The American Catholic Church, at times bitterly divided during the Francis Papacy, stands at a crossroads at the start of the conclave to select his successor. I invited three emerging voices in American Catholic media for this candid roundtable discussion — figures I frequently look to for insight and clarity amid the complexities of this moment: Katie Prejean McGrady, a Vatican analyst for CNN and host of the Katie McGrady Show on Sirius XM; David Deavel, a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and senior contributor at the Imaginative Conservative; and Dr. Marcus Peter, director of theology at Ave Maria Radio and the Kresta Institute.
This transcription has been lightly edited for clarity.
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Peter Laffin: The Francis Papacy in a word?
David Deavel: Chaotic.
Marcus Peter: To put it very charitably, confusing.
Katie Prejean McGrady: I’d say surprising.
PL: Let’s fill those in a bit. David?
DD: Chaotic, because you would have a good move, a good statement, and then you’d have a terrible move and a terrible statement. And it was just constantly trying to figure out what is exactly going on. “This is condemned, but I’m defending this prelate,” or, “this thing is off the table, but I’m giving signals that it’s really on the table.”
KPM: It was surprising for me because, for a long time, we just kind of assumed the pontificate speaks from a very formal perspective. [Pope] Francis was not that. He was in and out of Rome as quickly as possible before he was elected. So it was surprising to get an off-the-cuff pontiff. Sometimes, to our chagrin, he would say things like, “Who am I to judge?” that got taken out of context 1,000 different ways, which was incredibly frustrating.
But I’m more than willing to say I was quite a fan of this. He didn’t want us necessarily to see where he was headed, and that makes us in America very uncomfortable. And I don’t know that it was necessarily always a bad thing. It was a challenge to us. On one hand, I’d like to know because it gives me the illusion of control. But on the other hand, it requires a spirituality of trust.
PL: What do you make of that, Marcus?
MP: Confusion from any capacity, especially from papal office, whether or not we are comfortable with it, is always going to be a problem. No other pope in history gave as many informal interviews as Francis had. [St.] John Paul II, throughout his over 20 years of a pontificate, gave just shy of 200 interviews. Francis, in 12 years, gave over 300. There’s a reason the papacy communicates by means of formal pronunciations: because, whether we like it or not, the papacy becomes that single point of visible unity for the body of Christ here on Earth. The world looks to Rome.
We have to be honest here as a Catholic family. From [Pope] Pius IX onward, we have had not just literal saints for popes, but theological geniuses. And we took that for granted. We were spoiled. We took for granted we would always have linguistic precision, and we were due for a pope who wasn’t a theologian. And precision coming from the hierarchy is an extremely crucial thing. Francis prioritized tone over precision, and the secular media constantly jumped on that.
That doesn’t mean I think he was a bad pope. We were just due for a pope who wasn’t a theologian, and that’s what happened.
DD: Francis probably would have made a great preacher to the papal household, because he’s a Jesuit who likes to say sort of off-the-cuff, wild things to make you think. It seems as if he were trying to play spiritual director to the world. And part of the difficulty with that is precisely what I think Marcus is laying out.
As soon as “Who am I to judge?” was said, we had Pride Week at the university I was teaching at, and then Pride Month, and then pretty much the entire year was Pride.
KPM: Absolutely. It certainly did trickle down in both big and small ways. I would just qualify that sometimes it didn’t bother me so much that it forced us to maybe be a bit uncomfortable in the chaos and in the confusion, because we all had to become more articulate ourselves. There was a pastoral approach and an outreach; the images and gestures of the Francis papacy won some hearts. In terms of the hard numbers of who converted and who left in the past 12 years, I’m not sure people were leaving because of Francis’s imprecision, as much as people were coming in based on his gestures.
DD: You really think that’s true? You really believe that?
KPM: I think the people who left weren’t just leaving because of Francis.
DD: Of course. I just don’t think people came in because of Francis’s gestures, as much as many of them were beautiful. For many, the Francis papacy made the church resemble a big mainline Protestant mess. Many people explicitly tell me that it’s a stumbling block.
MP: It’s important to say that the church actually has been seeing growth since midway through [Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s] papacy. Globally, we’re looking at 1.5% annual growth. But the growth is occurring most in the nations that have flat-out rejected Francis’s innovations, in pockets of Asia and Africa. That growth isn’t happening because of the Francis papacy per se, but because of the perennial teaching of the church.
PL: What’s the health check of the American church following the Francis papacy?
DD: For people in America, despite the fact that it’s eight people out for every one person in, I actually think there is a certain health. Los Angeles had supposedly a 10% growth on last year’s record number of people coming into the church. The Diocese of Tulsa, their cathedral had almost 100 people. So there are these centers of faith. And I think this reflects much more on the fact that Benedict’s legacy will be much stronger because that’s what he talked about: tight-knit, concentrated small bundles of believers operating together and living in the tradition.
We are continuing to see lots of people leaving, but we are finally beginning to see the very early springtime John Paul II talked about. Things are budding.
KPM: Was that in spite of Francis, though? Is there room to say the great theological minds set the stage, and Francis’s pastoral nature helped plumb the depths of what was given to us before? I think our American church is a little frustrated, can I say “butt-hurt?” I heard somebody say the other day, “We should have more cardinals voting.” And I was like, “We got 10 Americans over there and six of them are planted here in the States, and four are Rome-based.” I mean, that’s not a terrible number considering the numbers of the American church.
To what you said, David, that he was worried about being the spiritual director and the pastor of the world: That’s a noble project. But is that the job of the pope? Some of the priests and the bishops of the world perhaps felt like they got left out in the cold. As a laywoman who spent time with him last year, that didn’t bother me quite as much. But that’s not my reality. I loved what he said to encourage moms and families, but he didn’t necessarily encourage the priests and the bishops in that way.
PL: We’ve heard electors say they are looking for someone with Francis’s heart but with a mind to match. Is that what the American church needs right now?
KPM: I would push back and say the American church doesn’t get the full vote. But I don’t think that perfect guy is in that room right now. I think what’s happening there right now, Peter, is you’ve got some kingmakers who are taking meetings and picking candidates, and you’ve got some commentators. And [prediction market] Polymarket tells us it’s [Cardinal Pietro] Parolin, but I think that’s a false flag, and Parolin doesn’t walk out on that balcony.
DD: Remember, he who goes into a conclave a pope comes out a cardinal.
KPM: I’ve got a drinking game for that.
DD: The betting markets now have [Cardinal Luis Antonio] Tagle in the lead.
KPM: His name is emerging.
DD: I’m skeptical.
PL: This stuff about the markets and all the media hit-pieces, including that awful video of Tagle singing [the Beatles’] Imagine on karaoke last week, is this stuff floated out there as a trial balloon? The same way trial balloons are floated for vice presidential nominees?
KPM: We’ve never had such an online mix in a conclave. In 2013, Facebook was the most common social media. Now it’s everywhere. It’s Trump posting an [artificial intelligence] picture of himself dressed like the pope. It’s the meme conclave, the TikTok conclave. What’s happening online and even what the Vatican is putting out on socials is totally factoring into who has star power, who is recognizable. They don’t necessarily want an unknown because everyone will scramble to create content.
Back in 2013, there was a scramble to fill the airwaves on “Who is this Bergoglio guy?” So yes, I think that all factors in, Peter, and I absolutely think whether we want to admit it or not, there’s some manipulation happening inside Catholic media, even about who’s getting these hit pieces written and whose quotes are being posted. As a Catholic in the media, we have to be very careful. If I say something negative about somebody and then that guy does become the pope and I’m the person who made somebody question the authority of the pope, that’s a problem.
So yes, the internet is absolutely affecting the conclave itself and the aftermath, and that is a spiritual reality we’ve never had to deal with as an American church or as a global church. And there’s a lot to be said about that.
PL: David, you had a reaction to that.
DD: I want to say one offensive thing and one inspiring thing. My offensive thing is that, when I was talking about the health of the church, I think that the main gift of Francis’s papacy is that it wasn’t very good. It forced people to acknowledge that the church has become very papal-centric. And that’s not really a healthy thing. What did the pope tweet? What did he say in this airport? The very fact that Francis was confusing and chaotic has sort of made people think, “Maybe this is not healthy.”
But the inspiring thing that I’d like to say is that I do think, and this goes back to something Marcus said, that people look to the pope. And particularly in America, even though there’s all this hostile anti-Catholic side on sort of the Bible Christianity and all that sort of thing, most people look to the pope. I remember in 2005, a friend — I think he was Presbyterian at the time — called me and he said, “Are we getting a good pope?” And it was kind of like the Tanto line: “Who is this ‘We,’ white man?”
KPM: “Who’s this ‘We,’ Kimosabi?” I believe is the phrase.
DD: It is a reality that many American Christians, even if they think we’ve gone too far with indulgences and Mary and whatever else, they look to the church to be the defender of Christian and biblical morality and civilization. And I think that that is itself a good thing.
MP: We’ve seen the collapse of mainline Protestantism in the world for a century. But especially here in America. Whether we like it or not, everyone’s going to keep looking to the Catholic Church to be the pillar of truth.
And that’s precisely why, more than ever, we need a saint who’s also a good teacher. But to Katie’s point, the next pope is moving into a greater development of not just the digital world, but now the machine learning world [and] the artificial intelligence world, which means we’re always going to have a celebrity pope from the Francis papacy onwards.
But we Catholics are covenant children, and so the pope is first and foremost a holy father. That’s my exhortation to all of us. If we’re not pushing people to be down on their knees more than we’re talking about speculation, I think we’ve missed the point.
PL: Before finding out who the new holy father will be, what advice would you give your audiences?
KPM: Remain with me. Watch and pray. The gates of hell won’t prevail. Jesus promised us that, good pope, bad pope, chaos pope, boring pope — and I think it’s going to be a boring one because we need boring — watch and pray.
DD: So you’re saying you want a fat Italian pope who shuts up and never leaves Rome?
KPM: Give me the guy who says, “It’s your church, Lord, I’m going to bed.”
PL: David?
DD: I’m trying to think of something smart that’s different, but I don’t really have a whole lot that’s different. God’s ultimately in control, and this is something that Benedict always made the point of, saying, “Look, it’s not my church.” And that’s one of the annoying things about the Francis papacy. It’s God’s church, and he has plans for it. And whether he allows a good or a bad pope, we still have a job to do, and we still have to focus on what our own vocations are.
PL: Marcus?
MP: There was an archbishop I knew in Singapore. He said the moment one is made a bishop, people put him on a pedestal and crown him with a crown of thorns. I think that’s amplified when it comes to the papacy.
He has owed our undying fidelity, our love, our defense, and our prayers. He has owed our affection as children. But he also owed our compassion that if we can prayerfully join our hearts to the burden that’s upon his heart every single day.
PL: [A] Word that you hope describes the next papacy?
MP: Saintly.
KPM: Joyful. We need a joyful pope.
DD: Calm.