Gaetano Masciullo
The year 2026 will be a crucial one for the Catholic Church and its cultural influence in the world, including the political sphere. The extraordinary Consistory, held in Rome between January 7 and 8, marked—according to many analysts—the true beginning of the Pontificate of Leo XIV.
Indeed, up to now we have witnessed various acts of Pope Prevost which, in their essence, are more to be considered as the conclusion of certain items on Francis’s agenda (which for the most part remained unfinished, and will likely remain so): one may think, for example, of the first encyclical on poverty, Dilexi Te, or of the doctrinal notes published by the former Sant’Uffizio which, according to the Vatican authorities themselves, are to be interpreted as the final acts of deference to the mandate received from Francis.
At the same time, we have seen significant and clear changes of course implemented by Leo in terms of repairing the juridical weaknesses left by his predecessor: see the abolition of the monopoly of the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the Vatican’s bank, and the amendment of the Vatican Fundamental Law. Finally, we have also witnessed acts in full continuity with Francis, which Leo has clearly made his own: first and foremost, the creation of bishops of a markedly progressive orientation. Thus emerges the profile of a pontiff who wishes to act as a “revolutionary of deceleration,” as we predicted on the eve of the Conclave: not a Bergoglian, but neither a conservative nor—this is evident—a traditionalist.
The themes addressed in the Consistory—the role of cardinals in the governance of the Church and synodality—foreshadow the development of Pope Leo XIV’s agenda in the coming months and years. Today, there is an attempt to experiment with a model of the Church that mirrors large supranational political entities, presenting itself as an institutional subject comparable to the European Union or the United Nations. From this point of view the recent revival of the Fundamental Law of the Church Project should also be understood. This project had already been promoted by Paul VI, who believed that the Church’s structures needed to be adapted to modern legal and political frameworks. He supported the idea of drafting a true constitution or fundamental charter of the Church, one that would precede and provide a foundation for all other laws and codifications.
Paul VI also cultivated a vision of the Church structured according to a monarchical-parliamentary model. In his perspective, episcopal conferences and the College of Cardinals functioned almost like a lower house and an upper house of the ecclesial institution. From this approach derives a profoundly downplayed idea of the papacy: the pope was no longer the proximate living rule of faith, nor the sole depositary of doctrinal infallibility, nor the exclusive mediator of governing power between God and the bishops. His figure was instead configured as that of a spokesman of the magisterium, a bishop among bishops, endowed indeed with a role as an arbiter—and even a right of veto—analogous to the presidencies of modern democracies.
This conception was never implemented, but neither was it entirely abandoned. Highly symbolic, for example, was Benedict XVI’s choice to replace the tiara with the episcopal mitre in his papal coat of arms, and moving in the same direction is the study document on the Bishop of Rome published in 2024 by Cardinal Kurt Koch, a figure close to Ratzingerian sensibilities.
Today, this model seems to be encountering a new season of revival. It has also been favored by the transformation of the College of Cardinals carried out by Pope Francis, who made it a globalized assembly composed of representatives from every corner of the world. In this way, the meaning of “universality” that the College is called to embody has definitively shifted from a sacramental and hierarchical plane—in which cardinals represented the three degrees of Holy Orders and, in the past, even unconsecrated laymen—to a geographical plane. At the same time, in the field of canon law, the idea has taken hold that the elector of the Bishop of Rome must himself be a bishop. This principle, established in canon 351 §1, has further reshaped the nature and function of the College.
The very high number of cardinals desired by Francis reinforces the idea of a College increasingly similar to an upper house of the Church. Recent practice also moves in this direction: during the last Consistory, the cardinals were given one hundred minutes of free interventions, followed by a conclusion by the Pope—a dynamic that closely resembles the functioning of a Senate.
On the second major theme of the Consistory, synodality, a confirmation of the line outlined so far also emerges. Pope Leo had already clarified—also in the book-interview with Allen—that he does not at all envisage a democratic reform of the Church, as Francis did, with lay people and bishops called to decide together on doctrine and morals. For Leo, synodality is something else: a harmony of roles, in which lay people and clergy offer their contribution, bishops discern and decide, and the people of God put into practice what has been established.
All this also arises from the ambition to present the Catholic Church as a weighty actor on the global stage. This ambition, however, clashes with obstacles that go far beyond the cultural and religious sphere: they concern the deepest economic and geopolitical balances. Here we witness the paradox: A Church that conceives of itself as a supranational institutional subject enters a field that is not its own, adopting its categories, languages, and operational logics. The moment the Church accepts presenting itself as ‘one among the great global institutions,’ it ceases to speak as other and begins to speak like the others. In doing so, it does not place itself on an equal footing but subjects itself to the criteria of legitimation of those who already dominate that field: States, the European Union, the UN, multilateral bodies, and positive international law.
The authority of the Church does not historically arise from structural similarity but from a recognized asymmetry. The historical strength of the Church in dialogue with empires has never depended on its institutional modernization but on the fact of representing a different order: sacramental, moral, transcendent. When Gregory VII, Innocent III, or Pius XII spoke to the powerful, they did so not as heads of a comparable institution, but as custodians of a higher law—non-negotiable, not derived. Reformers (among whom, presumably, Pope Leo himself) are today convinced that the Church is incapable of dialoguing with the powers of the world on equal terms because of its ‘obsolete structure’ inherited from the past, and not because of the gradual renunciations made in recent decades in order to increasingly emulate the world.
In other words, while the world returns to empires, why does the Catholic Church, which is also the heir of the most illustrious of these empires and is structured better than all of them, persist in pursuing a weak path that weakens the institution rather than giving it body and strength? Therefore, the subordination that the European Union imposes on the Vatican will remain a theme of the coming times: a dynamic that contributes both to doctrinal silences on bioethical issues of burning relevance (euthanasia, abortion, homosexual unions) and to actual doctrinal revisions, such as the Holy See’s abolitionist commitment regarding the death penalty.
Yet this incompatibility between Brussels and the Vatican cannot continue without consequences. The challenges awaiting the Church in Europe are no longer episodic but systemic. Homosexual unions, increasingly normalized euthanasia, aggressive abortionism, and surrogate motherhood are not merely moral issues: they are the coherent outcome of a juridical order that attributes to the state and the judiciary a growing supremacy over the family, reduced to a simple administrative construct. In this context, the progressive fiscal and regulatory centralization of the European Union erodes the principle of subsidiarity, emptying natural and local communities of their decision-making capacity.
Alongside these problems, openly discussed and claimed, there are others less perceived but no less serious. The structural increase in military spending as a deterrent against Russia, the assimilation of models of control and planning typical of Chinese policies, and the geopolitical marginality of the EU with respect to the United States, China, Russia, and emerging powers such as Turkey and India are reconfiguring European public priorities. The result is a silent shift of resources, attention, and legitimation toward logics of security and global competition, at the expense of the family, birth rates, and social cohesion.
Demographic decline and the rapid decrease of Christians, especially in an ever more Islamized Western Europe, are the most evident signs of this profound crisis. Here, the Church risks finding itself unprepared not so much on the doctrinal level as on the historical one: while the continent loses political weight and confidence in its own future, the human fabric that made its civilization possible also vanishes. This process often advances without clamor, as an indirect consequence of economic, juridical, and cultural choices that appear neutral.
If the Church were to choose silence or a merely adaptive presence, in the medium term it would lose the capacity to influence the language and the categories with which Europe thinks about itself. In the long term, it would risk being reduced to a residual minority, tolerated as long as it does not contradict the dominant order. The year 2026 thus presents itself as an important year not to measure the Church’s diplomatic success, but to verify whether it still intends to speak as a critical conscience and as a mother, or whether it will definitively accept being one of the many moral institutions that ends up speaking only to itself. And perhaps not even to itself.
* Gaetano Masciullo is an Italian philosopher, author, and freelance journalist. His main focus is addressing the modern phenomena that threaten the roots of Western Christian civilization.
