The next Pope will have to tackle distorted notions of liberalism

THE banners in St Peter’s Square on Friday last proclaimed “Santo Subito.” Translated, it means “a saint now.” The process may take a few years to start, but the faithful were returning their verdict much sooner.

Sainthood, of course, is not some kind of a gong which the church hands out to its favourite deceased persons. It involves a definitive statement by the church that a man or woman has lived a life of heroic virtue. The person is formally declared to be among the saints of heaven.

But before this happens there must be an investigation of the person’s life, works and writings, and of any unexplained medical cures attributed to him or her after death. This procedure is the norm in the church today.

The banners in St Peter’s Square go back to an older tradition of ‘sainthood by acclamation’ which we also know well - St Patrick and St Brigid, for example, were never formally canonised in the way that later saints like St Oliver Plunkett and the Irish martyrs were.

John Paul II will have it both ways. And he will be a popular choice.

Indeed, praying for the soul of this Pope already seems like voting in an election for a candidate who you know is going to get two quotas. Much better to pray to him, the way Catholics have always invoked their saints to intercede with the Almighty.

A note to the bishops, then: why not publish some John Paul II prayers now? They will be popular with people who want to make the transition from talking of the Pope admiringly in the third person to addressing him spiritually in the second.

As well as venerating JPII, the Catholic world must now look for a new leader. Next Monday, 115 cardinals will gather in the Sistine Chapel to elect him.

The cardinals will pray, talk, gather into groups, listen to the more influential ones among them, and cast their ballots. The decision they make will impact on the spiritual lives of millions.

The world outside will wait meanwhile, speculating and wondering about the drama within. For people of faith, the election of a Pope is the most important decision a mortal person can make - yet it’s one from which the powers of the world are excluded. Gone are the days when an emperor could expect to have a veto.

Bush, Blair and Bertie may have led the mourners at the funeral, but they must wait with the rest of us now.

One of the voting cardinals will be Desmond Connell, the retired Archbishop of Dublin. Four years ago, on the eve of his 75th birthday, he got the news that he was to be made a cardinal. On the morning of the announcement, I put it to him that he would probably now be voting in the next conclave.

He said he hoped he would never get to do so, ie, that he would reach 80 and become ineligible to vote before the next vacancy arose. We also discussed the ancient practice of bricking up the electing cardinals within the Sistine Chapel. “I wouldn’t mind,” he grinned, “as long as I could smoke me pipe.” With his luck, he might have added, his pipe smoke would have caused major confusion in St Peter’s Square.

Those who know Desmond Connell will be in no doubt about how seriously he will take his responsibility. He will approach the conclave on his knees. He has deep faith, but also a thorough knowledge of church history.

He believes that the holy spirit will guide the church no matter what type of Pope is elected. But he will also know the damage that the wrong choice can do, and has done, in the past. He may feel honoured to have such an important decision to make, but he will experience a lot of anxiety, too.

The church has been fortunate in its run of saintly popes and is unlikely to go back to the days when reprobates of every kind could ascend to the job.

Which is just as well. You could survive that kind of thing during the Renaissance. In a globalised and media-saturated world, it wouldn’t work.

Yet there are other temptations and challenges which a new Pope could face.

ONE would be to cave in to the shopping list of western liberal expectations. Already we are being told that the church needs to make itself relevant by introducing a range of changes: allow married priests, ordain women, change the teaching on contraception and homosexual behaviour and permit the use of condoms to fight AIDS.

There is probably an unspoken list as well, which might include abortion, euthanasia, the dissolubility of marriage, etc. The commentators who advocate such changes rarely give the impression of having engaged with what the church actually says about these issues.

To take just one example, the last Pope believed he did not have the power to ordain women - that the will of God required something else. Some critics preferred to call this sexism than to allow themselves be challenged by the fact that this Pope was a harsh critic of discrimination against women, that he apologised for the church’s past failings in this regard, and that he was the first to appoint a woman to head a senior Vatican commission.

The point is that a Pope must preach the gospel at all times, even if this doesn’t satisfy the expectations of the public. The church’s job is not to act as moral spokesperson for what most of the world thinks. Its task is to evangelise the world and to spell out the implications of the gospel it preaches for the way we live our lives. It is this issue, and not the liberal shopping list, which will weigh more heavily with the cardinals next week. How the western world thinks is extremely important, not only for its own sake but because it has implications for the way problems such as poverty and AIDS prevention are tackled elsewhere.

And just as the last Pope fought - and won - a big ideological battle with communism, his successor must now continue the battle which JPII fought against a certain notion of liberalism.

As with the communism struggle, this involves acknowledging that there is a certain amount of good on the other side. Communism sought to make people equal - but ended up crushing their freedom. Likewise, the liberal idea that people should be as free as possible to reach their potential is a noble one.

But when the liberal world view is expressed in terms of rights - to abortion, to complete sexual freedom, to acquire material things compulsively, even the ‘right’ to be ordained a priest - it ends up damaging society. Untrammelled human freedom inhibits the possibility of living in a community.

The challenge for the next papacy, then, may be to unite the world in opposition to a distorted form of liberalism. The church will not be able to change its teachings to soothe the impatience of its more liberal-minded members. But it must work hard to be as persuasive and pastoral as possible in presenting its message to the world.