In a very sensitive moment when the terms of peace in Ukraine are being discussed between the USA and Russia, the sickness of the Pope and his silence sound louder than many voices. The era of the Papal State ended more than a century and a half ago. The Second Vatican Council sanctioned the termination of any nostalgia for the Church’s temporal power. Western theology bid farewell to the possibility that global Catholicism could show some fidelity to the Gospel in the action of worldly powers. With that, unconsciously, this theology lost its ability to have insight into human history, the vicissitudes of peoples, and the destinies of the world.
From Scholasticism to modern times, the existence of a Catholic Church that was both an empire and a state forced theology to think deeply about the character and purpose of worldly institutions, and enabled it to shape what we now call “international law.” Catholic theology should start thinking again about those issues, given the authoritarian turn that democracies are taking today, the crisis of international law as a rule respected by all countries, and the rewriting of the world order.
Precisely because he is not European, Pope Francis has given a geopolitical horizon to his pontificate—not to bring about a new clerical domain over the world, but out of evangelical concern for the destiny of the earth and the future of peoples.
Today, the papacy and the Holy See are in practice the only global institutions whose international politics aim to build a common good shared by all. They also aim to solve conflicts and wars leading to a just and lasting peace, and to establish a sustainable approach to the earth—concerned not with short-term interests of exploitation, but with the life of future generations.
In these hours, Pope Francis’ words are not only important for the Catholic Church, but for the whole world—and his absence from the global stage perhaps makes international relations more fragile and volatile on a global scale. In moments like this, it becomes clear that the Holy See should equip itself with an institutional structure to have its say on the many crises occurring on a global scale.
With Francis, global geopolitics has become part of the spiritual powers of the bishop of Rome, making the Catholic Church an institution that deals with crises as temporal fidelity to the Gospel. If the Catholic Church can deal with the silence/absence of the pope in the highest spiritual act that faith knows, that of prayer, the world and its crises perhaps cannot afford to do the same.
It is a duty of theology to find ways that can make the geopolitical care of the Papacy and the Holy See felt and present even in moments like this. The justice of peace, the future of peoples, and the destiny of the earth call today for a Catholic Church capable of a word stronger than death, a word that makes itself heard even in times of agony.
