. To protect its centuries-old marble floor, workers installed a temporary timber platform. Once it’s in place, they’ll set up twelve wooden tables—six on the right side and six on the left—in two rows of different levels. An American priest told a local NPR affiliate that the floor is also equipped with “cellphone jamming devices” to prevent cardinals who forget or flout their sworn oath from leaking information about the election to the outside world.
Rest assured, however, the cardinals will not be without modern amenities entirely. Beginning in 2013, the Vatican decided to install chemical toilets, or papal porta-potties, so the cardinals wouldn’t have to slip out of the chapel to use the public restrooms located in the Vatican museums.
On this Friday morning, we wonder if this final detail is what critic Lewis Mumford had in mind when he called for “greater room for free and gracious expressions” in Catholic spaces in the pages of this magazine 100 years ago.
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Thursday Afternoon, May 1
Francis, Daniel Rober reminds us, was the first cinephile pope, which it turns out reveals a great deal about his papacy. It’s fitting, then, that celebrated filmmaker Martin Scorsese announced today that he is producing a feature-length documentary about Francis and his belief that creativity is at once a means of expression and a path toward transformation.
Developed by Scholas Occurrentes, the global educational movement founded by Francis in 2013, the documentary (Aldeas—A New Story) will focus on the movement’s cinema initiative, which brings together education, film production, and community-building to promote the culture of encounter Francis championed throughout his papacy.
In a statement before his death, Francis said, “‘Aldeas’ is an extremely poetic and very constructive project because it goes to the roots of what human life is, human sociability, human conflicts…the essence of a life’s journey.”
At the center of the documentary are young filmmakers taking part in the cinema initiative in Indonesia, Gambia, and Italy. In between these scenes will be previously unseen conversations between Francis and Scorsese.
“Now, more than ever, we need to talk to each other, listen to one another cross-culturally,” Scorsese said. “One of the best ways to accomplish this is by sharing the stories of who we are, reflected from our personal lives and experiences. It helps us understand and value how each of us sees the world. It was important to Pope Francis for people across the globe to exchange ideas with respect while also preserving their cultural identity, and cinema is the best medium to do that.”
Commonweal authors have spoken to Scorsese on several occasions, including in an interview with our film critic Rand Richards Cooper, which you can read here.
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A new round of papabile profiles dropped, which we’ve been passing around the office all day.
Over at Crux, John L. Allen Jr. spotlights American cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, the sixty-nine-year-old head of the Vatican’s “ultra-powerful” Dicastery for Bishops. Described in the Italian press as il meno americano tra gli americani (“the least American of the Americans”), Prevost hails from Chicago, arguably the most American of American cities, and is widely considered “a moderate, balanced figure, known for solid judgment and a keen capacity to listen”—someone who doesn’t need to pound his chest to be heard. Augie March he is most definitely not. But perhaps being the second or third pababili to knock will allow him to be the first admitted.
Also up is a New York Times profile of Luis Antonio Tagle, the previously discussed pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization at the Vatican and the so-called “Asian Francis.” We’ll continue to return to Tagle between now and next week for a more in-depth look at some of the factors, positive and negative alike, he will carry into the conclave.
For now, though, we want to point out that Commonweal contributor Joseph A. Komonchak is quoted in the profile. A retired priest and professor emeritus of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, Komonchak taught Tagle in the 1980s, when Tagle was earning his doctoral degree at the university. “He tries to persuade people rather than intimidate them,” Komonchak said about his former student, who is one of five cardinals from the Philippines.
Persuasion is a prerequisite for the papacy, as Komonchak knows better than most. He is the English-language editor of the five-volume History of Vatican II and he has written extensively about the council for Commonweal.
Humility counts, too, as Komonchak pointed out following Benedict’s resignation in 2013, which he described as a remarkable “self-denying act of personal humility”—and possibly his “greatest contribution to ecclesiology.” Benedict’s frank admission that he no longer had the strength of mind and body needed for the Petrine ministry, Komonchak wrote, “not only humanizes the pope himself but helps bring the papacy back within the church, down from what Hans Urs von Balthasar called its ‘pyramid-like isolation.’”
At the time, Komonchak said what Rome needed most were acts of institutional humility and self-denial to match Benedict’s personal acts. Rome is an entirely different place today than it was twelve years ago. But Komanchak’s words are nevertheless still worth thinking about as we consider the upcoming conclave and the emerging profiles of its pababile.
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Thursday Morning, May 1
A focus of yesterday's seventh General Congregation was the Vatican's “economic situation.” Specifically, the Holy See's historically troubled and scandal-ridden Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), more commonly known as the Vatican Bank. An estimated $6 billion currently sits in the bank, which was founded in 1942 to better manage clergy- and Church-related finances. But, according to various reports, the Vatican ran an operating deficit of more than $90 million in 2023, the most recent year available to the public.
Throughout his papacy, Francis took significant steps to reform the bank, centralizing control of its finances, while simultaneously improving transparency and ensuring greater regulatory compliance. He also started releasing annual reports and sidelined non-expert clergy from the Vatican’s economic affairs, appointing instead Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, the former CEO of Invesco Europe, to head the bank in 2014. de Franssu was one of the seven financiers—”major Catholics all”—Francis gathered at Casa Santa Marta to help him come up with a plan to get the Vatican’s finances in order, as Fortune reported in this fascinating, behind-the-scenes account of the summit.
Reform remains a work in progress, however, and Francis’s successor will undoubtedly have to continue to clean up the financial mess Francis inherited and left behind. In addition to the budget deficit, the Church is up against growing liabilities for its pension fund, which is estimated to be more than $650 million short, and declining collections around the world for its annual Peter’s Pence fund.
Thomas Reese, SJ, the former editor of America, recently predicted that the Vatican's budget woes would have a “tremendous impact” on the cardinals during next week’s conclave. “They're going to have to elect somebody who's a fundraiser, not a pastor," he said.
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Wednesday Afternoon, April 29
Papal campaigns are generally frowned upon, if not outright discouraged, but politicking is inevitable during any election. The Telegraph describes cardinals, eager to get a jump on the conclave, already laying the groundwork for the papal election in pizza parlors in the Borgo, the village-like quarter outside Vatican City.
Calling these meetings “gnocchi negotiations” and “tagliatelle talks,” reporter Nick Squires puts tongue firmly in cheek before setting the scene: “One is partial to grilled calamari, another cannot resist spaghetti with seafood and a third confesses to a weakness for gelato.” Squires notes that the exchange of opinions, voting strategy, and good old-fashioned gossip shared in this al fresco setting will ultimately prove crucial once the conclave begins.
Perhaps.
We suppose there are worse ways to select the next pope, like measuring a cardinal’s vertical leap and forty-yard sprint speed, as the Onion “reported” occurred at the Vatican’s Papal Combine. New York cardinal Timothy Dolan, the president’s second choice for pope, distinguished himself at the four-day invitation-only event, with a three-foot vertical leap and basilica agility time of 10.8 seconds.
NCR’s Michael Sean Winters is (rightly) more concerned with the most pressing question cardinals are asking themselves in advance of the conclave: What does the church need? “More than anything,” Winters argues, “it needs a pastor like Francis who is committed to the synodal process as a means, the means, of keeping the balance between aggiornamento and ressourcement. There is no other recipe.”
During today’s General Congregation, the seventh so far, cardinals affirmed the voting status of all 133 electors participating in the conclave. Though the apostolic constitution only allows 120 voters, the cardinals noted Pope Francis’s previous dispensation of that voting limit. They declared, “the Cardinals exceeding the set limit have acquired, in accordance with paragraph 36 of the same Apostolic Constitution, the right to elect the Roman Pontiff, from the moment of their creation and publication.”
How they vote is entirely up to them.
We conclude today’s coverage with rock icon and National Book Award-winning writer Patti Smith’s reflection on Pope Francis. After learning of his death on Easter Monday, she composed a poem for him and posted it on social media. Introducing the poem, she wrote, “Last night, before falling asleep, I reflected on the past twelve years with Pope Francis. Although I am not Catholic, I was drawn to his gentle, open, and steadfast sense of humanity. I felt safer knowing he was among us, doing his best to follow and preach the teachings of Christ. It is fitting that his final words to the public were strongly centered on peace. May he ascend to a loving place, visited by the doves of the air.”
Reached by phone in Japan, Smith opened up to Vatican News about her relationship with Francis, whom she met in 2013 and performed for in 2014. Her song “These Are the Words” appeared in Pope Francis: A Man of His Word, Wim Wenders’s documentary about the pope. You can listen to Smith’s interview here. And be sure to check out senior editor Matthew Boudway’s 2018 interview with Wenders here.
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Wednesday Morning, April 29
Earlier this month, Commonweal contributing writer Massimo Faggioli outlined the stakes of the upcoming conclave, which he described as “a test for the institutional Church in an age of crisis of institutions.”
Fortunately, one of the Church’s first decisions following the burial of Pope Francis was decided with little controversy. The College of Cardinals announced the conclave to elect the 267th pope will officially begin on May 7, sixteen days after Francis’s death and only one day later than regulations allow, per the rules laid out in the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis
The extra day gives cardinals more time to get to know one another—a reasonable decision under normal circumstances. And a particularly wise one given the fact that the college’s 135 eligible electors hail from 71 different countries and the 108 electors appointed by Francis will be participating in their first conclave.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols, leader of the approximately six million Catholics in England and Wales, told the London Times that the cardinals asked the Vatican to issue name tags. “It was mentioned that a lot of people don’t know each other,” Nichols said. “After a request, we will also have name badges stating where we are from.”
Christopher White at NCR wrote about Japan's Cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi and a number of other cardinals taking and posting selfies, a popular trend emerging out of what at least one journalist is calling “the first conclave of the selfie generation.” As one editor here quipped, the pre-conclave congregations scheduled between now and May 7 aren’t dissimilar to freshmen orientation at local colleges and universities.
Two cardinals we know will not be participating in the conclave are Antonio Cañizares Llovera, former archbishop of Valencia, and Angelo Becciu, Francis's former chief of staff and former head of the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Llovera is unable to participate because of health reasons. Becciu is a different story. He has previously forfeited his “rights connected to the cardinalate”—including the privilege of voting in the conclave—after he was accused of embezzlement in 2020. A Vatican court found him guilty in 2023, but Becciu’s appeal was under review when Francis died. Though Becciu expressed his intention to participate in the conclave, he announced on Tuesday that he would stay away. “I have decided to obey—as I have always done—the will of Pope Francis not to enter the conclave, while remaining convinced of my innocence,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, in preparation for the conclave, a group of twenty cardinals delivered addresses on Monday about the future of the Church and the problems it faces, according to the Holy See Press office.The cardinals offered reflections shaped by the perspectives of their continents and regions of origin, as well as the Church’s possible responses to specific problems.
Also on Monday, three cardinals were chosen by lottery to assist Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Irish-born American bishop, who is currently overseeing the Vatican during the papal interregnum. Among them was Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization at the Vatican. Known as the “Asian Pope Francis,” Tagle is widely considered one of the conclave’s papabili.
But, as the saying goes, “He who enters the conclave as pope leaves it as cardinal”—and we’re still at least a week away from finding out who will succeed Francis’s position in the chair of St. Peter.
