Pope Francis will face many challenges in 2023 – but it’s a year that also happens to be filled with significant anniversaries, including the tenth anniversary of his own pontificate, the 250th anniversary of the suppression of the Jesuits, and the 900th anniversary of the First Lateran Council. These anniversaries are filled with resonances for the year ahead.
Take the First Lateran Council, which took place between 18 and 27 March 1123. The assembly was the climax of a remarkable 70-year period during which the papacy asserted – and for the first time wielded to the full – all its powers over the Church. This new assertive style has been called the papal monarchy. At Lateran I, finally a pope (Callixtus II) attended and presided in person at an ecumenical council, and the power of lay rulers to appoint bishops was decisively rejected.
Then there’s the dissolution of the Jesuits by Pope Clement XIV, in 1773, which represented the nadir of this type of assertive papacy, bullied by half-believing temporal rulers into suppressing an organisation whose devotion to papal authority was considered by the “enlightened despots” of the 18th century to make the Society of Jesus a fifth column within their kingdoms. They were later restored to favour by Pope Pius VII in 1814.
Until 2013 a Jesuit had never been elected pope. The military concept of obedience which defined the Jesuits would, it was feared, make of these ideal servants potentially cruel masters. Whether Pope Francis has so proved is a hotly debated question in the Church today. Certainly, he has increased uniformity and centralisation in the Church for those who accept the traditional authority of popes.
But as for the “enlightenment” and the temporal powers, ironically the Pope’s critics fault him precisely for an alleged surrender to the state, in the form of the Chinese Communist Party, and to the spirit of the world, in the form of the Davos internationalists with whom he increasingly surrounds himself. Meanwhile, those who are traditionally less comfortable with papal authority (most prominently the German Bishops’ Conference) have enjoyed something of a feast of misrule.
The Synod on Synodality, set to convene in Rome on 4-29 October 2023, sums up these paradoxes. While it is presented as a step back from the monarchical papacy, those who disagree with Pope Francis are not participating in it, because they believe it is designed only to rubber-stamp the policy directions he desires.
Those who disapprove of the Synod on Synodality also think the Holy See’s half-hearted objections to the German Synodal Path reflect the fact that the latter, whose final meeting takes place in March, is a strategy to stretch the Overton window (ie the range of policies one can recommend without appearing too extreme) in advance of the October assembly.
The long-term impact of a papacy is often thought to be measured by the degree to which a pope is able to remake the College of Cardinals in his own image. Here longevity is crucial, as the election of Cardinal Ratzinger to succeed John Paul II, and the dramatic change of direction after the unexpectedly shortened pontificate of Benedict XVI, both seemed to prove. Pope Francis will have the opportunity to shape the Sacred College further in 2023, as ten cardinals turn 80 and so cease to qualify as electors in the next conclave.
Five of the cardinals turning 80 are Italians. They include Angelo Bagnasco, former president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference; Domenico Calcagno, former president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See; Crescenzio Sepe, former prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples; Giuseppe Versaldi, former prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education; and Angelo Comastri, former Vicar General for the Vatican City State. With the death of the Ghanaian Richard Baawobr in late 2022, at the age of 63, the number of cardinal electors will drop from 126 to 115, increasing the likelihood that Pope Francis will call another consistory.
This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and 30 years since Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical on Catholic moral teaching, Veritatis Splendor. The upheavals in the Church over the last 70 years have been associated more than anything else with the liturgy and the efforts of the popes to restore stability in the realm of (particularly sexual) morality. Pope Francis has been perceived as consolidating upheaval and chipping away at stability in these two areas.
From the opponents of the liturgical revolution of the 1960s he faces sustained opposition. From those seeking to storm the sanctuary for the sexual revolution he faces enthusiasm beyond his control. How far he really wants to control the latter, or extend his message of mercy to the former, may finally be revealed as 2023 unfolds.
