The Catholic Church engulfed by scandal.
Plagued by power struggles, controversy and corruption.
For the first time in 600 years, a Pope resigns.
With a new pontiff in town, will the Vatican reform and modernize?
The Church is behind about 200 years to the modern world.
Can the Argentinian Pope stop the loss of followers in the West and the Americas?
People just don't give a damn about God anymore.
We've come to Rome looking for answers.
How authoritarian is the papacy?
How imperial is the Vatican?
It is still structured like an absolute monarchy.
I am Marwan Bishara and this is him.
The Catholic Church boasts of over a billion followers around the globe,
with thousands of new followers in Africa and Asia joining every month.
But like all organized religions, it's facing new challenges, both internal
and external.
The oldest and most populous Christian denomination is losing adherence in Europe
and the Americas.
Here in Italy, its foremost stronghold, churchgoers have dwindled by two-thirds
over the last few decades.
In the coming and going between the faithful and the faithless, the battle for
hearts, minds and souls is more than just a numbers game.
To discuss the challenges facing the Catholic Church, we are joined here in
Rome by Marco Tossati, writer for La Stampa and author of several books on
religion, including John Paul II, Portrait of a Pontiff.
Father Norman Tanner, a Jesuit priest and author of New Short History of the
Catholic Church.
And last but not least, Marco Puliti, a journalist and author of Joseph
Retzinger, Crisis of a Papacy.
Two millennia in the making, a flock of 1.2 billion devotees, a legion of over a
million foot soldiers, nuns, bishops, running a staggering quarter of the
world's health care facilities and more than 200,000 schools across the globe.
Still, Rome remains the beating heart of the Roman Catholic Church.
But the far-flung outposts of the Catholic Empire are moving in from the margins.
The center of gravity is shifting.
Christianity is therefore not the cultural property of any particular country or
continent or civilization.
Over the last 40 years, Catholicism has seen a global shift southwards.
An overwhelming half a billion Catholics live in Latin America and another 137
million in Asia.
But while Africa's Catholics have increased by 15%, Europe's have diminished
by the same proportion.
Why are people not going to church anymore?
This Europe that has Christian roots is maybe abandoning its mission.
Corruption, inflexibility, and worst of all, the sex abuse scandals have shrunk
church membership and undermined its credibility.
The sex abuse was a great problem for the church, not only for the type of crime
that has been committed by clerical persons, but also for the sense that a
lack of governance was practiced by bishops.
But not all of the church's wounds are self-inflicted.
Society is changing and society is disenchanted.
People see no need for religion any longer in their day-to-day life.
In fact, unbelievers now make up the world's third largest, for lack of a
better word, religion.
And that's just one of many new and old problems piling up.
The church is facing the challenge of a lot of new Protestant churches.
Think of a country like Brazil, where they say that more than a million
Catholic faithful leave the church every year.
They propose an answer to ordinary people, which apparently the Catholic church no
longer does.
The old church, however, is trying new tricks to stop the bleeding.
Pop star priests, shiny new megachurches, and a Latin American pope will,
it is hoped, win back some of the lapsed and the lost.
In Africa, too, the sobriety and ceremony of Roman ritual is being transformed by
the sweat and song of local cultures.
But efforts to reinvigorate the faith at the margins are not always met with
approval at the center.
There's always some suspicion of what Africa has to bring to the table.
Rome sets the tone for how local churches could practice Catholicism.
Clinging to control, sticking to orthodoxy, insisting all roads lead to
Rome.
Could these be the causes and effects of a church in crisis?
Marco Tosatta, Father Turner, Professor Politi, welcome to Empire.
Professor, is the Catholic church in crisis?
The Catholic church is an empire both vital and in crisis.
It's vital because there are hundreds of thousands of priests and nuns all over the
world.
There are lay movements, associations, Bible groups, charities, hospitals,
school, universities, TVs, radio, and so many initiatives all over the
world.
But in the same time, there is a deep crisis because there are less and less
priests.
And so there are no more priests for the parishes.
And the parish has been the great invention of Christianity.
It was a territory with a spiritual guide.
So it's losing its essential base.
It's losing its essential basis, and there are less and less nuns.
The nuns are the infantry of the church.
If the nuns make a strike, all the church will stop for one day.
Because women are losing interest in the church because they don't participate in
the decision-making process.
And the last problem of big crisis is that people and believers more and more decide
for themselves in an individualistic way about the life of relationship,
the sexual life.
They don't care about the instructions of the Vatican about abortion, divorce,
pill, and so on.
But I think that certainly there is a crisis in some places.
But for instance, now in Poland, there are something like 6,000 seminarians
in Czestochowa for a meeting.
Now, 6,000 seminarians is a great number.
And in Africa, for instance, well, the Catholics and the Christians are
growing in a way that 10 years ago was not even thinkable.
And they are winning the race against Islam.
And that's why Islam has taken a face so terrible like Boko Haram.
So, in Asia, they are growing.
So, I think it's much more... well, we always see Europe and the United
States.
Let's talk about that.
But we are a little bit much too Europe-centered, I think.
Let's talk about that.
But we must not forget what Cardinal Martini, the former Milan cardinal,
a Jesuit like Pope Bergoglio, said just dying last August when he said the church
is behind about 200 years to the modern world.
It's too much pompos.
There are too many empty buildings.
And there is too much dust.
I think this is a strong reminder.
Well, the church has always been like that.
I mean, it's always been in crisis.
I'm sure, I'm not a historian, but I'm sure, as far as I was able to
read, that there have been, even in Europe, periods where the church was in a
real crisis.
It's a living body.
You mean it just lives in a crisis management mode all the time?
Well, I think that Father Tanner can answer better than I do.
Well, I think the professor has spoken very well that we perhaps concentrate too
much on Europe and the Western world where there are certainly problems.
But we remember the dynamic nature, vigorous nature of the church in other
continents.
But don't you think what's happening in Europe and the United States will happen
later on on those continents?
Because what is the problem in Europe and the United States?
It's a question of secularism.
Secularism.
Modernism, right?
Secularism.
And these are coming to Latin America and other places.
Many things.
And also, I think, important to remember that we've had big crises in the church in
the past.
So, the center of the very early church was in Western Asia and North Africa.
And, of course, those areas predominantly accepted Islam.
So, we've had big shifts in the past too.
But I want to go back to what Professor Pulido said.
That there's a certain, allow me, backwardness in the church in the sense
that it's not keeping up with the times.
That on questions of marriage, on the question of contraception,
on the corruption of gays, on the questions of women and their role,
the church is way behind.
It's behind the society.
Behind what?
The society, the modern times.
Well, it depends if the church has to follow the society or not.
The church normally thinks, even Father Bergoglio, who is a Jesuit as Martini is,
was that the church must keep some values.
Some values which, because they are not tied to what Benedict XVI called the
trends.
So, certainly, according to a secularistic point of view, the church is behind.
But it depends where the secularist point of view will lead us.
Well, let me ask you one example.
Where are the women in the church?
There have been promises about women.
Women are more than half of the Catholic world.
But in the hierarchy of the church, there is only two women in the top
echelon.
Well, let me start with a provocative statement.
Christianity is a very deep mystery.
And you might say it's a miracle that there's any Christian in such a deep
mystery.
So, we should be grateful for the number that there are.
Then, as you also said, it's a difficult balance between keeping faithful to what
we find in the Gospels, where we find all the twelve apostles were men, and other
structures like that, or choices which we find in the early church.
And to... yes, sure, you're completely right, the church must update itself.
But these are delicate and quite difficult decisions.
Professor Politi, it's been very slow coming, hasn't it?
I would put it this way.
Fifty years ago, there was here in Rome Vatican Council II.
And it was a moment when the church felt that it was really behind the times.
The church with Vatican Council II had to accept...
In the mid-sixties.
In the mid-sixties, had to accept freedom of conscience, freedom of religion,
freedom of press, the democracy, and also the dignity of the other
religions.
It had to overcome antisemitism.
So, in the middle of the sixties of the last century, the church made a great
effort to become up-to-date.
But now there are new problems.
And the great problem is the problem of secularism.
This means that men and women all over the world, also in other religions,
whether they are Muslim, Buddhist, or Hinduist, they don't live anymore
following the rhythm of the sacred life.
I mean, God is not important when you look for your job like it was important for a
peasant to ask for the rain, to put it very...
So, you could be a Catholic but not go to the church.
Oh, there are many people who say they are Catholics or Jews or from Arabic
tradition, and they don't go anymore to the mosque or to the synagogue or to the
church.
For the Catholic church, there are many people who say they are traditionalist
Catholics for tradition, because their family was Catholic, but in their normal
life, they are absolutely no more really believers.
And there are also increasing atheism as well around the world.
I would say that atheism is increasing, but above all, indifference is increasing.
People just don't give a damn about God anymore.
That's the problem.
Because there are so many beautiful things all around.
There is a do-it-yourself religion.
Not everybody, but a lot of people, more and more in the modern society,
Christian societies, are building their own rules and their own commandments,
and that's the problem.
And they would especially do that, Marco, when they look at what some in the
church are doing, for example, in the sex abuse, in the abuse cases.
That doesn't count very much.
I mean, you start thinking about yourself before.
You don't start thinking...
You don't think the crisis in the child abuse case was not important?
I think it was certainly important for the church.
It was not very important for the outside of the church.
I mean, the most of the cases of abuse happens in families, 70%.
And the number, the percentage of priest abusers was not higher than Muslim men or
rabbis.
I mean, that's a very touchy point, and 80% of this was not really pedophilia.
You are contradicting all the reports.
Yes, of course.
The 80% of the priests condemned in the United States for abuse was homosexual,
and they didn't do sex with somebody under the age of puberty.
But we're talking about tens of thousands of cases.
Anyway, that doesn't matter at all about the process of secularization.
You decide to do what you like, apart from religion, before.
And that's something that you breathe right now in our society.
We can say there are two phenomena.
One is the lose of belief just in the dogmas of the church.
And this is a process which is going on every decade more and more.
But the sex abuse scandal was a mortal blow to the credibility of the church as
institution, of the structures.
So that's the point, because when Pope Benedict said to the bishops of Ireland,
but it was the same message to the bishops all over the world, you didn't do your
job, you didn't follow the rules, you didn't bring the criminal priests to
the court, you didn't listen to the victims.
This means that this was a great failure for the credibility of the structure and
of the institution.
And just the challenge today is just to reorganize the institution, and I would
say also to democratize the institution.
We're going to get to that, Professor Britti.
But Father Tanner, what Professor Polit is saying, even if Marco Tosati is right
about it, it's not huge in terms of number.
But in a world of new media and satellite media, I tell you, anywhere I go,
I hear about the complaints of what those, minority or otherwise, in the church are
doing in the name of the church.
Well, the sexual abuse is a very grave sin, there's no doubt.
And especially priests with minors, that's a very, very serious sin.
But as colleagues have said, it's obviously important to remember there are
plenty of other very serious sins, and not to remember the seriousness of
other sins, and not focus exclusively on the sexual abuse, which nevertheless is
very serious.
I'd just like to also, on the optimistic side, as Professor said, the Vatican II
undoubtedly was a huge, tremendously important moment.
And it's taken a long time, 50 years, for the Catholic Church to digest this big
council.
And just one corollary on that, that we tend to think, well, all the
change and the responsibilities are on the Pope and the bishops.
But remember all the activity of the ordinary Catholics and Christians,
clergy, laity.
And in all sorts of ways, they've been bringing the church forward.
But I want to ask you particularly about that, Father.
It's been said that the Catholic Church asks its believers, its adherents,
to follow what it says, not what its clergy do.
That's kind of hypocritical, isn't it?
I mean, the men of the cloth, the men of the church, need to do exactly what they
preach.
Who does?
The people of the church should.
Should, but not only the people of the church, the politicians should.
And the high authorities in all other religions should.
Do they?
But then they lose credibility.
Well, everybody loses credibility, but it seems that the only place where
there's hypocrisy is the Catholic Church, of course.
I think also we should be very grateful for the journalists for bringing attention
to these difficulties within the Catholic Church to the public attention.
We must not forget one difference.
I mean, if there is a sex abuse scandal in a football club or also in a political
party, it is different whether it happens in the Catholic Church, which wants to be
the supreme teacher of morality.
Because a football club or a political party...
We don't expect them to...
You're right, Marco, but there have been a terrible...
Let's get to the part about Latin America, because I think apparently that's where,
aside from Europe and here maybe in Italy, it's in Latin America, Brazil,
the biggest country, that is facing the biggest challenges, where it's really
losing a lot of its believers.
Marco Politti, why is Latin America turning its back to the Catholic Church?
Well, one must never forget the situation of humiliation and of material needs of
millions and millions of people in Latin America.
Of course, also in other parts of the world.
I was in many travels of John Paul II with him, and for me it was very important to
come to the favelas, to these places where people live under human dignity.
And during the 70s, a lot of these people in the basis communities and with the
liberation theology had a perspective, maybe an utopistic perspective,
of something new, of the possibility of an advancement, of opening a new page of
history.
The Vatican has crushed down liberation theology in Latin America, and a lot of
people felt abandoned, and so they have turned to the evangelical groups which
promise health, to become rich, to live better.
And this, of course, is also utopistic, but the fact is that from Central America
to South America, a lot of people turn to these evangelical groups.
Millions and millions leave the Catholic Church.
The evangelicals from North America, they finance these confessions,
and they do what the Church doesn't do.
They help, practically, the people.
And that's why there's such a great... they turn their back to the Church,
and they go to the evangelicals for this reason.
But this does not contradict what Marco Politti said, in the sense that there's a
fertile ground, because people are disappointed with the Catholic Church,
as it turns its back on liberation theology.
I don't think so very much.
I think that, really, they meet somebody who can tell, OK, I'll help you to find a
work, I'll help you to find a house, and they have the means to do it.
The Catholic Church is the richest church.
Where?
The Catholic Church is the richest church.
How many hospitals and librosari and health system the Catholic Church have in
all over the world?
So that should be a problem, then, in Latin America?
Well, it's rich here.
I mean, you see beautiful things, but it's not so rich.
Even the Catholic Church hierarchy knows that, for instance, in many parishes are
living a bureaucratic life.
And these evangelical communities give you the sense of community.
That they are more in touch with...
In Brazil, a lot of people, of poor people, pay also taxes to these
communities.
They don't get... so they make a personal sacrifice to be part of the communities
where they sing and live together.
Do you think, Father Turner, before we go to a news break, you think this decline in
the Catholic Church in Latin America and elsewhere, you think this is reversible,
or is it irreversible?
Well, first of all, obviously the Catholic Church remains very strong in Latin
America.
And it's certainly far from perfect.
We're a church of sinners.
And then another point I'd like to emphasize is the other Christian churches
who, as you say, are gaining numbers.
We remember that they are our brothers and sisters in Christ.
And they are Christians, and in that sense we're close to them.
And we're very grateful to them for all the good things they do.
And they also actually help the Catholic Church to be... it criticizes the Catholic
Church and helps the Catholic Church to...
But there must be some competition and jealousy.
What?
There must be some competition and jealousy.
Well, there is competition, but we should also see the cooperation.
Gentlemen, we're going to take a news break.
Good.
And when we come back, we will look at what the next Pope is able to do for the
Catholic Church.
After another news break.
Everything about this place is grand and gilded.
The columns soar.
The costumes shimmer.
The voices echo.
And the crowds roar.
Vatican City, a world unto itself, home to history's most durable hierarchy.
All this began with the Christianization of the Roman Empire, giving birth to an
imperial Vatican, a Catholic empire.
And at the very heart of it, the Pope himself, a medieval emperor in the modern
world.
He who leads for life.
He who presides over powerful Curia, assisted by an assembly of cardinals not
different from the Senate of ancient Rome.
In 1870, the Church officially declared the Pope infallible, incapable of error on
matters of moral and principle.
But supreme though the pontiff may be, his election reflects the Vatican's
responsiveness to the outside world.
Over the last 50 years, three different Popes have left their mark on the Church.
Paul VI was the first Pope to visit the United States.
Leading the Church after the Second Vatican Council, he would begin the
dialogue between the Church and the modern world.
After his death, a political Polish Pope, John Paul II, presided at the height of
the Cold War, setting the Church at the center of a polarized world, daring to
take sides, defying the Soviet Empire.
But the next Pope would turn inward.
Benedict was focused on theology and theory.
His distance and disconnection would lead to a series of major scandals,
widening the rift between Rome and Muslims, Jews, women, and reform-minded
Catholics around the world.
This year brings a new Pope, and the choice of the man now holding the reins of
power suggests that even the Vatican, so set in its ancient ways, is capable of
doing the unexpected.
Really, the election of Pope Francis was a surprise.
And the first Jesuit Pope, the first Latin American Pope, not Italian, not connected
with the Roman Curia.
Even his choice of a name was a surprise, and perhaps a signal.
St. Francis was a man who built his little community against the traditional Church,
against the Curia.
So to see the Pope choose, paradoxically, the name Francis, the anti-Rome
establishment man, is quite extraordinary.
So the big questions of Francis' papacy, can he live up to his name?
Can he overcome the Curia?
Will he offer, like his namesake, a more humble and modest vision of the
Catholic Church, one devoted to peace and the poor?
He is asking the clergy to be credible.
And being credible is about having a lifestyle similar to the one that most
people have, in order to feel closer to them, in order to get inside their hearts,
and in some way, share life with them.
Francis is said to oppose any deviation from conservative Church doctrine on
social issues.
And yet there are high hopes he will get the Church out of its reactionary rut and
steer it in a new direction.
In Latin, pontiff means bridge.
So the question is, can this new Pope bridge the gap between an ancient
institution in crisis and a modern world in turmoil?
Gentlemen, welcome back.
Father Tanner, you've wrote a book about the new history of the Catholic Church.
Tell me, would you say that the Catholic Church is built on the model of the Roman
Empire?
Well, there are certainly big influences.
The Roman Empire was the Roman Empire when Christ was born.
He was part of the Roman Empire, and it had a big influence for the first
400 years.
But the world democratized since.
You think the Catholic Church should probably democratize as well?
Well, we have to... yes and no, should I say.
We have a long history, institutions which have built up, bishops and Pope and so on.
But equally, we have to... the Church has always tried to adapt to the century in
which it's existed, sometimes better and sometimes not so well.
And of course, as has been mentioned, the Vatican too gave a huge impulse to the
Catholic Church to modernize.
Professor Politti, would you say that some of the problems we mentioned in the first
half could have been resolved or could have been avoided if the structure wasn't
so authoritarian?
I would say that it's very interesting what were the first words of Pope Francis
when he got to the loggia and spoke to the Roman people just a few hours after he was
elected.
He said, the Roman Church chairs the other churches with love, which is an old
expression of the first centuries of Christianity.
This means that he wants the Vatican here, the center, not to be a bureaucratic
center, a power center, but more a federative center, who with the other
bishops of the world decides what are the strategies and how to resolve the
problems.
Certainly, a lot of problems come to the Catholic Church by the fact that it is
still structured like an absolute monarchy.
The Pope, until the moment of the election of Francis, was the absolute monarch,
a sort of semi-divine emperor.
The red shoes are still the purple shoes of the Roman emperors.
Pontiff is a pagan name, it's not a Christian name.
And diocese means department in the old administrative division.
So it was modeled over the idea of a Pope, especially in the last 500 years,
of a Pope who decides everything alone.
Now it's the moment that the Pope has to decide and makes its choices together with
the bishops of the world.
Certainly, the Church is a monarchy, but it's a very, very particular monarchy.
I mean, I don't think that in the last 400 years there's been a single decision taken
by a Pope without consulting a lot of other people.
Because he's the emperor.
He's the emperor, no, he's the king.
As an ordinary priest, the ordinary Catholics have a better balance and
they're not really quite as focused on the hierarchy.
But shouldn't they be focused on the hierarchy?
The hierarchy of bishops, Pope, very important, but the life of the Church
very much comes from the faithful, from below.
But it's your, let me call it revisionist reading of the history of the Catholic
Church, that connects the institutionality of the Church with the religious,
strictly religious practices of the Church.
Well, that's a good point.
I mean, there's always been two senses of the Church.
The Church, the word, the Church.
We think of the hierarchy of the Church, Pope and Bishop and so on.
And then secondly, the Church is the people of God, the people of God,
the faithful.
So you have to keep, we need both as it were, but you have to keep them both in
balance.
But do you think the question of the sexual abuse and other issues that were
problematic would have been resolved if there were more transparency and
accountability within the Church?
Yes, and I think I've said that already.
I think that we're grateful for the journalists and other people who've
brought this very serious sin to public knowledge.
And you're absolutely right that the institutional Church did try to cover it
up too much.
And there were also the problems of money and the Vatican Bank and so on and so
forth.
Both Benedict XVI and both John Paul II and both Francis now talk about the
hierarchy as a service.
Now, that's the main point.
What do you mean hierarchy as a service?
Service.
You are here.
I mean, Benedict XVI didn't want to become a Pope.
He was ready to go to his books and so on.
And he accepted.
He accepted as a service.
Yes, he sacrificed himself because he knew very well that he didn't like it.
He has tried already to resign a couple of times.
He didn't want to.
You take a great charge on yourself.
Not because it gives power, because the powers in the world are not the Church.
The powers are petrodollars and a lot of other things, financial...
This is called soft power, Marco, to sacrifice.
Soft.
I mean, you don't have a real power.
Regardless of the personal sacrifice of the Pope as an individual, but the
position he holds...
What does it give you?
No, no.
The position he holds is, of course, a very influential social position.
But you cannot take decisions that are against some people because otherwise you
have big problems.
You see, Benedict XVI took some decisions and he had a very divided opinion on some
things.
And he was not very helped, and so that really crushed him.
I mean, from a physical point of view.
So you have to have a consensus, even if you are a monarch.
Father Tanner, the part about infallibility...
I mean, that is pretty problematic for me, that a person, an intelligent person...
Intelligent or otherwise.
Infallibility is a problem for me in the modern world.
Why would we give anybody that is human that quality of never, ever making a
mistake?
Well, I think, may I suggest, you read carefully what the First Vatican Council
in 1870, when it made the definition, and it said that... it didn't simply say
the Pope is infallible.
It said when he is speaking solemnly as Pope on matters of faith and morals,
he enjoys the infallibility, the prevention from error, which Christ willed
his Church to possess.
So that the infallibility of the Pope is put very neatly within the infallibility
which is given to all of us as Christians.
But it was interpreted in various problematic ways throughout history.
It is also interpreted in a very problematic way within the Catholic Church
itself.
I mean, the proclamation of the infallibility of the Pope more than 100
years ago was actually the top of the evolution of the monarchic system.
Since then, only once the infallibility has been used, because the Catholic world
itself, the bishops and the cardinals know that it makes problem.
But what is interesting is to see that in these days, after the election of Pope
Francis, a revolution is going on, at least in the declarations.
Because when the Pope comes out, Francis, and never uses the word pontiff,
it has a meaning.
He speaks about himself only about bishops.
He continues to wear his black shoes.
He doesn't live in the papal apartment, but just in the little hotel within the
Vatican.
So, do you think that Pope Francis is going to be a transformative Pope?
Certainly, he wants to be a transformative Pope.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have named himself Francis.
Which connotates what exactly?
Well, Francis, in the Middle Ages, there was a famous dream of Francis when
Jesus was telling him, come and repair my church, restore my church.
So he's a reformer?
He can be a reformer.
At least we can see now three goals.
The first goal is to reorganize the Roman Curia and to bring also a slimming therapy
to the central government of the church.
The second goal is to bring to the church more transparency.
And certainly he will change also the situation of the Vatican Bank.
And the third big goal is to have a church which is more collegial, as Vatican
Council to ask.
What means collegiality?
It means that the bishops of the world are part of the decision-making process of the
strategy of the Popes.
That the church is ruled by the Pope with the bishops.
This would be really a great revolution in the life of the church.
Transformation.
Well, that sounds pretty transformative for me.
Yes, it will transform something, certainly.
And it was what Benedict XVI wanted to do.
He certainly didn't, right?
He had no strength to do it.
Because, you know, the church, I mean the church top as we know it,
it's been created in the 70s by Paul VI.
Now it's 40 years.
And you don't have an institution which has lasted without changes in its
organization at the top in 40 years.
I mean, certainly, it's high time.
That's not a very positive thing.
Not at all.
But John Paul II didn't want to do it.
And he was not probably much interested.
He wanted to go around and say, OK, I have some good news to tell you.
And Benedict XVI, he did a lot of things.
But he did something that's not covered by the media.
He chased more than 80 bishops.
And he worked every day on the curricula of the new bishops to be appointed.
Because he knew that the church is strong if the bishop is strong and is a good
person.
And all the problems, for instance, the abuse you like so much, well,
they were originated by local bishops.
And some of them were, most of them, I mean, very progressive bishops.
If I can add something, Marco was speaking about John Paul II.
John Paul II understood that he couldn't rule anymore the church just sitting in
Rome.
That's because he was going around all over the world.
And now Pope Francis understands that the bishops from all over the world have to
come to Rome to give him suggestions.
That's the reason why just a few days ago he has formed a crown council.
He has created a crown council of cardinals, of eight cardinals,
of all over the world.
And the Europeans in this crown council are only two Europeans.
And there's an Indian and an African.
There is an Indian and African.
There are three from the Americas.
One from North America, especially the cardinal of Boston, Sean O'Malley,
who was so strong against the sex abuse scandals.
Two from Latin America.
So, Father Turner, the fact that he was elected in the fifth round by 90
cardinals, what does that say to you?
Well, that was a much quicker election than we'd expected, or at least I as an
amateur.
Although, remember, because Benedict had resigned and then we had nearly a month of
actual preparation before the actual concave began.
So it was not so hasty as one might think.
And now with those 90 votes, Marco Politi, do you think Pope Francis is going to have
not just the will but the capacity to impose a new vision for the Church?
Well, he got more votes than Ratzinger.
And just the fact that he created a Crown Council of eight cardinals from all over
the world means also that he wants the bishops and the cardinals to be part of
the renewal process.
And we must not forget that within the Roman Curia, he finds allies in his reform
policy because the Roman Curia is structured in different parties,
if we can say so.
And some parties also before the conclave were absolutely in favor of a Pope coming,
not from Europe, not from Italy, not from the Vatican.
And they were in favor of this Latin American Pope.
And he's an Argentinian, but he's also originally Italian.
Yes, he's a Jesuit.
I mean, that certainly helps him to have a very clear vision of all what is needed.
Why is that?
Because the Jesuits are very well trained and they are capable people, normally
speaking, I think.
They know how to do the hard work.
They know how to do politics within the church and outside the church.
Something that Ratzinger did not do very well?
No, he was absolutely a non-political temperament, a non-geopolitical
temperament.
He was certainly somebody who saw a problem, the cleanness of a church,
and he worked as a devil to leave his successor a stronger and a cleaner church.
That's what he did.
Ratzinger, absolutely, absolutely.
But the church was absent from the world of Marco Tosatti.
Was it?
I don't know.
I don't think so.
Certainly John Paul was part of the present.
If you go around here and you go in a parish and you see how the church is
present in the real world, the people who need something go to the parish.
You don't think John Paul was far more active and far more present in the world
than Ratzinger?
He was a media man.
I loved him very much, but he was a media man and he did a great job.
Ratzinger did really what Kipling said, the toil of serf and sweeper.
A tale of common things, but he did a beautiful, great job.
According to me, he was a great secret pope.
But he was not so present on the international political scene.
Certainly John Paul II was more active.
Ratzinger had absolutely no temperament for geopolitical problems.
Since Marco Politi wrote the book about Ratzinger, we're going to...
But let's say something.
The church, in the political affairs of the world, doesn't count anything.
There's been a Madrid meeting about Terra Santa, Palestine, and the church,
it was the time of John Paul II, was not even invited.
Because the real powers of the world don't give a damn about what the church says.
John Paul made a very clear position, took a very clear position on the war in
Iraq in 2003, and he followed it up.
There have been some major transformations in the Arab world over the last several
years, including the Arab Spring.
We don't hear much from the church.
Well, that's the difference between the two popes.
John Paul II was a geopolitical pope.
He really organized for months a policy in order to isolate Bush and Blair,
who never got the majority of the Security Council, because some Catholic countries,
Mexico and Chile, didn't vote for Bush and Blair in the Security Council.
So at least John Paul II succeeded in showing that the Iraqi war was an American
affair, was not the war of the West against the East and of the Christian
world against Islam.
What is certainly a sign of the failure of Ratzinger as a political pope on the
international scene is the fact that during the Arab Spring, he never made a
wide-range speech on this phenomenon.
The bishops of the Middle East, of course, intervened, spoke and made
declarations.
But not the pope as such.
It's been 50 years since the Second Council.
Do you think it's time for a Third Council?
Do you think Pope Francis is able to do that major transformation that church
needs through a major participatory sort of consultation like a Third Council?
Well, I think the councils come when the Holy Spirit inspires the church to have
them.
We may think that a council is a solution to every problem.
No.
There are a number of these big councils which have gone badly wrong, which we tend
to forget about.
So, personally, I'm cautious about the need to have another council.
Marco Politi?
Cardinal Martini, in the year 1999, asked for a Third Vatican Council or at
least an assembly of representative bishops from all over the world.
He had no great luck, neither with John Paul II nor with Pope Ratzinger.
But I think this little cardinal working group, which has been established by Pope
Francis...
With eight members.
With the eight members from all over the world, can be the first step for
establishing a mechanism of permanent consultations.
And if the bishops have the possibility to meet regularly on special issues,
they can solve some problems which are still on the table, like the problems of
the priests or also the women issue.
More speeches and more documents and more speeches and more documents.
And you don't think that helps?
Oh, I don't think so.
I mean, the Vatican Council still has to be applied.
And I think that's the main problem.
I think that certainly to lead 1,200,000 Catholics from so different places like
Alaska and Mindanao, it's something that needs a great capacity of consultation.
And I think that... but it happens.
I mean, the people here in Rome doesn't pass their time doing this.
They don't?
They don't.
Even if John Paul XXIII, when they asked how many people does it work in the
Vatican, he says nearly the half.
They do work and they do this for the church.
I mean...
But they have to decide on new problems.
They have to decide on new problems.
Gentlemen, the discussion goes on.
I must come back in order for us to continue this at other time.
For the time being, thank you for joining Empire.
And I'll be back for a last thought.
Over the last few days, I've been asked whether this program is about religion.
It is not.
As always, Empire is about transnational and global power.
Its use, misuse, and abuse.
The Vatican is no exception.
Power, you see, is about the accumulation of means.
Soft, hard, organizational, financial, all need to be put in check.
In that way, abuse in the church, by the church, or by any other religious
authority needs to be examined without prejudice.
In fact, the greater the presumption of a higher moral calling, the greater the need
for public scrutiny.
Remember, power has no religion.
And remember to follow us on Facebook and Twitter and write to me with your feedback
and suggestions.
Until next time.
Thank you for watching.