The Pastor's Pen
May 11, 2025
Thanks to all who have made your pledge and/or signed your card for the Annual Catholic Appeal this year. What a gift your contribution is. And what a difference the appeal makes in so many lives. We are a direct recipient of that difference in the form of a very generous grant from the ACA to our Blessed Teresa of Calcutta School of Sacred Heart Parish, to the tune of $300,000. What an amazing gift this is, that helps our parish to support two school campuses. In addition to that direct gift to operating expenses at BTC, families from both our school campuses are recipients of funds generated by the ACA, as well as the Beyond Sunday campaign (over a decade ago) through the Today and Tomorrow Educational Fund. Those funds provide scholarship money to help keep Catholic education affordable for parents. Thank you in advance for your support of the Annual Catholic Appeal, as we continue to be “Messengers of Hope” to all God’s people.
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Sede Vacante. An empty chair. I suspect by now you have heard the term. But it is not just ANY chair, but the chair of St. Peter that is empty. By the time you are reading this, that chair may be filled. Or the conclave, which starts on Wednesday (I am writing this on Sunday night), may still be deliberating to choose the successor to Francis, who will have the task of guiding this church of ours. Certainly it is a time of heightened interest for not just Catholic believers, but all people of good will.
America Magazine is sending out a daily “ConclaveDiary” – articles about the gathering of the Cardinals in Rome, the state of the church, and anything of interest for Catholics who are following this process very closely. The following is an except from today’s (Sunday) ‘diary’.
The first question on everyone’s lips in interviews and casual conversations is: Who do you think will be pope? Who do you want to be pope? The images of Francis that once populated my news feeds have been replaced with shots of various cardinals entering and exiting their pre-conclave meetings who are considered likely frontrunners for the papacy.
On the one hand, this is completely understandable: We are all anxious to know who our Holy Father will be and how he might shape the church. And to some extent, it is helpful. Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez of El Salvador said in a recent interview that the cardinals themselves rely on the media’s papabile obsession. “The names are in the press,” he told Ines San Martin of OSV News. “We depend on the press to know who the candidates are, because names are not something we really talk about in there—perhaps only in small groups. This is not a parliament.”
At the same time, it can all begin to feel like a bit much. The College of Cardinals is not a parliament, and the conclave is not a presidential election.
Ultimately, the pope is not the point. Jesus Christ is. It’s a case that Cardinal Gerhard Müller made powerfully in an interview with my colleague Gerard O’Connell. Describing a “certain populism” that has come to shape the place on the pope in the universal church, he said:
Rome is important, but it is not the center of the church. The center of the church is Jesus Christ. Even in the Amazon, when the Eucharist is celebrated, it’s the same Eucharist as at St. Peter’s. The pope is the visible principle of unity, but not the center. Some have spoken of “the church of Francis”—a theologian cannot accept that. There is no “church of Benedict” or “church of Francis.” It is always the church of Christ, whose visible representative is the current pope.
Like all Catholics, I want to know the name and face that will become as familiar to me as family. But whoever it is, one thing is certain: The church will not belong to him. And the best thing we can pray for is that he, like all of us, belongs to Christ.
Ashley McKinless is an executive editor at America and co-host of the ‘Jesuitical’ podcast.
