For all his towering theological acumen, Joseph Ratzinger was a very practical man. When asked by a Bavarian journalist in 1991 whether it was the Holy Spirit who chooses the pope, the then-Cardinal Ratzinger gave a down-to-earth answer:
I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus, the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.
If electors heed the Spirit’s voice in such a way during any particular conclave, they will weigh several factors to narrow down the pool of candidates to a handful, any of whom they would consider competent to lead the Church for the foreseeable future. Though few would admit it, geopolitics is one such factor.
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Prior to the modern conclave, political motivations were commonplace, if not necessary, for the election of the Bishop of Rome. After all, for well over a thousand years, the popes wielded temporal, not just spiritual, power. Even in the fourth century, it was normal for imperial authorities to determine who would succeed Peter.
The emperor Constantine effectively appointed Julius I to the pontificate single-handedly in 337. Innocent I, who began his reign in 401, may have risen to the papacy for no other reason than that his predecessor, Anastasius, was his father (though some dispute what St. Jerome meant when referring to the former as the latter’s “son”). Although never formally recognized by the Church, a jus exclusivae had been exercised by several Catholic monarchs to prevent candidates from being elected. The institution of the conclave in 1276 and its various instantiations since then have streamlined the process and mitigated the abuse of political power in the election process.
Nevertheless, it would be naïve to think geopolitics had nothing to do with the election of Karol Wojtyła in October of 1978. Appearing on the balcony for the first time, the Polish pope acknowledged that the cardinals called him “from a far-away country” though he was “always near in the communion of faith and the Christian tradition.” Those who knew the Archbishop of Kraków knew that he was a man of extraordinary talent, and they were able to convince others of the same.
He would have been a strong candidate no matter where he came from. Yet no one knew the authoritative, systematic repression of Christianity in Poland better than Wojtyła’s main advocate, the Archbishop of Warsaw, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. It is not as if Wojtyła’s nationality was either the main reason or even an overt reason for him to have collected nearly 100 of the 111 votes that year. But each of those votes tacitly represented the acknowledgment of an opportunity, albeit risky, to encourage Christians suffering in the Eastern Bloc and perhaps send a message to an already tiring Soviet regime.
Although Joseph Ratzinger had spent almost a quarter century working in the Roman Curia, nobody had forgotten that he was a German. He is now listed among half a dozen German popes spanning back to Gregory V in the 10th century. Unlike his German predecessors, however, Ratzinger’s CV included a line indicating his former affiliation with the Hitler Youth, an organization he was required to join at the age of fourteen and something the press was obsessed with reminding us of after his election in 2005.
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More often than not, the media continued to consider his nationality a major liability, such as when Benedict visited Yad Vashem in 2009 and stopped short of stepping out of his white robe and acknowledging personal responsibility for the Shoah. Yet, every soul in the Sistine Chapel casting a vote for him in 2005 knew deep down that no one understood the crisis of European culture better than the former Archbishop of Munich and Freising. In fact, the speeches Benedict gave in Regensburg, Paris, and London proved that he understood the crisis even better than anyone thought.
It was only a matter of time before the cardinals would elect a pope from the Americas. If they had been specifically searching for one, they had a handful at their disposal. Cardinals Ouellet, Maradiaga, Scherer, and even U.S. prelates Dolan and O’Malley fit the bill (the last two, though conceivable under an Obama administration, are unimaginable under Trump). But again, it was unlikely that geopolitics would be elevated as the prime factor of consideration.
Yet, every vote cast for Jorge Mario Bergoglio in March of 2013 signaled at least an openness to a different mindset reflected in the Argentinian cardinal’s “peripheries” speech amid the general congregations held before the formal election process commenced. Think what you will of our ailing pontiff, but never forget that he hails from a part of the globe that approximately 40 percent of Catholics throughout the world call home.
