(LifeSiteNews) — Joining me on this episode of The John Henry Westen Show from Rome is Father Francesco Giordano, director of Human Life International’s Rome office. We discussed the kind of pope the Catholic Church needs in our times and more.
This episode was recorded prior to the election of Pope Leo XIV.
I began the episode by asking Fr. Giordano what the Church needs in a new Holy Father. The priest first recalled feeling distressed while discerning the priesthood in the early 2000s because of the sexual abuse, financial and other scandals that, after several decades, are still plaguing the Church. He emphasized that the new pontiff, along with all clergy, will need to help win back the trust of the faithful.
“We don’t have the culture that we once had, where priests, every word that comes out of our mouth … was like gold. That’s no longer that culture. Far from it,” he said. “I remember thinking very specifically, ‘We have to prove ourselves, we have to prove ourselves … to the faithful. And I think this obviously goes for the bishops, this goes for the pope, this goes for everyone. So clearly we have to have a good reputation. We have a duty to that.”
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A bit later, Giordano underscored that the next pope needs to promote a simple faith like we see in the Baltimore Catechism.
“The Baltimore Catechism … it’s so clear and concise and perfectly clear for people just to know, ‘What are we made for?’ for instance, the very first [question]. ‘We are made to know, to love, to serve God in this life and to enjoy Him in the next,’” the priest said.
“A statement like that doesn’t come out in five minutes. It comes out through many years of reflection and theology, but that doesn’t need to be debated,” he added. “These are undebated issues [of] simple faith, and the pope needs to … have that simple faith that confirms us in [our] faith.”
READ: Bishop Schneider urges Pope Leo XIV to address ‘tremendous doctrinal confusion’ in Church
Giordano further stressed that the new pope will need to be a custodian of the faith and correct heresies within the Church.
“The pope is the custodian of the faith synchronically and diachronically because the faith is based on revelation and tradition,” the priest said. “And this is something that in the 19th century the Church tried to emphasize so much … this passing on of the faith. And the pope needs to be a custodian of that. He needs to make sure that big errors are not said.”
Later in the episode, Giordano emphasized that the pope needs to bring unity to the Church.
“The allegiance of the pope cannot be strictly to his congregation or to a movement. He has to be the father of the whole Church, and all the charisms that are involved in that,” he said. “And he has to be able to listen to all of them and take into consideration everyone.”
READ: Cardinal Müller calls on Pope Leo XIV to heal divisions in Church
“That has to be the charism of the pope, because that’s a charism that then brings unity. A father brings unity among factions of brothers and sisters not getting along all the time, and he brings peace to them, calms them down if they get excited, and so we need that, we need a father. … That’s very important for a pope to be a father.”
To hear more from Fr. Giordano, tune in to this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show.
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LifeSiteNews readers are invited to continue praying for our new pope.
