Pope Francis looks miserable – he should retire

The people’s pope quickly became an ideological enforcer, driving ancient traditions underground

To mark his 10 years in office, Pope Francis has granted several exclusive interviews. How do you explain any errors under your leadership, La Nación asked? I can be impatient, he replied. This is the papal equivalent of telling a job interviewer you “work too hard”, the difference being that in this case it is true. Francis is 86, he uses a cane and wheelchair, and he sounds disappointed. It is probably time for him to retire.

When he was elected on this very day in 2013, he appeared on the balcony in St Peter’s and smiled. The world’s media decided no pontiff had done this before, hence was born the myth of the people’s pope, or what journalist Paolo Rodari described to him as “the Pope of the least”. “It is true that I have a preference for those who are discarded,” said Francis, for he is a humble man and would be the first to admit it.

Showers have been installed in St Peter’s for the homeless. Francis met refugees. He wrote a beautiful encyclical about the environment. And he tried to find a pastoral response to tricky personal matters such as divorce or homosexuality.

“Gender ideology”, however, remains “a dangerous ideological colonisation”. If you find the Pope’s pick-and-mix liberalism odd (pro-gay, anti-trans), then it’s because he embodies less a coherent philosophy than the generational prejudices of the 1960s (for those who lived through it, apparently the most important moment in religious history outside the life of Christ). The era dictates their taste in art, music, liturgy and politics, and this narrow frame of reference not only winds up traditionalists (because Francis’s party rejects some of what came before), but also liberals (because their concept of what is possible stops around the millennium).

Francis has told the website Infobae that he promised the Virgin Mary he’d cease watching television on July 15 1990. Imagine that! He probably thinks Match of the Day is still presented by Des Lynam.

The result? Confusion and frustration. For example, priestly celibacy is not a dogma, he accurately informed Infobae, but a “discipline” that can be “reviewed” – indeed a few years ago it was hotly anticipated that the rule would be lifted in the Amazon. Instead, the discipline stayed put, and only last year Francis called celibacy a “gift”. So, where do we stand? Where are we going?

Perhaps the Pope would like to change things but can’t evade the brick wall of tradition and teaching, hence he’s tried to edge around it by triggering a “synodal way” that encourages local churches to discuss how they do things and investigate reform. The problem is that if you tell people you want to hear their opinion, they’ll oblige, and the German synod delegates have just voted not only to re-examine celibacy and same-sex blessings, but engage with the very gender ideology Francis has called “demonic”. No doubt this will all be cleared up in another interview.

Curiously, devolution and debate are permitted in some areas but not all. A rare source of growth in the Western church are services that use the Latin Mass, the rite used before the 1960s. Francis loathes it and his acolytes are busily suppressing it – because it is old and, he imagines, a Trojan Horse for opposition to whatever it is he’s doing with the Church. This is paranoia. The vast majority who attend the Latin Mass do so largely because it is pretty.

Today one can attend private Latin Masses said by a priest that, if you happen to know when he’s doing it and if the door is carelessly left unlocked, you can slip in at the back and participate. It is like living in the Soviet Union. Francis says he wants a church with “open doors”, so what does it say about his pontificate that a rite practised for centuries, a rite that in no way contradicts teaching and is attended by faithful Catholics, has been driven underground?

These unjust, contradictory methods are doing nothing to fix the Church’s real problems. General Mass attendance is down; vocations are struggling. The people who grumble the most about Francis are priests, sick of being described as “rigid” by a man who gives every impression of disliking them. Stories of corruption leak out: a former chief-of-staff has been indicted for alleged financial crimes (he asserts his innocence).

The sadness of my fellow Catholics upsets me, but my own way of handling the madness in Rome is to ignore it. People ask, “Did you hear what the Pope said yesterday?” I reply: “No, and don’t tell me.” For me, the Christian life is rooted in prayer and the sacraments; counterintuitively, I’ve read more about religion and strengthened my faith greater during this sad era than before. Shutting out the noisy gossip makes room for grace. I suspect much of the Church is doing the same. We’ve entered a kind of internal catacomb, hiding away, waiting for the pontificate to end.

Not just for our own sake but out of brotherly love for Francis. He seems so desperately unhappy. His memory of lockdown, he told Rodari, was “It was raining and there were no people … The Lord wanted to make us understand the tragedy, the loneliness, the darkness.” And the thing he misses from his previous life is “walking, going down the street … always with people”.

The weight and isolation of the office is clearly an intolerable burden. His Holiness has earned a good rest.