Limited to its essential tasks. The head of the Church is not the Pope, but Christ. Let the new Pontiff's motto be John the Baptist's words about Jesus, “He must increase, I decrease.”
May it be a minimal Papacy. A Papacy like the Minimal State theorized by liberal philosopher Robert Nozick, that is, limited to its essential tasks. Few things, but done well. Not only because the vain loudness of an overwhelming Papacy, and an idolatrous and unbelieving Papolatry, disturb my ears. Especially because “the head of the Church is Christ, not the Pope” (Pope John XXIII). Because “the figure of the Pope is praised too much. One risks falling into the cult of personality” (Pope John Paul I). Because “the Pope is not an oracle, he is infallible only on very rare occasions” (Pope Benedict XVI). Let us begin again with the beautiful Gregorian title “Servus servorum Dei.”
May it be a Papacy of service that of the next pope. No more personalism, narcissism, despotism. Let the servant of the servants of God put himself at the service of the recovery of Catholicism, in France and elsewhere now evident, or at least avoid hindering it. The 18,000 French people (mostly adults, a sacramental boom) who got baptized on Easter night did not do it for Bergoglio, they did it in spite of a Bergoglio who in Abu Dhabi signed the indifferentist declaration in which the uselessness of baptism was made clear. May the new pope's motto be John the Baptist's words about Jesus, “He must increase, I decrease.”
