A new Pope is about to assume his office, but what once was a greatly influential position, making and breaking kingdoms, is becoming obsolete, at least in the Western world. Should a new Pope change that?
The relevance of the Pope is hard to measure, but for those interested in number-crunching, several metrics are available. Google Trends shows that, since 2004, peak interest in the topic was always around the time of a Pope’s death, with a slight increase when Pope Francis visited America. Generally, the topic “Imam” sparked more interest than “Pope” over 5 years.
In the last 30 days, the most interest in the topic of the Pope, including low search volume regions, was found in Italy, followed in decreasing order by the Central African Republic, San Marino, Malta, Argentina, Timor-Leste, Costa Rica, Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati, and Gibraltar, just to list the top 10. At the same time, all top 10 related topics revolved around the death of the Pope, except for the eighth which was Melania Trump, while of the top 10 related queries, 6 involved Pope Francis’ funeral, and rather worryingly, 5 were related to President Trump, mostly in connection to the funeral. The most related query was “Trump Pope Funeral“, however, the 4th was “Trump as Pope”. Candidates for Pope (more precisely “candidatos a papa 2025”) come in 6th.
In the ranking of most memorable people, Pope Francis is the highest-ranking Pope at 67th, while Donald Trump is 17th. The most memorable person is Muhammad, while Jesus is 4th. The two are separated by Isaac Newton and Genghis Khan.
Christianity is an Easter religion, and although the centre of the Catholic Church is in Europe, the continent is no longer its strongest base. The number of Catholics is declining as well as the number of priests, while Islam is growing, but is still slightly above 1% in North America, and slightly below 7% in Europe. The trends are showing that it is not religion people are against, although the number of the religiously unaffiliated is also growing rapidly in North America and Europe, and is already the second largest religious group in the two regions.
In the US, the Catholic Church is suffering from a crisis of trust, among both the clergy and lay people, and Americans are concerned about the sexual predators within the Church. In Europe, people want the Church to separate from politics. Although it seems the Catholic Church lost North America and Europe, the mental health and loneliness crisis shows the need for communities, something the church was historically good at building.
Religion is popular in times of instability, and Africa, a continent plagued by crises, is becoming a stronghold of Catholicism.
The new Pope will either be liberal, meaning he would aim to modernize and reform the church, or conservative, whose main selling point is providing the stability of inertia. The stability conservatives are promoting is not as popular as they want it to seem. Under one of the most popular conservative candidates, Péter Erdő, his native country, Hungary, has seen a historic decrease in the number of Catholics, a strong influence between church and state, and a staggering amount of public funds channelled into the church which fails to deliver numbers, values, or support for the educational system.
At the time of writing, before the conclave to elect the Pope begins, Polymarket, a betting platform with a high value of accuracy, gives the highest odds to Pietro Parolin. In the top 5, there are 3 liberals and 2 conservatives. Péter Erdő is the 5th with a 6 percent chance.
The new Pope can either focus on strengthening Catholicism in Africa or on reversing the trends in the Western world. While Pope Francis was portrayed as a liberal, there were accusations of a dark past and Peronist policies. The current candidate with the highest odds, Pietro Parolin, is a liberal follower of Francis, who was involved in bringing about the controversial deal between the Vatican and the Chinese Communists. If the Church really wants to reform, a truly liberal new Pope is needed.
Europe could help foster an environment in which the Church would be a positive force, helping communities. Countries should cut public spending on the Church, following in the footsteps of Argentina, a very Catholic country. Transparency in the Church should also increase and clergy must be held accountable by authorities and the Church itself for sexual crimes and mismanagement of funds. The Church and the state should be completely separated. If the Catholic Church wants to gain back support, it has to modernize and reposition itself on its conservative policies, even at the risk of losing some support in Africa.
In the Western world, the Church should function as a civic society: solving problems the state is unable to, without government funding, with strong accountability and transparency. In Africa and other places of turmoil, meanwhile, it can focus on providing stability.
The article was written before the election of the new pope.
Continue exploring:
Irish, Church, and End of Special Relationship with Derek Scally [PODCAST]