It May Be Time for a Quiet Pope

The Wall Street Journal, 7 May 2025

After the garrulous Francis, the cardinals may conclude that they’ve heard enough.

With the cardinals locked away in the conclave—the word literally means “with a key”—a silence descends on the Sistine Chapel. There are no speeches. The most frequent words said, sometimes softly, are those of each cardinal as he casts his secret ballot, “I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge.” The formula is reinforced by reciting it before the immense “Last Judgment” of Michelangelo.

The digital age makes instant and unfiltered communication possible. Pope Francis took maximum advantage of that from the beginning. In August 2013, five months after his election, he delivered the dominant theme of his pontificate during an airborne press conference: “Who am I to judge?” Within weeks his first lengthy interview was published in various Jesuit journals.

The cataract of words never stopped flowing. Francis’ official documents were some of the longest in the history of the papacy. The charter of the pontificate, “The Joy of the Gospel,” included a nearly 5,000-word excursus on how to preach homilies. Critically, Francis served as his own interpreter, both ministering and commenting on his pastoral activities. He inveighed regularly against being “self-referential” but spoke without ceasing about his experiences and ideas, commenting on the passing scene from politics to piety.

Vatican reporter Luis Badilla estimated that Francis’ papal interviews included more than 70 that were long enough to be published as books. By the end of the pontificate, the torrent included two “first ever” autobiographies, both of which sank without a trace. Like the peso in his native Argentina, inflation had eroded the value of the currency.

Francis’ decision to be his own chief interpreter and commentator has influenced the current conclave in three ways.

First, because consistency is hard to maintain when speaking extemporaneously all the time, even the Holy Father’s closest collaborators would find themselves sidelined, their leadership undermined. Three of the leading lieutenants of the pontificate—Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state; Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, prefect of evangelization; and the late Cardinal George Pell, entrusted with financial reforms—faced stunning reversals of their authority, having major responsibilities stripped from them without warning. Nothing was stable. This conclave thus begins with serious questions about the administrative competence of those who would otherwise be considered leading candidates.

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