These Contentious Issues Could Determine Who Becomes the Next Pope

The cardinals who have traveled to Rome to elect the next pope at a conclave next week sometimes look as ideologically polarized as many secular voters around the globe.

At first glance, they appear to split along the kinds of left-right lines that characterize political contests elsewhere. Many conservative Roman Catholic Church leaders disagreed with Pope Francis, who was often a darling of liberals around the world.

But the typical divisions between progressives and conservatives don’t correspond so neatly with the ideological battles within the Vatican and the broader church. Although there are some exceptions among the cardinals, the issue that most consistently marked Francis as a liberal — his fierce advocacy on behalf of migrants and the poor — does not necessarily set him apart, because the Catholic Church has made the gospel’s call to shelter and feed strangers a fundamental tenet.

Ultimately, the cardinals’ choice will amount to a referendum on whether to extend Francis’ legacy of inclusivity and openness to change. That was “how he made sense of living in a highly polarized age,” said Anna Rowlands, a political theologian at Durham University in England.

Francis understood “what’s at stake in the polarization,” said Professor Rowlands, and was willing to accept disagreement as a precursor to dialogue. “The danger is the church moves into a moment when it might be tempted to choose a pole,” she said, which could close off discussion altogether.

More than any single issue, the choice of the next pontiff will be dominated by a philosophical question: Who deserves a say in determining the Catholic Church’s future?