ROME — When Benedict XVI announced his intention to resign, it was February 2013.
Barack Obama was the president of the United States. Less than seven months earlier European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi had delivered his bold “whatever it takes” pledge at the Global Investment Conference in London to save the European single currency.
Yes, back in 2013, Britain was still part of the European Union.
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The globalized world seemed to be holding up, despite no shortage of contradictions, dark corners and the recent memory of wrong-headed violence — the invasion of Iraq, for example.
Apparently the two great Western areas of influence — the U.S. empire and the European soft power — were doing better than a Catholic Church overwhelmed by scandals, conflict and rivalries of all kinds. Whoever emerged pope from the conclave would have the task of saving what some believed could not be amended. The Argentine Jorge Bergoglio was that man.
In 12 years, the plan was reversed. The Church today is decidedly more solid (and global) than it was then. The secular world is instead on fire, out of control, restricted in nationalism, swollen with hatred and violence.
The Western part of our world is sinking into the abyss of an astonishing political and identity crisis. The United States is increasingly similar to Philip Roth’s nightmare in The Plot Against America. Europe looks like the parody of the Austro-Hungarian Empire depicted in Robert Musil’s novel The Man Without Qualities: a continent that is both highly cultured and frivolous, Byzantine and Hamlet, a smug little orchestra that plays while the boat goes straight towards the iceberg. Which, in that case, was World War I.
Where are the leaders?
While the world has become an increasingly distressing place in the last 12 years, the Church of Francis gave the impression that despite itself it could increasingly stand in for fragile chancelleries — or increasingly monstrous Oval Offices — of nation-states or pseudo-unions in reiterating what should be obvious for both the Gospel and the United Nations.
Who continued to talk about sustainability while political agendas continued to fuel the climate crisis? The Church did, in an encyclical that will go down in history.
Who talked about Gaza while the United States fed on the massacre and Europe stammered in embarrassment ? Pope Francis did, no matter how delicate the topic can be.
Who has been on the side of the poor in an increasingly unequal world? Who defended the weak while the world was relying on the law of the strongest?
Out of the abyss
Should we hope that the new Pope Leo XIV can succeed where Donald Trump, Ursula von der Leyen, Javier Milei, Giorgia Meloni and Emmanuel Macron fail every day?
The Church does not have the task of saving the planet from wars and economic crises, from climate collapse and dictatorships.
The problem is that the Church does not have the task of saving the planet from wars and economic crises, from climate collapse and dictatorships. The Church plays an eminently religious role. If it matters politically, it should be an accidental consequence.
On this, I invite you to read the beautiful book by Javier Cercas, God’s Madman at the End of the World, where the Spanish writer talks about a trip to Mongolia following the Pope in 2023.
A world that needs a Pope to pull itself out of the abyss is a world in trouble! But it is the paradoxical, even grotesque situation in which we find ourselves. Can Leo XIV help save us all, and fill the void inside?
