What the NEW POPE Must Be ｜ Fr. Giordano’s Vision
Summary
In this special episode of the John Henry Weston Show, Father Francesco Giordano, the head of Rome's Human Life International, joins Dr. Weston to talk about what the Church needs right now in a new Holy Father.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
In the end we have to have a man who is wise because the demons have a lot of knowledge
00:00:04.680
but no wisdom. Hello my friends and welcome to this special episode of the John Henry Weston
00:00:11.500
show where I'm so pleased to bring you a good friend a priest here in Rome. He is the head
00:00:18.680
of Rome's Human Life International which you should know is the pro-life group all around
00:00:26.500
the world that does such great work and they especially do amazing conferences but they're
00:00:31.640
so active around the world promoting life and the Human Life International has always
00:00:39.300
had this beautiful office here in Rome. I was really close to Monsignor Barrero who used
00:00:46.220
to run it many years ago and Father Francesco Giordano has taken that place and is a beautiful
00:00:55.480
work of the Lord in Rome. But I wanted to talk to him right now because what's going
00:01:01.540
on of course is the conclave and we're about to elect a new Holy Father and for someone
00:01:07.660
who's around Rome who is really lives here and understand what's happened here and all
00:01:14.040
of what goes on in the church here. I thought bringing Father's perspective on the conclave
00:01:18.900
on what the church needs right now in a Holy Father would be great. Father thank you so much
00:01:24.620
for joining us. Thank you so much Dr. Henry. We always begin with the sign of the cross
00:01:28.080
if you wouldn't mind leading us. Yes of course. Amen. So Father about what the church needs
00:01:36.520
right now in a new Holy Father if you could let us know from your perspective. Well so I
00:01:42.100
was reading this talk the other day that Cardinal Zen read at the congregations and I was really
00:01:49.860
moved by it because I thought this is the portrait of a Pope and he emphasized five points. The Pope
00:01:56.600
needs to have a good reputation. He has to have the freedom to move. He has to have a simple faith.
00:02:04.320
He has to have fatherly cares and he has to have experience, competence and wisdom. And so a good
00:02:12.140
reputation. I mean think about this. The Cardinal emphasized how priests are expected to have a good
00:02:18.360
reputation. When the scandals broke up or broke out in 2001 I remember I was in Chicago and I remember
00:02:24.800
being distressed because I was not even a seminarian and I was thinking about the priesthood and I was
00:02:30.060
very distressed by all of that was going on. But I remember thinking now is a time that we have to
00:02:35.600
prove ourselves. We don't have the culture that we once had where priests you know every word that
00:02:45.340
comes out of our mouth that was like gold or whatever. That's no longer that culture. Far from
00:02:50.340
it. And so I remember thinking very specifically we have to prove ourselves. We have to prove ourselves
00:02:56.940
to you, to the faithful. And I think this obviously goes for the bishops. This goes for the Pope. This
00:03:03.940
goes for everyone. So clearly we have to be, we have to have a good reputation. We have a duty to that,
00:03:13.740
you know. And obviously we're not perfect. Priests, bishops, nobody's perfect. But at least,
00:03:21.140
you know, not some, you know, big scandals like, you know, finance scandals, you know, and
00:03:26.780
I don't know, sexual scandals of all sorts that come up. I mean, you know, maybe people
00:03:34.520
can make mistakes, but you know, there are some scandals and there are some scandals and
00:03:38.200
you know what I mean. And so we don't, that's, we can't have that sort of thing come up in
00:03:45.900
the papacy. That's a very good point the cardinals then made. Or the priesthood or the bishops.
00:03:51.860
We are held high to this. The second point, the freedom to move. Well, you know, the Pope
00:04:02.700
throughout the history has fought for his freedom, his autonomy, because, because he is the vicar
00:04:11.360
of Christ. This is a divinely instituted institution. We cannot be bound to others, to kings, to embers,
00:04:19.480
to anyone. We, we just can't. We are, he is the vicar, the vicario. He is in the place
00:04:25.120
of Christ. He's like the luogo tenente, the lieutenant. He holds a place. He represents
00:04:32.320
that. That's divinely instituted, Matthew 16, the successor of Peter. This is, and he happens
00:04:40.560
to be the bishop of Rome. And this is what the Pope is. And he's a father. That's what
00:04:45.480
Papa means. He's a Papa. That's why you also have like, for instance, in the Chaldeans and
00:04:50.840
the, and the, the Pope of, you know, the, the Pope of that, you know, there are lots of different
00:04:56.940
churches also talking about the Pope, Papa, Papa, the father, the priest, the father.
00:05:01.920
So, and he has to have the freedom to be a father, the freedom to, to, to guide the, the institution.
00:05:08.220
This is also part of the break also with the East, with the, with the Eastern churches is
00:05:11.980
that the, they're autocephalic churches and they're bound to their nations usually, you
00:05:16.940
know, like in Russia or Romania or whatever you, you have these, they're, they're connected
00:05:21.320
to the, the, the Pope is not bound to the nations. Then the Pope is, the Pope is, is above, is
00:05:27.800
a universal entity, the universal figure representing Christ universally. It's a universal faith.
00:05:36.920
Speaking to the third point, faith, he has to have a simple faith. You know, we live in
00:05:40.800
a society right now, as I said from the beginning, where we've lost our reputation. It's not so
00:05:45.980
much a question of reputation, it's so much as a question of authority, really. Authority
00:05:52.540
from the Latin, au geris, autoritas, au geris, to make the other grow. We, we are losing the,
00:05:59.600
the, the weight. We've lost the weight, you know, of the priesthood, of the, the, the bishops
00:06:05.980
and the, the Pope and the cardinals and all, that there used to be, culturally speaking,
00:06:10.600
there was a weight, you know, there's an autoritas behind the words that are said and done, actions
00:06:17.380
that are done. And, and so if we complicate things further, you know, uh, people get confused.
00:06:26.060
We don't have to be getting into public discourses on theological debates. Uh, I think that doesn't
00:06:35.040
need to be, the public doesn't need to be brought into these big debates that we have amongst
00:06:39.740
clergy, among theologians, you know, because there are obviously, uh, valid debates to be
00:06:47.780
had throughout history. That's what theology does. We sit and we debate about issues and
00:06:52.040
things, but that doesn't need to come out in the newspapers or with you or with it doesn't
00:06:56.000
need to get everyone involved. That's why we have catechisms and catechisms and syntheses
00:07:00.940
and compendiums for people, you know, and the catechism of the catechism for the, for
00:07:05.480
the youth, for this, for that group. And because the church has got all these wonderful instruments
00:07:10.640
that we've had, we, you know, think about the America, the Baltimore catechism. I was
00:07:14.880
just saying that the other day, I mean, you know what, it's so clear and concise and perfectly
00:07:19.640
clear for people just to know, you know, what are we made for? For instance, the very number,
00:07:24.100
very first number, we are made to know, to love, to serve God in this life and to enjoy
00:07:29.040
him in the next. But, you know, a statement like that doesn't come out in five minutes.
00:07:34.300
It comes out through many years of reflection and theology and, but that doesn't need to
00:07:39.300
be debated. These are undebated issues. Simple faith. And the Pope needs to be that. The Pope
00:07:45.280
needs to have that sort of simple faith that confirms us in the faiths. And another point
00:07:50.940
to be said in all of this, we have to understand that we're living in the modern world right
00:07:55.840
now, since the 1700s, where, you know, where, where a lot of the, where a lot of the cultural
00:08:04.800
apparatuses are no longer there. We don't have the emperors and the kings and all this anymore.
00:08:10.100
We have these, we have secular states. And so people have focused a lot of their attention
00:08:15.480
on the, on the Pope in these last centuries. And the last century in particular, even with
00:08:20.960
the media, even sitting here talking right now, it's become, he's become a very important
00:08:27.300
figure. But obviously the Pope is not the Catholic faith. It's, the Pope is the, is the custodian
00:08:35.120
of the faith synchronically and diachronically. Because the faith is based on revelation and
00:08:43.620
revelation and tradition. And this is something that in the 19th century, the church tried to
00:08:47.840
emphasize so much that this passing on of the faith and the Pope needs to be a custodian
00:08:53.580
of that. He needs to make sure that, that big errors are not said. And in fact, you know,
00:08:59.000
even when they, the cardinals signed before they get into conclave, they have to sign that
00:09:03.280
they're not heretics. You know, you don't have, you can't have a formal heretic, you know,
00:09:08.080
become a Pope. This is a teach, this goes back centuries, you know, from the beginning of the
00:09:15.440
conclave, some of the beginning of the, of the elections of Popes. The conclaves began
00:09:19.980
in the, in the 1270s, I believe it was. Anyway, uh, the conclave as, as we have as a function
00:09:27.840
today, it used to be that the Pope was elected on acclamation and divine, on Vox Populi, Vox
00:09:38.660
And that was the Roman people. That's the other thing. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome and
00:09:42.760
the cardinals are the clergy of Rome and the cardinals are the cardinal, you have the cardinal
00:09:48.500
priests, the cardinal deacons, you know, because they're deacons in the diaconia of Rome, you
00:09:53.320
know, and, and that's how it was sort of functioned that way. And, um, and they were red, they were
00:10:00.080
red because the Pope wore red. In fact, that's why you have the mosetta with the red and the
00:10:05.520
shoes that are red because the red refers to the, to the blood that's shed and the martyred and
00:10:10.240
the, the witness that you're supposed to do. And the cardinals wearing red because they're
00:10:14.480
close to the Pope, they're as close advisors, right? And in fact, they were brought in, they
00:10:19.200
were brought in, the cardinals emerged in the 11th century and they were brought in, uh,
00:10:24.000
after the reform of the papacy in the last latter half of the 11th century, you have like
00:10:29.440
Peter Damian and those are among the first cardinals. And they, they gathered together
00:10:34.320
to discuss specific issues. So they would have congregations, they'd come in to gather together
00:10:39.920
the congregations and this issue is an issue, that's an issue, that's an issue. And then they
00:10:44.880
dismantled the congregation. Then with the, with the Protestant Reformation, you have the problem of
00:10:51.360
the Protestant Reformation. So you have the Santo Ficio, the Holy Office that remained a permanent
00:10:56.320
congregation because it was a permanent constant conflict, an issue to try to resolve this,
00:11:01.760
what's going on theologically. But as you see, there are counselors, there are advisors to the
00:11:06.160
Pope, the cardinals to help them exactly in the simplicity of the faith. All the complexity that we
00:11:12.400
have in life, in theology, in everything has to eventually bring to the simplicity because that's
00:11:19.280
how God works. God is simple. There's a simplicity to God. There's a unicity to God. And so your unicity
00:11:25.440
goes also to another point that's really important in this. And that brings me to the fourth point
00:11:29.440
of Cardinal Zen's talk was on the fatherly charism. The Pope has got to be a father,
00:11:34.960
it's got to be the authority. The father is the one who is an authority and he has to have this
00:11:39.520
fatherly charism. What does this mean though? This means that he has to also, that he has to be someone
00:11:44.640
who's not attached to specific movement, a specific movement in the church or even religious order in
00:11:51.600
some ways. Because, I mean, he can be a religious, no problem. And we had a Jesuit just now and
00:11:58.240
we've had Franciscans, we've had Dominicans, St. Pius V changed the color to white, kept the Mosetta.
00:12:04.160
But the allegiance of the Pope cannot be strictly to his congregation or to a movement or to whatever.
00:12:10.960
He has to be the father of the whole church and all the charisms that are involved in that. And he has
00:12:15.760
to be able to listen to all of them and take into consideration everyone. That has to be the
00:12:21.840
charism of the Pope. Because that's a charism that then brings unity. A father brings unity among
00:12:27.360
factions of brothers and sisters not getting along all the time. He brings peace to them, calms them
00:12:32.800
down if they get excited. And so we need that. We need a father. We really need that. That's very
00:12:38.480
important for a Pope to be a father. And the Pope, and then the fifth point, he needs to have experience,
00:12:43.760
needs to have competence, needs to have wisdom. And this last point about when you think about
00:12:48.880
experience and competence, you think about someone who understands the Curia, who understands how things
00:12:54.800
work in the Curia, how things work in Rome, how things work among the bishops, how things work in
00:12:59.920
the church, how things work, and how to govern also taking always into consideration subsidiarity.
00:13:07.920
The Pope doesn't need to be governing every little piece of the church. He cannot do that.
00:13:13.680
He doesn't have the energy to do that. That's where he has entrusted to him bishops. Bishops
00:13:19.120
are representing him. Priests are representing the bishops. And that's the whole, that's the
00:13:24.080
subsidiarity of the church is wonderful. It works so wonderfully, actually. It really flows that way.
00:13:29.120
It's not a centralized government in the way that we have imagined in the modern sense. It's divinely,
00:13:35.680
and divine, and human, and integrates all of the parts together, just like Jesus does.
00:13:41.120
Jesus, in his own being, in his own person, in his own being, Christ, the second person of the Holy
00:13:51.920
Trinity, who assumes our human nature, Jesus Christ, as perfectly human and perfectly divine. And so all
00:13:59.360
these elements of the human and divine have to come in, because church is, as the Second Vatican
00:14:03.520
Council emphasizes in this order, Roman Gentian says, the church is the body of Christ. The church
00:14:12.560
is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The church is the people of God. In that order. In that order. Because
00:14:19.920
it has to reflect Christ and his humanity. And humanity is what it is in its diversity. But it's
00:14:26.880
a unity in diversity. And the church has to be able to bring that unity in the diversity. In fact,
00:14:33.440
I always say this. I always say that church is able to bring out the best of each individual person,
00:14:43.360
each individual culture. And that's because Christ does that. Christ doesn't create us separate,
00:14:50.800
and doesn't create clones. It creates individuals. Just like you have individual persons in the Trinity,
00:14:57.920
you have individual persons that are angels, you have individual persons that are human beings.
00:15:04.480
And so everything Seminole has to reflect the divine plan. Everything has to reflect
00:15:12.880
that. And we cannot lose track of that. And that's what I also think, you know, we get this
00:15:18.240
impression that politicking going on. Yeah, that's a human dimension, but that's not everything,
00:15:23.360
obviously. This is pointing up to something much greater than that. That's part of it. There's
00:15:27.920
always politicking going on because people politic, people talk together. Aristotle talks about this,
00:15:33.760
you know, that society is about politicking. It's about networking, getting to see each other,
00:15:38.880
negotiating, etc., etc. But that's just an instrument. That's just an instrument. In the end,
00:15:47.600
we have to have the wisdom. We have to have a man who is about that, who is wise. And why wisdom,
00:15:54.240
let us not forget, is imbued with charity, with love. Because the demons have a lot of knowledge,
00:16:03.040
but no wisdom. No wisdom. They have a lot of intellectual knowledge, but they'll use it really
00:16:10.160
badly. So it is a spiritual war we're in. Think about Christ when he gets angry. He gets angry with
00:16:15.440
the demon that says something true about him. You are the Christ. You are whatever he says in that
00:16:22.480
scripture passage. And Jesus says, keep quiet. Why? He's saying something true. But it's not enough to
00:16:29.920
to say something true. Because he says it with a bad intention. And the moral act requires not only
00:16:35.920
the truth, but it requires the intention and the goodness that's there. And so that's why the
00:16:40.160
goodness and the charity is so important in everything that we do. Why do we do what we do?
00:16:46.240
We do it and why do we do it? That's why we have to ask ourselves these questions all the time.
00:16:51.280
And a holy father has to exemplify that. Pope Pius XI said, men must look for the peace of Christ in
00:17:01.120
the kingdom of Christ. And he urged that the faithful give public honor to Christ the King
00:17:06.080
so that individuals and states would submit once more to the rule of their savior. And that is why
00:17:12.000
LifeSite News is raising up the image of Christ the King across the United States. And you can help us
00:17:18.400
reach millions more. Please pledge your support today for these billboards at lifefunder.com
00:17:25.200
slash Christ is King. One of the things you mentioned about before we started was about
00:17:33.280
that this really is a spiritual battle, even in the the selection of the pope. And you mentioned also
00:17:39.600
about the other side of that spiritual battle being also organized in terms of what those who are
00:17:47.040
opposed to Christ and his church in the world and their human instruments in the world actually do
00:17:53.040
sort of take part, if you will, in the conclave in a way, in a sense. How do they do that?
00:17:59.760
How do they do that? I, you know, I, there are a lot of influences, negative influences. I mean,
00:18:06.800
you sense this in Rome and, uh, we've had, we've read articles about this, you know, politicians and
00:18:13.280
such that trying to influence the conclave and all that just recently, we've been reading articles,
00:18:19.360
you know, uh, that have come out even on CNN. Uh, I just read something yesterday about Macron or
00:18:25.840
trying to influence against certain candidates or whatever, and then they'll deny it, whatever.
00:18:30.400
It doesn't, that's not the point. The point is not Macron or any of these things. The point is that
00:18:35.520
where there is goodness, the goodness of Christ, the martyrs, Rome is full of martyrs, by the
00:18:45.280
martyrs, there's going to be, there's going to be the, the, the evil one. It we have, we cannot
00:18:50.560
forget that we are in the middle of a spiritual war. If we don't remember that we're in a spiritual
00:18:55.280
war, we, we were in dire straits. Uh, not to think that there are people out there trying to do
00:19:03.520
bad things, uh, witches or what have people cursing or, uh, not nasty things. I mean,
00:19:10.960
that's happening. We'd be naive not to think that there are people, you know,
00:19:15.600
I mean, we just saw, for instance, the Satanists in, um, Kansas City. You saw that episode, right?
00:19:24.320
And I'm lost. I'll, I'll use that as an example. So you saw the Satanists and Archbishop Nauman.
00:19:31.440
Archbishop Nauman had a mass celebrated in front of the, of the Capitol building and all surrounding
00:19:37.280
it and adoration, not, not just the mass adoration, which is an extension essentially of the mass.
00:19:43.520
Whenever you elevate the host, you think, I think of this, you're extending your adoration of the,
00:19:48.400
the host that you are at mass. So our, so it is a spiritual war and we do have to think like this.
00:19:53.600
And Archbishop Nauman did a wonderful job. And so what happened, they were impeded from having
00:19:58.400
their ceremony, their ritual ceremony in, in the building itself, but then they had it outside.
00:20:04.640
And then there was that fight that took place, right? Because they were going to,
00:20:08.560
part of their ritual ceremony was to desecrate the host. The Satanists believe this more than we do.
00:20:14.400
That's unbelievable. They, they, so they were there, they had the, they had the host,
00:20:19.920
they were going to throw it down and stamp, step on it. And somebody came up, this gentleman,
00:20:25.360
I don't remember, came up and grabbed him. And the other one, the Satanists was beating him up too.
00:20:30.480
It was really bad. And then he was, oh, it's freedom of religion, freedom of religion.
00:20:35.040
Freedom of religion. But you're, you're, you're stomping on Christ and the Eucharist.
00:20:40.400
So talking about the Eucharist, the mass, the mass is really where everything takes place.
00:20:45.520
The source and summit of our faith, as the council says. And so when I celebrate mass,
00:20:49.680
especially these days, when I'm celebrating mass, especially at the elevation of the most
00:20:53.840
precious blood, I pray that by the power of this most precious blood, that these demons that are
00:21:00.240
surrounding Rome, demons that are surrounding us in the church, demons that are surrounding and trying
00:21:09.840
to influence negatively in the thoughts, even the cardinals, that they be bound by his most precious
00:21:18.400
blood. I, I've been praying that actually at the elevation. And I've been asking other free,
00:21:23.760
press freest friends of mine to do the same. And we have been doing that. These are prayers that
00:21:28.320
we can do. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're core ad core loquitur. It's, it's from the
00:21:32.240
depths of my heart. I mean, and I, as a priest, have that power with, with Christ. I, I have the power
00:21:38.160
to bring Christ. It's the greatest power a man can have, actually. That's the reason why bishops,
00:21:43.040
when you celebrate the mass, you don't put the cross and the, you know, you put it under the, the
00:21:48.960
chasuble because the bishop and you took off the zucchetto during the consecration, because in that
00:21:54.880
moment, the priest and the, and the bishop, you have the same, the same dignity because you consecrate
00:22:02.240
Christ. You bring Christ onto the altar. You consecrate his blood. And by the power of that, of that
00:22:10.000
blood, you can free a lot of souls. You can really do a lot. And Christ wants us, this is a very,
00:22:17.760
very important point, that Christ wants our participation. In order to earn merits, we have
00:22:23.680
to participate. You know, St. Augustine said that Christ, if God created you without your consent,
00:22:30.240
will not save you without your consent. This is very important. So with our free will, we can do so
00:22:36.240
much. What do we choose to do with our free will? What do we choose to follow? Who do we choose to, to
00:22:42.240
follow? And as a priest, with my free will, I wouldn't, obviously I want to do the good. I
00:22:47.680
don't always know what the good is. And that's why I pray and I do that. And all of us have a duty,
00:22:53.440
I think, to when, in whatever position we're in, to do the best that we can, to do the best,
00:22:59.760
the good that we can for the church. And because it's our mother church, we have to love our church.
00:23:06.000
And that just requires these many acts of prayer and offering.
00:23:13.440
Protecting your money doesn't have to be complicated. With stocks, bonds, and crypto,
00:23:17.440
it's easy to feel lost. The gold and silver have been trusted for centuries as a simple,
00:23:22.880
stable store of value in uncertain times. If you had invested $35,000 in gold at the millennium,
00:23:28.960
an amount you can give today tax-free to anyone you love, it would have grown to be worth over $325,000.
00:23:35.840
Call our team at 610-326-2000 and let us step you through crafting a solution for your family.
00:23:44.720
We have the Auxilium Christianorum prayers for laity that Father Chad Ripperger put out.
00:23:49.920
I think are a great, a great boon for the faithful to be able to participate with you,
00:23:54.080
the clergy, in that powerful offering. Father Giordano, I want to thank you for joining us
00:23:59.520
and know that we are praying for you, for all of our priests, our bishops,
00:24:04.160
but especially right now, our Cardinals, as we await the selection of the new Holy Father.
00:24:11.680
If you could give everyone your blessing in closing that.
00:24:14.400
Thank you, Father, and God bless all of you, and we'll see you next time.
00:24:31.920
I'm Deacon Keith Fournier, and I hope you enjoyed this video from LifeSite News.
00:24:37.680
Check the links in the description for more content like this.
00:24:40.880
You can also connect with LifeSite News on social media and stay up to date with the latest news on
00:24:52.240
Thanks for watching, and may the Lord bless you.