By Miguel Murado

ACCORDING TO the prophecies of Saint Malachy, there are only a couple of Popes to go before the End of the World. Those who believe in such things consider this to be worrying. I rather see it as proof that Malachy, who wrote a little oracle for 112 future Popes, simply could not think of anything else to predict. The result is that, like Fukuyama, Malachy overstepped the mark when he announced so confidently the end of History, and he particularly underestimated the longevity of the Roman Church, maybe the longest living institution ever known.

Religion aside, it’s undeniable that there is something extraordinarily efficient behind the uninterrupted succession of Pontiffs, which has proved occasionally conflictive though never as much as the succession of Kings and Presidents. For many, the explanation is the Holy Spirit; for many others, the economy: Attali, for example, credited it precisely to celibacy, the single resort which could prevent both the evasion of capital outside the Church and the jobs there from becoming hereditary. The wealth of the Church was, for the French historian, the cause and consequence of its continuity: it was what allowed investments made centuries ago to continue increasing in value, building up an unparalleled patrimony of which the Vatican was just a showcase. Since I find the mysteries of economics by all accounts smaller than those of religion, both explanations leave me unconvinced.

The fact is that Rome is once more going to stage that ceremony of continuity. I think that those who claim Wojtyla’s death as a historical fact are mistaken. It is nothing but our usual temptation of believing that we live in an exceptional moment of History that makes us qualify as “historic” anything that astonishes us. But what is really astonishing and historic is precisely the opposite: how scarcely relevant the Pontiffs really are, taken one by one, in the History of the institution they govern. What is astonishing is that a Pope dies and almost nothing happens apart from that painfully private affair that is death, and that when a new one is elected, nothing much changes either (or just the ritual, like with John XXIII, as if ritual had not changed so many times in the Church…). There are those who don’t like continuity, even within the Church, let alone outside it. But it’s only fair to admit that, when you look at it objectively, this continuity is nothing but one of the most fascinating spectacles in European History.

(Miguel Murado is a former Middle East correspondent and current political analyst for the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia)

Miguel Murado
La Voz de Galicia, 05 April 2005