away from the practicing faith- ful, especially in the West. And although the numbers of Catho- lics worldwide are up, church attendance and vocations are down, and most people continue to look elsewhere for salvation. The pontificate has borne


fruit, but probably not the fruit wished for by Francis; instead, he inadvertently revealed much inner corruption by his own malfeasance and errors. With a progressive pope like Fran- cis, many cardinals, bishops, and priests who dissent from church teachings have viewed him as one of their own and so have felt emboldened to reveal themselves. As the conservative Ameri-


can Cardinal Raymond Burke, known for his respectful criti- cisms of the pope, put it: Francis “brought out into the open all the terrible corruption, sexual, financial, doctrinal.” He “opened up a lot of peo-


ple’s eyes to realise how lethal and how harmful” was the “re- bellion” that took place after the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, Burke added. He also noted how, by sup-


66 NEWSMAX | APRIL 2025


pressing the traditional liturgy that had been celebrated in the church for centuries, it made Catholics appreciate it more. “Adherence to tradition is


growing stronger every day,” he observed. The Canadian Catholic writ-


er Hilary White has called this pontificate the “Great Clarifica- tion,” a period when a “polite middle way” of compromise with the modern world — a fea- ture of all the pontificates Fran- cis, Benedict XVI, and John Paul II — began to die. It was a middle way, or sta-


tus quo, White wrote, that “has no place in the crystal- line world of absolute truth in which God dwells and which the church is supposed to mod- el here on Earth.” It has never worked, White


said, as the church is supposed to be a beacon of truth in a world of lies and deception. Francis has, unintentionally,


through the harm caused by such a close collaboration with the modern world and its val- ues, helped shine a light on this basic truth. Francis’ pontificate, through


GATHERING The pope has hosted numerous lunches at the Vatican for the poor and underprivileged as well as met with transgender women in 2023 that were brought to the Vatican by Father Andrea Conocchia, a local parish priest.


abuse of papal power, also ex- posed a false understanding of the papacy that has grown up in the church, especially since Pope John Paul II, but which dates back to Pope Pius IX and the 19th century. The English philosopher


John Rist has called it “creep- ing infallibility” leading to a kind of “papal absolutism” or “hyperpapalism,” and culmi- nating in the kind of autocratic papacy embodied by Francis. Francis may, therefore,


be best remembered as the chief human protagonist of an apokalupsis — a Greek word meaning to uncover or reveal, providing the church with the opportunity to address prob- lems that would probably not have arisen. That won’t of course excuse


the mayhem, disunity, and an- ger he generated, but will have been achieved in spite of Fran- cis, not because of him.


VATICAN LUNCH/CLOSE-UP/AP IMAGES / POPE FRANCIS/STEFANO PITRELLI/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES / ERDO/FRANCO ORIGLIA/GETTY IMAGES


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