TLC Editorial
Not since 1681 has the word seen this double sede vacante: the chairs of both the See of Rome and Canterbury being vacant. While that is noteworthy on its own, the last two holders of these respective sees shared remarkable similarities, and their legacies are instructive about what both churches may need in their successors.
Rowan Williams (2003-12) and Pope Benedict XVI (2005-13) certainly had their differences, but both were among the greatest theologians both of the 20th century and among all to hold their respective offices. Both faced complex structural challenges in their churches and met with significant disappointments: the Anglican Communion’s failure to embrace Williams’s hoped-for Covenant and Benedict’s inability to complete needed curial reforms before advanced age left him with a “lack of strength of mind and body.”
Pope Francis (2013-25) and Justin Welby (2013-25) began their ministries within days of each other and shared a much deeper and more public friendship. The archbishop spoke of the pastoral care that Pope Francis offered to him upon his resignation, fruit of a close camaraderie. They undertook several joint ventures, most notably their “ecumenical pilgrimage of peace” to South Sudan in 2023. The pope treated the archbishop as something of an analogous leader, like the Ecumenical Patriarch. Pope Francis accepted Welby’s suggestion that the Anglican Primates meet in Rome in May 2024, and they met privately with Pope Francis.
The two bishops also shared a penchant for the symbolic.
Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt’s reflection on Pope Francis notes that his decisions to open his ministry with a visit to Lampedusa to highlight the plight of migrants and to live more simply “captured the world’s imagination.” Welby’s placing of Gregory the Great’s crozier (a “prop” loaned by Holy See) at the center of his first (and most successful) Primates’ Meeting and inviting the divided leaders to wash one another’s feet revealed similar instincts.
Both also had similar weaknesses. Both could be brusque at times, and neither was a theologian. Welby’s lashing out at meetings left him with few friends when accusations of mishandling the John Smyth safeguarding case were raised, and it was sometimes hard to identify clear priorities among the pope’s seemingly contradictory public statements.
The incongruity of “Who am I to judge?” alongside his staunch defense of a traditional sexual ethic is just one example. Dan Hitchens enumerated a substantial list of such contradictions.
Both also had autocratic impulses. Many have pointed out the tension between the synodal impulse of the pope’s ministry and his tendency to bypass traditional structures with his frequent use of the papal “executive order” known as the motu proprio. His frequent critique of certain kinds of Catholic conservatives not only seemed harsh but also politically confusing.
Welby’s authoritarian streak reached its nadir at the 2022 Lambeth Conference, when his executive order approach was clear in his refusal to allow any discussion of the Lambeth Call on Human Dignity. This was despite patient and insistent requests by Global South leaders for a vote to reaffirm Lambeth 1.10, which looked to many like a distressing echo of centuries of colonial suppression.
The 2023 publication of Fiducia Supplicans, which gave permission for informal blessings of persons in same-sex relationships, has made entrenched Global North-South division in the Catholic Church, along the lines of what has plagued our Communion for decades, more likely. The Catholic Church can, we hope, learn from our mistakes (the colonial past hangs over Rome less heavily, which helps).
Giving proper space for Global South leaders to speak about the pastoral challenges such changes present for their mission and security is especially important. The way white liberals have repeatedly handled Lambeth 1.10 has left Global South leaders feeling ignored and disrespected, and this has provided an opening for alliances with right-wing Westerners that has undermined the authority of the Communion’s central structures. All the tinder for such a set of crises is already present in the Catholic Church.
The most recent Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogues have focused on synodality amid differences. The summoning of the Synod on Synodality was an important step for Catholics in listening more broadly to the voice of the church and making decisions by consensus—something the new pope will need to lean into.
The dialogues call Anglicans to give more space for synods to make binding decisions, while curtailing deepening trends toward autonomy and division. This is the ultimate goal of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, which require the archbishop to relinquish some of his traditional dignities, partly to build trust in pursuit of more fully discerned common action. We will see how the rest of the Communion receives these proposals. Full support by the new archbishop will be essential if they are to succeed.
Above all, we pray that both new leaders will be evangelists, placing the clear and winsome proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ at the heart of their public teaching and writing. They must be people of prayer, steeped in the Holy Scriptures. Religious celebrities are not what the Church or the world need most, but leaders who will witness at all times to the beauty and power of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the profound mystery of his revelation of the Triune God.
TLC Editors
