(ANALYSIS) This was a very busy year on the Catholic beat. A decade after Pope Francis replaced the then-retiring Benedict XVI, the consistently progressive pontiff has very much been the focal point of plenty of news coverage in 2023.

Pope Francis was named the top religion newsmaker of the year by members of the Religion News Association. That was before his decree that priests should offer blessings to same-sex couples. The mainstream news coverage of that decision was precisely what press critics would have predicted.

Thus, Catholic media will — once again — be required reading for everyone who wants to better understand what’s going on. Mainstream media sources, while always the center of our attention, aren't the best place to get news and information out of this Vatican. GetReligion readers will not be surprised by that statement.

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Plenty of what went on this past year will spill over into the next. I again expect 2024 to be another very busy year. Can you say “synodality”?

Here are my five storylines to watch for in the new year:

5. Pope Francis’s health

I had this on my list last year. A year later and it remains a major storyline after the pope turned 87 earlier this month.

The pontiff has had so many health scares that Catholic News Agency published a timeline of his hospital-level issues in 2022 and updated the story file this fall. In November, the pope suffered a bout of pneumonia that forced him to miss the United Nations climate conference held in Dubai.

A key thing to look for regarding Francis’ death is what will transpire afterwards regarding the College of Cardinals, the men actually tasked with electing a new pontiff.

Over the last decade, Francis has elevated many bishops. Pew Research found that Francis had elevated fewer Europeans throughout his pontificate, but he has favored bishops whose views are sympathetic to his own. There are currently 136 cardinals eligible to vote (one must be under 80). How will that impact who will be the next pope? It remains to be seen.

4. Rupnik scandal will find a resolution

As the church continues to try and become more transparent, L'affare Rupnik has not been a good look for this papacy. With the recent Vatican “trial of the century” that found Cardinal Angelo Becciu guilty of financial wrongdoing, the attention moved back to the alleged sex crimes of Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik.

A recap from my last post regarding Vatican scandals:

Rupnik had been declared excommunicated by the Vatican in May 2020 for one of the most serious crimes in the Catholic church’s legal code of using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity. But the excommunication was lifted two weeks later, and he continued in his artistic and preaching activities, which include running an art center in Rome. He has also been accused of sexually abusing at least nine other women and at least one man.

The Catholic press has been very good about covering this case, especially news sources on the doctrinal right. But the Associated Press has attempted to cover this case fairly, when it was necessary for a global audience.

Again, the legacy news outlets have not, as a rule, done a very good or thorough job on this case. And, once again, Crux has been among the best sources on this scandal. I have found the site, and John Allen’s analysis and podcast in particular, to be very incisive over the last few months regarding both this story and other happenings out of Rome.

This story hasn’t been a good look for a pope who vowed transparency. Again, look for Catholic media — places such as Crux and The Pillar, to lead the charge on this story once again.

3. Catholic vote will matter again

Yes, it’s another presidential election year and that means Catholics and their vote will matter once again, almost certainly more in swing states than (follow GetReligion patriarch Richard Ostling on this issue) more than white evangelical Protestants.

I always say that Catholics — those across the doctrinal spectrum — living in Ohio and Pennsylvania will determine the outcome of the next presidential race. The key will be whether any reporters make it to those Rust Belt counties to talk to and hear from these voters, Catholics in particular.

What faith-related issues matter to these people? Is it abortion? Religious liberty? Parental rights? More options in education? Something else?

As the right questions and you will find out.

At the first Republican debate of the 2024 cycle in Milwaukee this past summer, several GOP presidential hopefuls made it clear that religion is part of their pitch. How that plays out in the coming months — and in November — matters.

President Joe Biden’s openly progressive Catholic faith, an important part of the 2020 election cycle, could become an important storyline again in 2024. The appeal of Donald Trump, especially by more conservative-leaning Catholics, could tip the scales in his favor like in 2020.

While mainstream media has done a poor job capturing what voters want and feel, Catholic media has stepped up those efforts. I’m looking at you EWTN. They had a series of polls in 2020 that tried to pinpoint what Catholics were saying in 2020. I expect this election cycle should be no different.

2. Pope will visit his native Argentina

Pope Francis is expected to return home — and that wouldn’t normally be a big deal if not for the recent election of Javier Millei as Argentina’s new president.

Millei, a libertarian and a practicing Catholic, ran as a reformer, a populist outsider looking to transform a nation dogged by inflation. He also aimed more than a few hot words at the pope during the campaign, something that didn’t deter Argentines — even Catholics — from casting their vote for him.

The pope said he plans to travel to Argentina. Last April, this is what the Associated Press reported:

In recent interviews with various media outlets, Francis stated he has no desire to be connected to any political parties in the polarized South American country. Analysts have often said the pontiff has been postponing a visit to his homeland to make sure his presence isn’t used by either side of the political divide.

The pope has stated on several occasions that in 2017, he had planned to visit Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, but then-Chilean President Michelle Bachelet asked him to postpone the trip until after presidential elections in November.

Pope Francis then decided to only visit Chile and Peru and leave Argentina and neighboring Uruguay for a future date.

But it will be difficult for the pope to avoid such a situation, especially with Millei there to greet him – or not! – once Francis gets off the plane.

1. Same-Sex blessings and more fallout

And now the big one. This was the bombshell Catholic news story of the year. It could be just the start as the pope’s Synod on Synodality comes to its conclusion in 2024. The meeting — likened by some as a sort of Vatican III lite — could bring even more changes in pastoral practices and even Catechism level doctrines.

Leading figures on the Catholic left jumped at the chance to turn ambiguous language in the confusing (and widely misunderstood) Fiducia Supplicans into a “clarion call for supporting same-sex marriage.” That quote, from a National Review piece, is certainly one apt way to put it.

More from that piece:

Jesuit priest and editor of the magazine America, James J. Martin, celebrated the document as a “huge step forward” for LGBTQ Catholics.

The Church “recognizes the deep desire in many Catholic same-sex couples for God’s presence and help in their committed relationships,” he told the Associated Press. “Along with many Catholic priests, I will now be delighted to bless my friends in same-sex marriages.”

The key point that Martin glosses over — an omission also made by many mainstream news outlets — is that there is no such thing as same-sex marriage in the Catholic Church, nor can there ever be. Monday’s declaration repeatedly affirms this point.

This was all predictable. While plenty has been written about this, more will be as well come 2024.

The past — and by that I mean the last three months alone — will serve as a prologue on this stuff. In other words, nothing will be the same regarding doctrine after the Dec. 18 announcement.

Since the pope’s decree, large swaths of bishops and priests across the world — in places such as Nigeria — have said they won’t conduct such blessings. Others have said they are confused. Keep an eye on Europe (hello Germany) and the Francis-favored bishops there and elsewhere (think liberal zip codes in America) to see if Catholics who plunge beyond the foggy words of Fiducia Supplicans will face any kind of discipline.

We will only see what other fall out comes of this starting in the next year. Across the Catholic world, couples who are LGBTQ, unwed but living together or re-married outside the church — in opposition to Catholic teaching — will be photographed standing in front of a priest and receiving a blessing.

We got an inkling of that in a New York Times story on Dec. 21. Indeed, this is a seismic shift, reverberations of which will be felt for years to come. It’s just the beginning.

In conclusion, here are the questions that need to be asked: What will happen after the Synod on Synodality’s second meeting in October and its final report? What other areas of church doctrine will change? Will the same-sex blessing decree be openly debated at this stage? What will bishops in the Global South, where the faith is growing, do in that setting? Will potential non-compliance cause bigger rifts between traditionalists and conservatives, inflaming a possible schism?

These are all good questions that journalists need to ask in 2024. We may not get clear answers to in 2024, but these questions remain essential for anyone interested in this late stage of Francis’ pontificate and the overall state of Catholicism at this point in history.

This post was originally published at GetReligion.

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Clemente Lisi is the executive editor at Religion Unplugged. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event” and previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.