Under Francis, the Vatican has been more transparent on a number of issues, including its own finances. But this has also opened an ugly chapter in the history of the “temporal” justice administered in the name of the pope, who is the absolute sovereign of Vatican City State. In July, the Vatican trial of ten people involved in a money-losing investment in a controversial London real-estate deal began. Among those being tried is Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who is the first cardinal ever to be indicted by Vatican criminal prosecutors, and whom Francis stripped of the rights and duties of the cardinalate in September 2020. Becciu was not just the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Saints, but also, as the sostituto (or Number 2) to the Secretariat of State between 2011 and 2018, a key figure in navigating relations between the Vatican and Italy. It is hard to say what the consequences of his trial will be for the Vatican, the Italian Church, and Pope Francis.
The Church also faces challenges over how to deal with the Zan bill, anti-homophobia legislation sponsored by LGBT activist Alessandro Zan, who was elected to Parliament with the Democratic Party. Debate over the bill has led to a level of tension between Church and state not seen in years. In June, the Vatican Secretariat of State sent a diplomatic note to Italy’s ambassador to the Holy See raising concerns that the bill, if approved in its present form, could limit freedom of expression of Catholics and Catholic institutions and thus breach guarantees granted to the Church in Italy in the revised Concordat of 1984. Despite clarifying that the Vatican’s goal is not to stop the bill but to reformulate some passages, this rare diplomatic step raised alarms among progressives in Italy over the secularity (laicità) of the Republic. The majority of Italians seem to support the bill, but Catholics are divided—not on the need for a law protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination and violence, but on the possibility that it would introduce American-style “culture wars.” In its present form, the bill contains sometimes moralistic phrasing not just defining what would be illegal, but also what would be socially acceptable to say.
There’s also the issue of how the Church can be involved in Italy’s continued recovery from the pandemic. As the crisis ebbs and restrictions are lifted, Italy may be poised for a level of economic growth not seen in decades. The question is whether it will benefit all of Italian society: economically, there is a huge gap between rich and poor, and between the north and the south. The social safety net provided by the Catholic Church remains strong, but even though it’s the most important provider of social services in Italy, the Church has lost much of its cultural and political cachet, and the ability of Italian Catholics to win over legislators and entrepreneurs with the wisdom of the Catholic social doctrine has weakened. Criticizing the hierarchy has become the norm across the political spectrum: the left on gay rights, the right on immigration, the populists on the very idea of religious institutions. Old-time Italian secularism was nothing compared to the rise of new media and social-media influencers, some of them turned politicians, many turned political mischief-makers. Given this reality, it makes less sense than it ever did to envision some sort of intellectually elite grounding for a new Catholic party: it would have no electoral viability. Almost thirty years after the dissolution of the Democrazia Cristiana, very few Italian Catholics (and even fewer non-Catholics) seek a new Catholic party; even Francis himself says that he does not believe in confessional political parties.
But what this really demonstrates is the practical disappearance of the Catholic laity from political life. Lay associations (Catholic Action, Catholic boy and girls scouts, the new ecclesial movements) have lost their clout not just because of secularization, but also because of the clericalist policies of the Italian bishops during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The bishops conference under the leadership of Cardinal Camillo Ruini (1991–2007) became something like a political action committee. The result has been a disaster both politically and ecclesially—the dissolution of the tradition of independence of lay Catholics in the public square. Try as he might, Francis has not been able to revive the Italian laity.
Or, at least not yet. The best thing the Catholic Church in Italy could do to address these challenges would be to hold a national synod. The most recent comparable event was in 1976. While the Italian bishops refused Francis’s 2015 invitation to begin the synodal process, they gave in after his more forceful request earlier this year. Finally, preparations are underway, in conjunction with the global Catholic synodal process taking place between now and 2023. And yet it is hard not to think we have entered the declining phase of this pontificate. Francis, who invested so heavily in shaping the social and political role of the Church, lacks allies and partners both inside and beyond Italy. And if there remains the belief that Catholicism in Italy still has something to say (and a way to act) on immigration, poverty, and marginalization, there is no common movement or organizational energy to realize it. As the authors of a new book on the Italian Church and the pandemic (Il gregge smarrito, or The Lost Flock) put it: the Church “speaks but is not able to count, and when it acts it is not able to speak.” Francis’s pontificate liberated Italian Catholicism from the right-wing, culture-war inclinations of the clerical elites in the early 2000s, but it has not generated anything new in its wake. A national synod could lead to a movement that would benefit the Church and Italy both, even if it might not be as big a unifying event as beating England on penalty kicks.