Thinking about realities facing Pope Leo XIV

Why I wrote what I wrote about the open Chair of St. Peter and when I wrote it

There’s a good chance that you may have heard that the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics have a new shepherd.

You may have heard this news because, to skilled religion writers (and wise editors who hire them) a papal election is the Godbeat Olympics. At the same time, the rest of the world views these transitions as political elections in which candidates wear spectacular vestments and talk too much about God.

Now, there are doctrinal issues in Catholic life in which ancient truths collide with modern (and I would say postmodern) trends. Catholics disagree on how to deal with that. Catholics in different parts of the world — think fading, but rich, Germany vs. growing, but poor, nations in Africa — are frequently divided.

Thus, there are “camps” inside Catholicism that clash on debates about ancient doctrines — such as the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death, and the importance of marriage, gender and sexuality. Way too many mainstream editors view these conflicts through the lens of politics.

Can you say “Fiducia Supplicans”? I knew that you could. As it turns out, Catholic shepherds in Germany had a different reaction to that Vatican document that sort-of approved the blessing of same-sex couples than did the Catholic shepherds in Africa. (Hold that thought, because I may go there in this coming week’s national “On Religion” column.)

Now, when you are a WEEKLY columnist like me, the clock and the calendar are everything and they are frequently not on your side.

I had already chosen a topic, one linked to global Catholicism, for the week that Pope Francis died. It was too late for me to do anything other than insert a quick reference to the pope’s death. Also, I knew that reporters for DAILY publications and digital outlets that operate 24/7 would be doing wall-to-wall coverage on the loss of Francis and the start of the process to select his successor.

The key term here is “lead time,” as in the gap between reporting and writing and when the finished product will be available for readers.

The lead time for a book may be a year or more, while digital systems have sped things up for certain types of books. For many magazines and journals, the lede time might be two to four months. For others (think classic Time and Newsweek printed on paper) it might be one or two days. My nationally syndicated column ships late on Wednesday afternoons and, most of the time, I write on Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday mornings.

Thus, a pope being elected on THURSDAY is really bad news for a journalist whose column ships on Wednesday, but that column will reach readers on the weekend. Yes, I know — cue the sad violins.

While writing this column for 36-plus years, I have learned to write what I call “sidebars to the big news” — as in topics linked to news that I expect to see unfold, while covering angles that do not depend on specific events or outcomes.

I did take a risk, a week ago, and wrote a column about the cardinal that I (and many others) thought would be the compromise candidate for Global South and conservative cardinals. See this column: “Parsing the words of an emerging "pope able" cardinal from Jerusalem.” We may learn, eventually, that Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa was a player in this conclave.

The key: My goal in that column was not to predict the next pope, but to point to the kinds of sermons and documents that Vatican insiders were studying about the various “pope able” men. As it turns out, one of the two cardinals that I (and many others ) thought would be viable compromise candidates for team Pope Francis and church progressives ended up being elected — Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago, Peru and Rome.