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And what will the Catholic Church be looking for when electing the next Pope
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Joining us now with what we can expect is Father Brian Massingdale, a professor of theological studies and ethics at Fordham University
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Father, thank you so much for joining us. It's good to be with you. Yeah, let's talk about Pope Francis and what is he going to be defined by
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in his legacy that he leaves behind? He's going to be remembered as an inspirational, transformational figure
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He moved the Church to have a special concern for the stigmatized
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stigmatized the marginalized of society, the poor, victims of injustice, war victims, the poor
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LGBTQ people, sexual minorities. He really wanted to move the church to have a special concern for
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those he saw on the peripheries of the world's concern and bringing them to the center. And so
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he's a remarkable transformational leader, but also a person who is a person of joy. I think
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And most people when they met him, they were impressed with his humanity
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And so he wanted to have people to be convicted with the joy of the gospel
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And that joy of the gospel was something that inspired him, even when he was a voice of moral authority
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and authenticity in the world. And you talk about authenticity. I think a lot of people that are Catholic non alike were very excited by the fact that he did talk about issues like climate change people with the LGBTQ community So I think a lot of people were asking now is the Catholic church
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going to be moving forward with that, or is there still a possibility, you know, there could be
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another pope that's going to come back with more serious and more strict ways of looking at life
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Well, it's impossible to predict the future, because no one could predict Pope Francis when
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he was elected in 2013. But I think it's also important to realize that this pope has
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basically appointed 70 to 80 percent of the cardinals will be sitting in the conclave
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and the new pope will need two-thirds plus one of the voters to elect him
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And while not all of them are clones of Francis, but I would think that they have broad agreement with the general direction of his papacy
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And so I don't think we're going to see an abrupt or radical change from this papacy
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There may be a time of consolidation of let's take a breath
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Let's kind of look at where we are. Let's look at where this pope has taken us
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But I don't think we're going to see a wholesale retreat. As I say, we're not going to see this kind of radical abrupt shift we saw from going from Joe Biden to Donald Trump
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That's not likely to happen. But the new pope will bring his own priorities, his own perspective, his own personality to the job
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And that is the next chapter. All right. Thank you so much, Father. We appreciate your time
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Thank you. Thank you so much
