for Rorate Caeli
Pope Leo has just held his first extraordinary consistory with the College of Cardinals. The pope gave the cardinals a chance to perform one of their two key tasks, that is, to advise the Pope in governing the universal Church, even before he appointed any of his own cardinals. The meeting came to be viewed as more important when it was announced that it would deal with liturgy, with synodality, with Pope Francis’ controversial curial reforms and the late pope’s first important document Evangelii Gaudium.
The meeting was in many ways a clear mess. Conflicting reports emerged from Lifesitenews and GloriaTV, describing cardinals as being upset about confusion and an alleged continuation of Francis-era priorities, to The Pillar describing more optimism, and fears and worries of the much anticipated topics of the Traditional Latin Mass being shelved. Progressive curial prefects dominating the scene (due to their office) and ultraliberal Radcliffe from the UK being allowed to give a mostly generic meditation at the beginning amplified fears (though, as Damian Thompsom has testified, many conservative Catholics in the UK actually like his meditation, despite the heretical agenda he sometimes pushes).
With the dust finally settled some things are now clear:
1. Pope Leo genuinely wants to restore meetings with the College of Cardinals as a form of consultation and advise for the Pope.
2. The atmosphere of fear and censorship in the Vatican has gone. Cardinals speak more freely and openly about what they liked and did not like.
3. There was no clear pre-determined agenda, cardinals could freely choose which topics to prioritize and topics shelved by the majority could still be addressed unofficially as well as in future consistories. There was no pre-determined outcome as consistently appeared to be the case under the previous pontiff. Pope Leo’s responding to frustrations over time constraints with future and longer meetings make his collegial approach seem genuine and a rejection of the personalist despotism often associated with his predecessor.
4. At the same time, Pope Leo does not want to embrace the other extreme and reduce his role as Pope to a Primus Inter Pares. Nothing was written down. While the meeting is to help Pope Leo shape the next few years of his pontificate, he does not let a majority bind him to a detailed program. When the majority of cardinals sidelined liturgy and curial reform, Pope Leo emphasized that these were still very important topics that have to be dealt with.
5. There is no strong majority consensus in favour of radical curia reform, Traditionis Custodes, liturgical experiments or the continuation of a dogmatic synodality. Even radical modernist Cardinal Hollerich suggested restrictions on the Tridentine mass can be lifted and moderate progressive Cardinal López Romero from Marocco said the consistory was not so much about Francis as about all the Popes since the Second Vatican Council.
6. The College of Cardinals itself appears to be a complete mess.
This last point seems especially poignant. It appears to be almost a miracle (or a sign of brilliant strategy by the conservative cardinals’ block) that the sprawling, bloated mess of cardinals from across the world who do not know each other, was able to elect someone as Pope Leo who can restore normalcy and orthodoxy and help us stop lamenting the fact that Pope Benedict resigned. Many of the cardinals lack experience or crucial knowledge regarding the Vatican and were appointed based on very personal favouritism by the previous Pope, often not necessarily based on progressive ideology but merely Francis having met them once and deciding he liked them. On top of that Francis largely prevented them from meeting and getting to know one another.
As a result, the majority of the current College is not necessarily very progressive, but it’s not firmly orthodox either. Several cardinals from Asia and Africa (including Da Silva from East Timor, Bo from Myanmar and Napier from South Africa) simply showed apathy regarding the Traditional Mass, rather than hostility.
The good thing is that most cardinals seem to want to evangelize, to promote the Catholic faith based on Jesus Christ rather than promote a political or social agenda. The basics seem to unity the majority. But beyond this, the details of doctrine and liturgy seem to get much more muddled beyond a general (semi)conservatism that at least sometimes appears more culturally conditioned (though many African cardinals have shown their defense of Church teachings on marriage and sexuality is based on natural law and the gospel, not merely African culture).
The confusion at the first real open discussion amongst the College of Cardinals since 2014 almost resembles an old sports’ team or music band having to get back into the swing of things after over a decade spent split up.
It shows the need for Pope Leo to strengthen his brethren, to be the Chair from which unity flows as Saint Cyprian described it. Thankfully, Pope Leo has increasingly demonstrated that he is the man for the calling. Firmly orthodox with a moderate style and presentation, prudent and patient, but not indecisive, reserved but not timid, and above all both a good administrator and a skilled canon lawyer.
Both The Pillar and Monday Vatican have stated that Pope Leo treated 2025, the Jubilee Year, as a transition year. That he wished to avoid radical decisions or disruptions which would openly break with his predecessor. In spite of this he did manage to have some documents (by the radical Cardinal Fernandez which were already in the pipeline) revised and removed a few second level curial figures, who were amongst Francis’ worst cronies. Also, almost immediately after becoming Pope he dismantled networks of liberal cardinals who bypassed nuncios to provide liberal candidates for bishops to the Pope.
Now it is said, however, that Pope Leo can define his own pontificate and in the process, define (or redefine) the legacy of Francis, who left certain key issues frustratingly vague, including the implications of his controversial curial reforms and synodality itself. The Pillar noted that Pope Leo can make synodality mean something completely different than what it did under Francis. To some extent it seems this process has already started.
Synodality appears to have lost its supreme status. While it was one of the two topics that the majority of cardinals prioritized, they spoke of it to only a limited extent towards journalists. Pope Leo mentioned it only very rarely, both during his address to the cardinals and during his Wednesday address on the Second Vatican Council to the faithful. Synodality does not seem to have been integrated into the Pope’s understanding of said council. It remains a buzzword, a new style or method for evangelization, not something essential.
The Pope’s address on the Second Vatican council had multiple important implications. While somewhat out of touch with younger clergy and faithful, to whom the council is an increasingly irrelevant footnote in Church history, it was clearly Ratzingerian, advocating for a return to the actual texts of the council. The new Pope provided a clear hermeneutic of continuity for all the Popes since the Council in the process (during the general congregations before the conclave, some cardinals desired such a hermeneutic specifically for the past three Popes).
The Pope’s hermeneutic returned John Paul II and Benedict XVI (the Popes who defined most of his time as a priest and as Prior General of the Augustinians) to primacy. Pope Leo paired John Paul II with Paul VI and Francis with Benedict, rather than the usual mainstream pairings of Paul VI with John XXIII and Benedict XVI with John Paul II. In doing so, he makes John Paul II key to Paul VI’s implementation of Vatican II (and as we previously mentioned, John Paul II in many ways doubled down on and improved the more conservative phase of Paul VI’s pontificate from 1968 till 1978).
The link between Benedict and Francis clearly interprets Francis through Benedict. He cites Pope Benedict’s words to the complex and contested Aparecida Conference, and then claims Francis agreed with it and repeatedly said so. Aparecida has been highly contested between conservatives and progressives for nearly two decades, with Francis (and his allies) seeming to gradually more openly embrace a progressive interpretation after he was elected, now Pope Leo has read both this conference and Francis through Pope Benedict, making Francis a continuation of how Benedict build on John Paul II.
As a result Pope Leo’s emphasis in interpreting Francis is strongly on (the non-progressive elements of) Francis’ first important document Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel). It was the document he cited to the cardinals shortly after being elected and which was now one of the key agenda items and discussed by the cardinals. It was generally framed as a basis for a focus on evangelization radical than on Francis’ more radical agenda items. Cardinal Napier framed it as a return to basics, which oddly suggests the document was not properly followed or implemented under Francis.
Evangelii Gaudium still based itself somewhat on the 2012 Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, convened under Pope Benedict XVI. That was the first synod then Prior General Prevost ever participated in and his only one before the Synod on Synodality. He seems eager to return the Church to that, to 2012, and to interpret Francis through that lens, in a way retroactively validating conservative popesplainers who desperately attempted to read Francis in that light in his early years.
The Second Vatican Council is reinterpreted by the new Pope as encouraging the Church to be more Christ-centered, to positively engage with the world and other religions, but starting in Christ, to engage the laity and to encourage them towards a universal call to holiness. The ‘spirit of the Second Vatican Council’ or a ‘hermeneutic of rupture’ are nowhere to be found.
This suggests a return to orthodoxy that uses and subsumes some unrealized or misused elements from the pontificate of Francis. An impression strengthened by the fact that multiple cardinals who knew the Pope said he disliked liturgical abuses and distinguished a proper inculturation of the liturgy (the Zaire Use) from reductive or harmful forms (the plans for a so called Amazonian rite).
In term of organizing large assemblies in Rome, the Pope still suffers from some growing pains, but his eagerness to improve should be encouraging all Catholics.
At least several of the right cardinals were happy with the way things concluded. Cardinal Chomali from Chile (a strong opponent of abortion, homosexuality and communion for the divorced remarried) and Arborelius from Sweden (an early open critic of the German Synodal Way who was personally very friendly towards the TLM) were both satisfied with the way things ended.
As the cardinals appointed under Francis and the old cardinals get to know each other better, and when Pope Leo starts appointing his own cardinals (on average more orthodox and generally more experienced and suitable) future meetings will likely go smoother. Hopefully they can demonstrate a proper balance between Petrine primacy and episcopal collegiality.
