A Popeless Cause: Why Hasn’t There Ever Been An Irish Pontiff?
(ANALYSIS) Remember that time Ireland had a pope?
You probably don't.
Because it never happened.
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Italy, of course, has had hundreds of popes. France has had 15 and the Germans half a dozen. Even the Croatians, Dutch and English have each had a pontiff. (In fact, the sole English pope authorized the invasion of Ireland in the 12th century).
But despite Ireland's rich monastic and missionary traditions, along with its hard-fought struggle to maintain the Catholic religion, there has never been an Irish pope.
I once asked an Irish priest about Irish popelessness, and he told me he has “never heard the matter raised.”
Other Irish Catholics, when asked, gave a similar response. Nobody seems to mind or, for that matter, take notice.
If this is what the Irish think of their popelessness, then maybe having an Irish pope isn’t that good an idea. Perhaps a failure to notice the predicament is a reason why Ireland has gone popeless.
At any rate, there seems to be a sentiment that the global church would benefit much more if ensuing pontiffs came from sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines or some other non-European setting where Catholicism thrives but from where no popes have originated.
The College of Cardinals, which is responsible for electing popes, started to become more transcontinental in the mid-20th century. This trend has accelerated during the current pontificate. Currently, less than 40% of the College of Cardinals is European — down from 52% when the Francis pontificate began in 2013.
This change reflects the current realities of where the world's Catholics now live. The faith is on the decline in Europe, including Ireland, where weekly Mass attendance has dropped from 91% in 1975 to 36% in 2016.
Over the past 50 years, the number of nuns in Ireland has gone from 14,000 to 4,000. The number of Irish priests has fallen at a similar rate. And the trend is set to intensify: The average age of an Irish nun is now over 80. Meanwhile, Ireland’s main seminary for priests has gone from 500 seminarians to just 20. Ireland will increasingly have to rely on importing reverse missionaries from the same distant lands it used to evangelize.
If Ireland was deemed unfit for papal duty in pious bygone centuries, one might assume the exclusion will continue.
The chances of an Irish pope in the 21st century are remote, confirms Belfast native and Jesuit priest Oliver P. Rafferty, who is also a history professor at Boston College.
“The center of gravity of the Church is moving, and increasingly the developing world will provide its leadership at all levels, including that of the church’s head,” he said.
Not since the early centuries following the death of Christ has Ireland seemed so far removed from the church's “center of gravity.” Ireland no longer even has a cardinal eligible to vote for the next pope. Among the countries that do have a current voting cardinal are Ethiopia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, South Sudan and Sweden (India has 5 voting cardinals).
During Ireland's Catholic heyday, popelessness never prevented it from making a huge contribution to spreading Catholicism or from providing church-affiliated educational, health and humanitarian services across several continents.
Of course, one might view it as unfair that a country that has made such a contribution has never had its own pope, when other countries that have made less of a contribution have had one.
I fear at this point, though, my train of thought is succumbing to an “everybody gets a trophy,” everybody gets a pope mentality. Still, as the child of an Irish immigrant, I do sometimes wonder if there's something about Irish personality and cultural traits that makes them unfit for papal duty.
It is unlikely that any Irish native has ever come seriously close to becoming pope. Rafferty said that some had described Paul Cullen, who became the first Irish-born cardinal in 1866, as a “possibility” in the 1878 papal conclave. Cullen, who had played a major role at the First Vatican Council, could also speak Italian. But that wasn't enough to get him any votes at the conclave, and he also died later the same year.
The only Irishman ever to receive votes in a papal conclave was Luke Wadding, a 17th century Franciscan priest and historian who helped insert St. Patrick's feast day of March 17 into the Catholic Liturgical Calendar.
St. Patrick, for all his endless association with Ireland, was not actually Irish himself (I suspect there are many people of Irish heritage who are unaware of this.). Rather, he was a native of Roman Britain who, as an adolescent, was kidnapped by Irish pirates and taken to their land, where he was put to work tending sheep.
Patrick, of course, famously returned to his forcibly adopted land in order to evangelize it. In terms of ancestry, however, Ireland's patron saint is less Irish than Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama and even Robert De Niro. But you can hardly blame a popeless Ireland for claiming him.
Ray Cavanaugh is a freelance writer. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Aleteia, The Guardian and The New York Times.