Preparing for a bad pope

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | May 05, 2025

Asked in 1997 whether the Holy Spirit is responsible for the election of a pope, Joseph Ratzinger said:

I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope. . . . 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…There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!

What may have seemed like an academic question in 1997 gained more immediate resonance during Pope Francis’s reign. This quote began to circulate widely as Catholics struggled to make sense of what was happening in the Vatican. Ratzinger countered a popular misconception that might be an obstacle to seeing any given pontificate clearly. If we are not guaranteed that the cardinals will make a good decision, then we are also not guaranteed that every pope will be good.

Ratzinger gave a good answer to the question he was asked. Yet there is more that could be said. If we only emphasize the role of human choice, there is a risk that we will see events in merely human terms, missing their spiritual significance. While the cardinals may fail to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit so far as their own choices are concerned, there are other important senses in which the Pope is indeed chosen by God:

1. God ratifies the lawful acceptance of a Pope by the Church, so that once the man is chosen, it is God’s will that he be Pope and we be under his authority.
2. All temporal and spiritual authority is given by God, which means that even bad authorities are in that sense chosen by God, even if this is for our chastisement.
3. God’s Providence is sovereign over all that occurs—so unalterable circumstances should be accepted as expressions of God’s will.

We might also take the following principle, as a corollary of the fact that all our merits come from God while our sins come from us: while we sometimes get a better pope than we deserve, we never get a worse pope than we deserve.

St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote in Uniformity with God’s Will:

We must unite ourselves to God’s will not only in things that come to us directly from his hands, such as sickness, desolation, poverty, death of relatives, but likewise in those we suffer from man—for example, contempt, injustice, loss of reputation, loss of temporal goods and all kinds of persecution. On these occasions we must remember that whilst God does not will the sin, he does will our humiliation, our poverty, or our mortification, as the case may be. It is certain and of faith, that whatever happens, happens by the will of God: “I am the Lord forming the light and creating the darkness, making peace and creating evil.”

Looking back on the past twelve years in light of these principles, it becomes clear that Francis’s pontificate was not a day longer or shorter than God willed it to be. So while sober and respectful criticism of Pope Francis was warranted, complaining in a self-centered way about “how sick I am of this Pope” was a rebellion against God’s will—His permissive will to allow evils in the Church, and His perfect will for us to glorify Him by suffering them well. There is a difference between recognizing human injustice objectively, and whining and raging as though we can stand righteously before God and tell him “Your chastisements are unjust.”

In the Church’s trials, our focus should be on the suffering of Christ rather than our inordinate self-love. One who suffers with Christ is not impatient.

We should pray and fast for a good pope out of love for the Church, but we should not look for the next pope to “save” us so that we will not have to suffer or convert personally. The Church is as holy as her members. Likewise, though it is heartening that the younger generation of priests is more orthodox and zealous, we should not complacently put our hope in a reaction against the sins of previous generations. Every generation has its problems. It is a worldly man who trusts in a pendulum.

If our attitude during the last pontificate was one of complaint against God’s will or distrust in Providence, let us resolve to start fresh with the next pope, no matter his quality. Even if he is worse than the last, which is certainly possible, we must be part of the solution rather than the problem. That does not mean merely speaking against the errors we hate, but suffering well and committing to a heroic prayer life.

As a guide to how God would have us respond to current infidelities within the Church, I highly recommend Fr. Donald Haggerty’s book The Hour of Testing: Spiritual Depth and Insight in a Time of Ecclesial Uncertainty. Because even if the next pope is a saint, he cannot sanctify the Church alone.