What Does the Pope Do? Religious Leader

Excerpted from
Conclave: The Politics, Personalities, and Process of the Next Papal Election
By John L. Allen, Jr.

While religion is still a powerful force in shaping culture, it no longer controls the culture in the West. The dominant realities of the modem period are secularization and pluralism. Institutions such as the media, education, social services, and the courts operate independently of ecclesiastical control. Governments no longer compel membership in a particular religion. The days of cuius regio, eius religio - "whoever the ruler, his the religion"-are over. Where spiritual leaders could once take the option for religion itself as a given, and argue over which one, today they have to propose the very idea of religion to a culture that often finds it alien.

Several figures in the world community today have a high media profile and the capacity to articulate a religious message-the Dalai Lama, for example, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. But if one were to ask a sample of randomly selected persons, at least in the West, what word they associate with religious leader, most would come up with pope. For better or worse, the Roman Catholic pontiff is the most recognizable spiritual leader in the world, with the strongest bully pulpit and the most significant presence in the mass media. Hence the pope plays a unique, if undeclared and sometimes controversial, role as a spokesperson for the religious community. How he chooses to exercise that role can have enormous impact.

One example came on October 27, 1986, when John Paul II hosted a one-day summit of religious leaders from around the world in Assisi, Italy, to pray for peace. The group that assembled in Assisi in 1986 was unique. It included rabbis wearing yarmulkes and Sikhs in turbans, Muslims praying on thick carpets and a Zoroastrian kindling a sacred fire. Robert Runcie, the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, exchanged pleasantries with the Dalai Lama. Orthodox bishops chatted with Allan Boesak, the South African antiapartheid activist and president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. The leaders came to Assisi not to "pray together"-according to the pope's advisers, that would be theologically problematic, since prayer presupposes doctrinal agreement-but "to be together and pray."

Despite strong pressure from the conservative wing of the Catholic Church to abandon the idea, John Paul saw this gathering as an expression of his mission of promoting unity. At one point, each of the faiths was assigned a church to hold services. Buddhists chanted and beat drums, while Shintoists played haunting melodies on thin bamboo reed instruments. Afterward they all assembled with the pope and formed a circle to offer their own prayers. Two animists from Africa prayed: "Almighty God, the Great Thumb we cannot avoid in tying any knot, the Roaring Thunder that splits mighty trees, the All-Seeing Lord up on high who sees even the footprints of an antelope on a rock here on earth . . . you are the cornerstone of peace." John Pretty-on-Top, a Crow medicine man from Montana in full headgear and smoking a peace pipe, offered: "O Great Spirit, I raise my pipe to you, to your messengers the four winds, and to mother earth, who provides for your children. ... I pray that you bring peace to all my brothers and sisters of this world." After the prayers were finished the spiritual leaders gathered at a Franciscan monastery for a meal of bread, pizza, vegetables, Coke, and water (in a rare concession for Italians, no wine was served, so as not to offend believers for whom alcohol is off limits).

John Paul has pressed the cause of interreligious harmony beyond the gathering in Assisi, becoming the first pope to visit a Jewish synagogue (in Rome in 1986) and the first pope to enter an Islamic mosque (in Damascus in 2001). It is difficult to establish what sort of impact these gestures generate, but most observers agree that at a symbolic level, they are enormously important. When the pope and a rabbi, or the pope and an imam, embrace in public and wish each other well, it sends a signal. Those who wish to commit violence in the name of religion or to hate in the name of religion are marginalized. They can no longer present themselves as allies of their own leadership.

In addition to his interreligious role, the pope is also the most visible Christian figure in the world, and hence has another special role as the informal leader of the Christian community. (Christians call relations between themselves ecumenical; relations with non-Christian groups are known as interreligious dialogue.) Despite the prayer of Jesus that his followers "may all be one," Christians are badly divided into a staggering variety of denominations and splinter groups. Worldwide, there are more than 2 billion Christians, roughly one-third of the planet's population. Roman Catholics constitute the largest group, with slightly more than 1 billion members, followed by mainline Protestants (such as Methodists, Lutherans, and Baptists), with 321 million. The world's Orthodox Churches have 222 million believers. Anglicans, whom most people classify separately, report 74.5 million. In addition, there are almost 450 million Christians around the world who belong to a local church community that has no strong affiliation with any larger group. Many are so-called pentecostal and charismatic communities, which stress the gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as spiritual healings and speaking in tongues. It is a bewildering cacophony of theologies and styles of prayer and practice.

There are places where members of the different branches of Christianity live in near-perfect solidarity. In ancient Christian villages in the mountains of Syria, for example, one can find Orthodox and Catholic believers who have been living side by side for centuries, who attend one another's sacraments and feasts, who make practically no distinction between members of one church and the other. When one asks Syrian Christians whether they are Orthodox or Catholic, the question often elicits a puzzled expression indicating this is not something they think about very much. It is a charming example of peaceful coexistence. Yet in other places, relations are hardly so pacific. Divisions between Christians have caused much bloodshed over the years. Think of Europe's wars of religion or of Northern Ireland's ongoing battles between Catholics and Protestants. If Christians can't get together, how can they preach unity to the wider world?

Under the impact of globalization, the followers of the world's religions are rubbing up against one another as never before. Religious diversity is a fact of modern life and is, at present, a mixed blessing. There are places where cultures have been enriched and strengthened by a reciprocal exchange between different religions, but religion (along with language, ethnicity, culture, and geography) is fast becoming one of the principal factors in the social equation that ends in violence. In the Sudan, for example, where a long-running civil war pits Muslims in the north against Christians in the south, more than 1.9 million people have died since 1983, and another 4 million have been displaced. In Kashmir, a disputed province on the border between India and Pakistan, religion (Hindus versus Muslims) is a main bone of contention. In the 1990s, 24,000 people died, by the Indian government's official count. Others say 40,000; still others, 70,000. In the Balkans, where Orthodox Serbs battled the Western Christian nations of NATO as well as Muslim Kosovar Albanians, the Serbs took 5,000 military casualties and 2,000 civilian deaths. The Kosovars lost an estimated 10,000 lives, and more than 800,000 people at one time or another found themselves refugees. NATO believes that mass murders look place in at least sixty-five villages. The NATO-led bombing campaign against Serbia also claimed a number of civilian casualties, and there are voices in the Orthodox world that see that result as part of a Western, largely Catholic, anti-Orthodox campaign. In East Timor, horrific slaughter seemed to stem from enmity between Christians and Muslims. Of course, the tragic events of September 11, 2001, also had strong religious undertones.

In a world threatened ever more by tribalism, religion has a remarkable capacity to stir the dark side of the human soul. Spiritual leaders are called upon to reject violence hallowed by religious conviction. Cooperation, whether between Christians or between the followers of all the world's religions, will require a sustained commitment to dialogue. The pope is in a position, institutionally and because of his media profile, to chair that dialogue. It is a role that John Paul II's successor will have to play in an ever more sustained and complex fashion.