Papal elections guided by Holy Spirit, not politics – Archbishop
In this interview with WALE AKINSELURE, Archbishop Alaba Job, Metropolitan Archbishop Emeritus of the Catholic Archdiocese of Ibadan, speaks on the 12-year reign of the late Pope Francis, the emergence of a new Pope and the general character of the Catholic Church
The world still mourns the death of Pope Francis. How would you describe his 12 years of papacy, in terms of his person, his ideology, and generally, what he stood for?
Well, we were not expecting him to live longer, since the last hospitalization. But nobody expected that it would just come the way it came – just wonderful. I could look back at when he was appointed. At that time, I had already reached my retirement age. And the first thing he did, when he was supposed to give his Urbi et Orbi, that is the blessing to the city of Rome and the whole world, was to ask for prayers. He bent his head and asked for the people to pray for him first before he imparted his blessing. And to see that a few hours before his death, he was also able to give that same blessing for Easter, Urbi et Orbi, I think that is very significant. It shows how close to the heart of the Lord, he is. I didn’t say he was, I say he is because it’s a continuation. Human beings are created by God uniquely. So too, are the popes elected and the Holy Spirit feeds them, uniquely, for the assignment they are meant to carry out. I can see that in play. At the election of Popes that I have witnessed, Pius XII, who was dying in 1954 but Our Lady healed his lung – he was living on one lung for so long and he was weak. The election of his successor, John XXIII, who was thought to be just a stopgap, surprised the whole world. He was the one who called the Vatican Council which, unexpectedly, changed so many things. You said his ideology, a Pope does not have an ideology. No. Ideology is for politicians. You can’t come up with an idea of what the Church should be. No Pope has come up with an idea of what the Church will be. Don’t forget, that Christ has promised that He will be with His Church until the end of time and that the gates of the underworld will never prevail against Him. If what happened at the beginning is not enough to bear testimony to those words of Christ, look at the Apostles He chose. He once said, if you don’t believe what I say, believe in the works I do. So, looking at the papacy is not looking at the election of a president – no matter how big or how strong the country is. No. They are individuals for themselves. But the Pope is chosen for the Church of Christ and His influence in the Church cannot be eradicated because the Church depends, and breathes through the power of His Holy Spirit. Until we consider that, we will never be able to understand how Christ wanted to start a new Church and brought illiterates and fishermen. Who among them was educated? But the Church is still the strongest unit in the world. So, it is the Holy Spirit that chooses the Pope. He came in, and from the very first interaction of Pope Francis with the Catholic world and the whole universe, he came in humility.
The Catholic Church is viewed as conservative, and there is the notion that Pope Francis, during his papacy, stirred reforms in the church with a sense of progressivism. What do you make of the reforms he brought about?
He did not bring about reforms. The church has always been reforming itself because Christ yesterday is alive – yesterday, today and tomorrow. Please do not mistake what I am talking about. I am trying to tell you that the Catholic Church is both human and divine. When we make mistakes, it is the human aspect of the church you see. It’s not the church itself making mistakes – because the church cannot make mistakes. Members of the church can misinterpret even what the church is saying. I remember, at one time, some people said, the Pope said the scriptures should be jettisoned for a new form of scripture. He was not speaking of the black-and-white of the Western world. He was speaking of explaining the scriptures. The scriptures cannot be jettisoned and he has never tried to chastise the scriptures. But that the way an African will express the same thing that the scripture is saying, may not be the way the American will express it or the British will express it. And it is high time we respected people, not their colour. And if you are a child of history, you will see how the church developed, how the Jewish church – because they were all Jews – how they assumed Gentiles into the church. Nobody came to settle for them. If we look seriously, with faith, into all that has been happening, I do not believe that he was radical because he never did anything so radical. He continued, but in his way, because he spoke a tongue different from what had used to be used, does not mean that he meant something different.
What are those legacies that Pope Francis will be remembered for?
Humility; love of the downtrodden, of the poor. The church under him manifested the need for the world to honor the person, and to respect the human person. And just like Christ, while hating the sin, to love the sinner. I think he made that quite clear. Yes, they once said he was approving gays, but he never once did that. But he said I’m not going to judge them. They are to be judged by God. So, Christ, who came to suffer for us, who are sinners, still suffers for sinners. To bring sinners to God, let us bring them with Christ, and in the name of Christ to God. Let us accept the truth. If we are working for Christ, if we continue to work for Christ, where he has appeared to different people all over the world, he has always spoken of his love, which is above any other thing. That made him to love everybody, to love sinners, to pray for them. Since He died for them, he is still asking us to bring sinners to Himself. When he is hanging on the cross, he says, I will draw all people to myself. He didn’t put aside some. It’s only somebody who says, I do not want, who rejects him to the last. We are still in the Easter season. On the cross, what did that thief hanging by him say? One said, if you are God, save yourself and save us too. The other one said, let us remember that we deserve what we are getting. Remember me when you get to your kingdom. And so, we should have to accept, we cannot all understand the same way. It is true that sometimes, Francis was strong on some points, and people found it difficult to understand him. But he never enforced anything on the church that is not traditional.
Following Saturday’s funeral for Pope Francis, the Cardinals are set to call for the start of a conclave to select the next pope. While you have talked about the role of the Holy Spirit, some talk about politics also playing out in the election of a new pope. What kind of pope do you look forward to having after Francis?
Now, there is a dictum, a saying, built from ages that the cardinal that goes into a conclave, a pope, comes out a Cardinal. That is a dictum borne out of history, out of the experience of the church. Generally, the Yoruba have a saying that everybody only throws what is good to himself. You never get Filipinos to come and speak of Nigerian being the Pope, just as you don’t have Americans talking of Congolese being the Pope. That is the weakness of our present development. Our present communication skills do not allow people to think for themselves. People force their ideas on others, call that whatever you like. But talking of the election of the conclave, it is a serious act of faith. All the cardinals who are not yet above 80 years of age will have the opportunity to elect the new Pope. But they must be in the conclave. The Code of Canon Law, the laws of the church, has prescribed that. And it has been modernised.
No cardinal goes with a phone to get information from outside. Yes, you have known yourselves, but even if you do not know yourself, with the prayers they shall say, with the mood they shall be in, we believe the Holy Spirit will inspire them to elect a pope.
How do they go electing?
After prayers at mass, a chalice will be placed on the altar. And each cardinal will swear with his vote that he is writing this, making his nomination, not having listened to anybody, but what God put into his heart to do. So it is what we call Oramo Domino, that is, before God, into the chalice with which you celebrate mass, in which the wine was done into the blood of Christ. It is weighty. And the church does not permit gossiping. They are men of honour. They have reached a stage in life. They have seen so much.
So, what type of Pope should emerge?
Anybody who has had the opportunity, to see how decisions are arrived at, not political decisions, I’m talking about the Church, the Catholic Church, you will know that the working of the Holy Spirit, as promised by Christ, is still in the Church. We want a Pope that will follow the mind of Christ for his church. We have been praying -the prayer has been sent round – from Rome, We want a Pope that will love Christ and serve Christ and his people and his church; the one who will be disposed to the Holy Spirit. We want one who will rule the church according to the mind of Christ and for this present era of the church. We want one who will live with us in love and with love, serve the people. Once you have the mind of God, we leave the remaining to Christ to inspire accordingly. We have faith. We must have faith. It is not like a political election, with no campaigns. And we must pray to He who started this church, Christ himself. And since he committed his apostles to the care of his mother, we must appeal to Mary, mother of the church, mother of Christ, with the Holy Spirit and God the Father and God the Son to bring to us a Pope that will have faith, love and hope in Christ, that will have love of Christ and his church, that will be open to the divine spirit to guide the church according to the will of Christ.
Some refer to the Catholic Church as a cult, in its manner of selecting the Pope among others.
How could that be true? The Catholic Church is not a cult but it is a confraternity, that is, brothers and sisters working hand in hand for the progress of all. What does not suit the old church, may suit the young church. Let me use a good example to prove this. Before, in Europe, we never had women coming to read, before Vatican II, during the celebration of mass. But with us, we had had catechists, male and female, who had been doing this. But today, all over the world, there are male and female catechists. You can say, but we don’t have women deacons. Yes, because the Church maintains that Christ did not leave that for us. And he respected women and he gave them their roles to perform in the church. Was it not Mary – the two Marys – that went to tell Peter and John and the apostles that Jesus was risen?
There are peculiarities of today’s era, for example, the growing use of technology, artificial intelligence and modernity. What are those issues, and peculiarities that the next Pope must have his foothold on in the interest of the stability of the Catholic Church?
There is no time in the world that issues don’t develop. As long as God gave us human beings reasoning faculty and a will, I tell you, human beings will always assert themselves. But the point is, look at the ceremony of the coronation of a Pope. When the crown is placed on him, the straw is burnt and the ashes thrown out and the Pope is told, “sic transit gloria mundi,” which means, this is how the glory of the world will evaporate. It means it is in humility that you rule. It is in the joy of love that you govern. From the little I know of the workings of the church, no Pope has ever asserted himself to the point of saying, these are the words you must use. These are the things you must do. Today, there is artificial intelligence. We are pushing things to the point that we forget what has happened in the scriptures – the Tower of Babel – let’s wait and see the outcome. Now, they are making robots, even to bear children. Is that proclaiming the greatness of God or human intelligence? The pressure will always be there, as long as human beings think, as long as human beings have their wills. They will project, but the Spirit will always temper the life of the Church.
