On this episode of “Interesting Times,” Ross Douthat is joined by the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and an editor of America Magazine, to reflect on the legacy of Pope Francis and the challenges facing the next papacy.02:20 The First Jesuit Pope05:23 Google Translate and Exchanging Emails 06:05 The Visual Element of Francis’s Legacy07:48 The Concrete Changes Made16:19 Christian Sexual Ethics25:22 The Church in the Modern World27:14 What Kind of Leader Will the Next Pope Be?31:57 The Latin Mass Controversy34:54 What Draws People to Christianity?39:21 What Holds Such a Diverse Church Together?43:09 The Influence of the Pope and the Hierarchy 46:41 A Renewed Interest in Religion 48:30 The Church as a Field Hospital 49:13 What Father Martin Hopes to See in the Next Pope 49:59 Where Should the New Pope Go? 52:27 Who Will Be the Next Pope?(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What is the legacy of Pope Francis?
He said, you can continue this ministry in peace, which I found extremely encouraging and moving. And, you know, he didn't have to do that. And he didn't have to meet with me a couple of times. And we would exchange notes over email in his little kind of crabbed handwriting. How would you get those? Would you get those notes scanned via email? Yeah.
So I ended up getting the email address for his secretaries, which were different people at different times. And I would send him more formal notes, you know, like typed out and whatnot in Spanish or Italian, thanks to Google Translate. And they would send me back scanned PDFs of his handwritten note, which they would have to
Chapter 2: How did Pope Francis approach Christian sexual ethics?
transcribe or transliterate because it was like this tiny little handwriting. And then I would ask to have someone here to translate it. So that's how we communicate. That's how it works in the universal church. Yes. Yeah.
Thanks to Google Translate. I was always struck and thinking about his legacy now, I'm struck by it even more by what you might call the visual element of his papacy. After he died, a lot of people on social media were sharing the photograph of him in the empty St. Peter's Square holding the monstrance, which holds the Eucharist, the host that Catholics believe is the body of Christ.
Again, in this sort of empty, darkened square in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years. And I feel like at the beginning of his pontificate, there were a lot of those kind of moments. The one that I remember most is him embracing Christ. a man who had boils, I believe, or was disfigured in some way. And I feel like he had a certain kind of genius for
in effect, creating Christian iconography in his sort of public moments that I think will be one of the more lasting elements of his papacy.
Well, yeah. And I mean, as you know, like Jesus, who taught with words and deeds, right? I mean, Jesus taught with gestures as well, not just words and teaching. Francis was very good at that. I remember that, you know, Ross, as you were saying that, that to me is the image that I'll take with me to my grave, which is him embracing that man with the skin condition.
You know, which called up Francis of Assisi embracing the man with leprosy, Jesus embracing people. You know, one of the great things was for me that it was natural. He wasn't doing it for show, right? Or I'm going to now do something that's going to impress people. This was who he was. He naturally reached out to people like that. But yeah, it made for good teaching moments, I would say.
And I agree. I think the visual is just as important as any encyclical that he did.
Yeah. So let's talk about the doing, though, as well as the showing. This was a dramatic pontificate in a lot of different ways. But from my perspective, I'd say the great drama of the pontificate was, you could call it a push to change church teaching or practice on a host of difficult and controversial post-1960s issues.
I would say that that sort of went on as a thread throughout the, you know, was it 12 years? 12 years, right? Where you had...
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Chapter 3: What concrete changes occurred under Pope Francis?
Chapter 4: What kind of leader will the next pope be?
How far did Francis go on those issues?
That's a great question. You know, interestingly, I would say that while those issues were in the forefront of a lot of our minds, I think for Francis they were secondary, the kind of hot-button issues. I mean, basically what he was trying to do, you know, in most of his homilies and his encyclicals and his apostolic pilgrimages to different places would just proclaim the gospel.
So most of his time he was just talking about Jesus, the resurrection, mercy, love. But I think it's a fair question. How far did he go? I think he went as far as he could, basically.
One of the things I learned when I was at the Synod, I was a delegate at the Synod, which is this worldwide gathering of Catholics, and we met in Rome in October 23 and 2024, was realizing how much he wanted church unity. And so some issues, women deacons, LGBTQ people, you know, all sorts of things.
You could see how much pushback there was from places like sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and, you know, even in the United States. And he said a couple of times, unity is more important than these conflicts, right? So I think he tried to open the door to the discussion about some of these issues without breaking the church, right?
I think, you know, one of the fundamental differences, I think, between Pope Francis and a lot of his critics, particularly in the church and sometimes even in the hierarchy... Sometimes even in the pages of the New York Times. Sometimes.
Was that he really spent time listening to people talk about their spiritual lives and had a real reverence for the activity of the Holy Spirit in the individual person's conscience. And so he really took that seriously. So... when he talked about discernment and listening to people and even in the synod and LGBTQ issues and in Amoris Laetitia, his apostolic exhortation on the family.
A lot of his critics said, oh, well, anything goes. It's just where we're going to listen to people. It's all about polls and opinions. But I think what they missed was that he really did trust the Holy Spirit active in the individual. So I think that, for me, encapsulates why people, I think, struggled with that. Because it is, you know, it's a challenge when you hear something like that.
We need to meet people where they are. We need to listen to them. We need to see where the Holy Spirit is active. But To your point, he didn't want to move the church so far that he would break it.
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Chapter 5: How did Pope Francis influence the Catholic Church's stance on LGBTQ issues?
Chapter 6: What challenges does the Church face in the modern world?
controversies that conservative Catholics regarded as having been sort of addressed and settled under prior popes over whether divorced and remarried Catholics should take communion without getting an annulment, over the possibility of female deacons, if not female priests, the possibility of allowing blessings for same-sex couples. All of these were suddenly sort of in the air.
And that mattered a great deal to you because as you just mentioned, right, one of the One of the forms of work that you took up under Francis was writing and arguing about gay Catholics and their place in the church. So from your perspective as a sympathizer, I would say, with that kind of push and that kind of opening of debate. How far do you think it went?
How far did Francis go on those issues?
That's a great question. You know, interestingly, I would say that while those issues were in the forefront of a lot of our minds, I think for Francis they were secondary, the kind of hot-button issues. I mean, basically what he was trying to do, you know, in most of his homilies and his encyclicals and his apostolic pilgrimages to different places would just proclaim the gospel.
So most of his time he was just talking about Jesus, the resurrection, mercy, love. But I think it's a fair question. How far did he go? I think he went as far as he could, basically.
One of the things I learned when I was at the Synod, I was a delegate at the Synod, which is this worldwide gathering of Catholics, and we met in Rome in October 23 and 2024, was realizing how much he wanted church unity. And so some issues, women deacons, LGBTQ people, you know, all sorts of things.
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Chapter 7: How did Pope Francis handle the Latin Mass controversy?
You could see how much pushback there was from places like sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and, you know, even in the United States. And he said a couple of times, unity is more important than these conflicts, right? So I think he tried to open the door to the discussion about some of these issues without breaking the church, right?
I think, you know, one of the fundamental differences, I think, between Pope Francis and a lot of his critics, particularly in the church and sometimes even in the hierarchy... Sometimes even in the pages of the New York Times. Sometimes.
Was that he really spent time listening to people talk about their spiritual lives and had a real reverence for the activity of the Holy Spirit in the individual person's conscience. And so he really took that seriously. So... when he talked about discernment and listening to people and even in the synod and LGBTQ issues and in Amoris Laetitia, his apostolic exhortation on the family.
A lot of his critics said, oh, well, anything goes. It's just where we're going to listen to people. It's all about polls and opinions. But I think what they missed was that he really did trust the Holy Spirit active in the individual. So I think that, for me, encapsulates why people, I think, struggled with that. Because it is, you know, it's a challenge when you hear something like that.
We need to meet people where they are. We need to listen to them. We need to see where the Holy Spirit is active. But To your point, he didn't want to move the church so far that he would break it.
I want to talk about that question of sort of breakage and conflict. But then what were the concrete changes? Because the point you make about sort of disturbing or disappointing people runs both ways. So you had a certain kind of disturbance from conservative Catholics to the way the pope talked about these issues, the debates he wanted to open up.
But then, especially by the end of his pontificate, There was a certain kind of disappointment from more liberal Catholics, right, saying, well, he sort of left us in a place of ambiguity where he talks about, you know, the individual soul and discernment and so on and issues statements and teachings that can be, let's say, read in somewhat different ways, depending on depending on where you are.
But there isn't like a concrete change to the catechism in what it says about the immorality of same-sex relations. He opened the debate about possibly ordaining women to the diaconate, but it didn't really go anywhere. So first of all, what concretely changed do you think under Francis? And then I'll ask you about where the different sides would want to push things beyond him.
Yeah. I mean, you could say more broadly that concretely, you know, we were brought to a greater understanding of the importance of the human dignity of migrants and refugees, for example. I mean, there's no church teaching change in that. But to your point more specifically, for one thing, the catechism changed on the death penalty. It's now inadmissible. That's a small thing.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of Pope Francis's approach for the future of religion?
I think it's important that Christianity teaches something like marriage is an indissoluble one flesh union that you, you know, can't easily get out of. Do you agree with that? Which part? The part that there has to be something more than just a general statement. That there is sort of a specific concreteness to the way Jesus talks about sex as the way he talks about wealth and poverty.
Absolutely. I think, yes. I mean, in terms of the sacrament of marriage. But I think what Pope Francis was trying to do... you know, was to remind ourselves that we're also dealing with individuals, right? And so we talk about, you know, we've talked about divorce, masturbation. I brought it up just for the record, sorry.
You know, it comes up in the, I don't know any man that comes to the confessional, at least in my experience, who does not confess that. So it's, you know, it's common. There's also a sense of, and homosexuality, right, in terms of all these topics.
You know, one of the things that Pope Francis is trying to teach, and I think is Christian teaching, is encountering the person where they are and as they are, right? And, you know, he said, the name of God is mercy.
So, yes, we have, obviously, we have all these rules, we have all these traditions, you know, but what is the pastoral application of these things in the confessional, in a person's life? And I do think there is something of a over-focus on some of these topics. And I think Pope Francis was trying to remind us that there are other topics.
Because I feel like there aren't many Catholics in the world who don't understand what the Catholic Church teaches on marriage and homosexuality and masturbation and things like that. There aren't a lot of Catholics that don't know what the Church teaches on marriage. poverty, the environment, those kinds of things. So I think this is what Pope Francis was trying to do.
Interestingly, in an interview with Jesuit magazines, including America in 2013, he said something like, I'm paraphrasing, I'm not changing anything. He said, but when it comes to questions of sexuality and abortion and things like that, I feel like people know it and it's time to, like a good teacher, move on to the next lesson.
And I found that a really interesting insight because I think what people saw is his ignoring that Was rather him saying, you know, we've understood this and now let's move on to other topics, which I think have been less stressed. You know, poverty, you know, the stuff you pointed out and the environment, which was a surprise.
Do you think that's a stable equilibrium, though? I guess it's my question. Like, say, 100 years goes by. And that becomes the equilibrium of the Catholic Church. The church has a very pastoral case-by-case approach to issues around sex and sexuality. But nothing ever changes in the formal teaching of the church.
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