As I put the finishing touches to this blog, white smoke has issued from the world’s most-watched chimney … But to appreciate today’s news:
In a picturesque and historic piazza of Rome (aren’t they all?), one tourist is overheard commenting to another, “They have no premier, they have no pope — isn't it amazing that anything works at all?”
As the “Time In Between” continues, we keep looking back on what Pope Benedict’s announcement began and what has unfolded since 11 February. He said then that “to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel” required strengths of mind and body which he no longer could sufficiently command. And the subsequent month has opened ample space to consider the serious shortcomings, enormous challenges and most urgent problems facing the Church. They have become the necessary agenda of the new Pope. Yet when heaped together, they are more than even a healthy Pope could manage.
But rather than just make way for a younger more energetic man, Benedict’s last act served to focus and re-focus the Petrine ministry. On his last day in office he told the gathered Cardinals, "Through the Church…, Christ continues to walk through all times in all places." And that evening, on arrival at Castel Gondolfo, he urged the faithful, "Let us go forward with the Lord for the good of the Church and the world."
One of the very senior Jesuit confreres I'm privileged to live with goes to the heart of the matter. On the way out from lunch, I ask him, “Does the sede vacante make you nervous?” He shrugs to say No and goes on, “What would make me very nervous is if it were Jesus who's absent.”
Yes, while the sede is vacante, we are much reminded of how the Church fails and what the Church needs, and how the Papal office-holder must have these gifts and those talents and many more. Yet the beginning and the middle and the end is Jesus the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth crucified for our sins and risen from the dead. With Him it is all yes, yes, yes (problems included); without Him it is nothing. The problems might indeed overwhelm a Pope, but the Church is greater than the papacy, and Christ has promised, “I am with you always" (Mt 28:20).
Tuesday morning was the Missa pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, the special Mass for electing the Roman Pontiff. St. Peter’s Basilica was calm, orderly, full with about 12,000 of us called there, it seemed, as representatives of the whole Church ("12" is the whole Church!) and indeed the whole human family, to pray with and for the Cardinal Electors.
Straight ahead of me is the statue of St Peter seated on his sede. High above him, truly High above him we see Jesus’s words of commission: "Tu es Petrus." Does this mean boss? Full authority? Pleni-potentiary? The Gospel of the Missa pro eligendo includes Our Lord’s commandment to each and every one of us: “This I command you, that you love one another” (Jn 15:17). In his homily, Cardinal Sodano recalls that Jesus asked Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" (John 21:15). Christ missions Peter, the Pope, to love more. Anyone who has tried to love, knows what a demanding mission that is, let alone to love more. So, to be the “servant of the servants of God” is to accept Christ's mission to “strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22: 32).
Above me near where I am sitting, I am consoled by a great statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola, very baroque, very dynamic, holding the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and our motto, "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam," for the greater glory of God. His image makes me mindful of the discernment which the Electors need to elect someone, and which that someone will need humbly and truly to say, “I accept.” This we prayed for in Swahili amongst the Offertory petitions: “May the Lord fill the Cardinal Electors with his Holy Spirit with understanding and good counsel, wisdom and discernment.”
During the whole Mass, applause broke out only once. At the beginning of his homily, Cardinal Sodano thanked God for “the brilliant Pontificate that he granted to us through the life and work of the 265th Successor of Peter, the beloved and venerable Pontiff Benedict XVI, to whom we renew in this moment all of our gratitude." Which we all applauded energetically for over a minute within the Basilica, and a generous clap of thunder joined in from on high. Church visible and invisible were one in giving thanks for the successor of Peter, affirming what has been and what will be.
And now we know that Pope Francis is St. Peter’s 266th successor as the new Bishop of Rome. Before blessing the faithful, he asked us to pray for him, and in our thousands we silently did. Habemus Papam!