There is a general perception that Pope Francis’s pontificate has entered an irreversibly declining phase.
It is not just a question of age: yes, Pope Francis is elderly and in poor health. But aging aside, the pontificate finds itself navigating a descending parabola. It started with the language of ‘mission’ and ‘reform’. Francis’ reign, now nearly ten years old, was immediately engulfed in difficulties, particularly within the Catholic Church.
Given the predictable end of a season, the question is therefore legitimate: after Francis, who will be the next pope? This question is asked not by some bitter secularist or even a seasoned bookmaker, but by the devout Roman Catholic scholar George Weigel, former biographer of John Paul II (Witness to Hope. The Biography of John Paul II, 1999) and author, among other things, of a book in which he proposes a change in the meaning of the term ‘evangelical’: from being a descriptor of the Protestant faith grounded on Scripture Alone and Faith Alone to an adjective describing a fully-orbed Roman Catholicism (Evangelical Catholicism. Deep Reform in the 21st Century Church, 2013).
