PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ The Pope
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Summary
In this episode of Brokonomics, we discuss the current situation in the Vatican, how it stands in relation to the rest of the world, and what it means to be a Catholic in the modern world. We also talk about the rise and fall of Catholicism in Asia, and how it compares to other religions.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Brokonomics. It is Pope season again where we will be selecting a new Pope.
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Now I think this is quite interesting because the base of Catholicism is going a very different way
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to the current leadership of Catholicism. So for me this is a fairly important bellwether moment
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in what direction at least one element of the global leadership goes, being a leadership of
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1.4 billion people. So I think it's significant. Now this is going to be a primer on all matters
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potpourri. We are going to be covering the current situation, how the Vatican stands today and also
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of course a bit of the classical stuff. How did we get here? Now I don't know anything about the
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classical stuff but Bo does. Hello Bo. Hello. All right. Hello Bo. Well thank you for coming on.
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Yeah no. I was getting me chatting about history, even ancient history. Yes. I love it. Well there's
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definitely a bit of Roman stuff in here. That's definitely a bit I'd like to cover. But yeah,
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you kind of see where I'm going with this is that, you know, Catholicism is in decline in Europe,
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very much so. It's growing like a weed in Africa and they're very orthodox. Latin America has declined
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a bit, but you know, they're still quite orthodox. Apparently it's growing in Asia.
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Just to make a differentiation between orthodox and Catholic, because some people, when you say orthodox,
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they think... Oh orthodoxy, as in traditional... Not Eastern orthodox, like Greek orthodox or Russian orthodox.
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Not that, not that right yet. I mean that might also be growing. I don't know. In Asia, I mean like the Philippines,
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I've been reading recently a fair bit, as I guess you might imagine I would, been reading all about MacArthur,
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of all things. I'll do an epoch at some point about MacArthur and the war in the Pacific and he will return.
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And anyway, the Philippines is Catholic. Big time Catholic. Oh big, yes, very much so. Yes.
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I mean, the Philippine people are sort of all different types of ethnicities,
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but a lot of them are sort of Chinese originally, going back centuries now,
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but they're sort of Chinese people and there's been lots and lots of sort of Muslim influences.
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And yet, despite everything, because of the Spaniards really, they're Catholic.
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The Spaniards spent 400 years there, didn't they?
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Yeah. And the Spanish sailors who were stationed there, didn't really have anything to do apart
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from the local girls. And so they've injected a lot of Spanish-ism into the country.
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Funnily enough, in the Philippines, I did come across a massive statue of, and get this,
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There was literally a cardinal whose surname was Sin. Okay.
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And he's got a huge statue in Manila. All right.
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I mean, you could never promote him to Pope because you've got to keep him as a cardinal.
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He was really popular as well. They built a statue of him. So, yes.
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Well, they've got cathedrals and stuff, haven't they, all over the Philippines?
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Yes. And apparently it's doing well in Vietnam as well and some of those other Southeast Asian
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countries where young professionals are turning to Catholicism for whatever reason.
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And I did say it was declining in the West, but every time you meet a Catholic in the West,
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they're pretty hardcore, aren't they? I mean, you don't pick Catholicism if you're going
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I mean, the nature of Catholicism is the, well, put it this way, the nature of the Church
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of England or Anglicanism is extremely wishy-washy. And that's not what Rome is about.
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Well, I do like Catholicism for the fact that he's got a boss man. Whereas in Anglicanism,
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the Church of England stuff, you basically, I mean, you kind of have got a leader in the
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Well, yeah, but he doesn't actually enforce anything, does he? He doesn't do anything.
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And what you end up with is lesbian bishops. And they just go all over the place. They're
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just so rudderless. Well, at least with Catholicism, you've got a guy who's like, well, the last
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one was like, okay, now we're going to be weff-aligned and we're going to be a bit woke. But at
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least you have got a boss man who can come along and say, right, no, we're sorting this
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Yeah, Catholics, like most religions, actually. I mean, Anglicanism is something of an
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exception. Catholicism, like most religions, they have doctrines.
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Yeah. But where I'm going with all of this is the leadership is basically, well, the
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majority of the cardinals, I think it's the majority, there's like, whatever, 300 of
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them or something. But the majority, I think, were selected by Francis, who was a wokester.
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So the leadership is a bit woke. But what I'm saying is the base, Catholics themselves,
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especially young Catholics, they are traditionalist. They're more orthodoxy. They're not, you know,
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they're not signing up for whatever Francis was selling, basically.
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And so for me, this is a really interesting question. Where does the Vatican go next?
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Does it go with what the cardinals want? Which it probably will.
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Well, they're the ones that get to decide who the next pontiff will be.
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Or will they go down the route of what the base desperately wants, which is a return to
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We shall see. Who knows? I've got no real insight into that. I don't know the politics of the
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Well, before we dive into the history stuff, why don't we take a quick look at that?
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Okay. So hopefully our editor can stick up on screen this little table that I put together.
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So what I've got here is the top cardinal selections.
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And basically he was the Vatican Secretary of State. So he's basically the number two
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behind Francis. So he's a powerful dude already. I've given him a base score of 40%, which
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is pretty low. So I'm taking Francis as a sort of, you know, around about, you know, 50-ish
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So he's more lefty than, is that what you mean?
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Yeah, maybe. I mean, he was the action man for Francis and he was going around.
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You know, enforcing this agenda. So he spent a lot of time talking about climate change
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The only reason he hasn't scored lower is because he is at least sensible on women's
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I mean, as soon as you get... I'm not saying all women are bad, obviously, but the ones that
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have absolutely ruined the Church of England have generally been... Yes.
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Yes. Well, I mean, there is pressure to... So you've got the... Next up is Louis Antonio
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Tegel. So he's from Manila that we were just talking about.
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He only scores 30%, but he's the second favourite close behind. So it's basically between these
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top two is the current thinking. So he's the Archbishop of Manila.
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So the odds get much longer after these top two.
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Well, that's what the betting market thinks at the moment.
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And he has been described as the Asian Pope Francis, and he's been very pro-LGBTQ.
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Yeah. Which, for Pope, I would suggest is not the way to go, but then I'm not Catholic.
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It's weird. It's divisive. I heard the last Pope just gone. I've seen him described in
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a number of different places as one of the most divisive Popes.
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Because, again, the base, your average Catholic, isn't on board with pro-LGBTQ stuff.
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Yes. Then we've got Matteo Zuppi here, who is even woker. He's the third. So basically
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the top three, well, actually the top four, because Turkson's after. So Zuppi has praised
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queer families, and he's done a focus on migration. So he's basically the wokest on this list,
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and he's number three, is Zuppi. Number four on the list is also a wokester, Turkson, who
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who's apparently Ghanaian, Ghanaian, and he's been focusing on climate change, social justice,
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But just, anyway, number, what are we on? Number five, Erdo. Now, we start getting sensible
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Yep. He's on pretty good terms with Viktor Orban.
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So he really is. I was joking, but he really is then.
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Yeah. No, and he's been sensible on migration issues.
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And he's been quite sceptical about the progressive reforms under Francis.
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So he might even be even more based, but because he was a cardinal, Francis got rid of bishops
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I mean, one of the bishops basically just called him a heretic, and he was like, okay, right,
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So this guy might be even more based, but because he's been a cardinal under Francis,
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he kind of kept his powder dry. But from what we have seen, he gets a pretty decent based
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score, does the Hungarian. So he's probably my favourite out of this list.
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This one, I just love the name, Pierre Battitista Pizza Baller. I really think we should have
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a Pope called Pizza Baller, even if he does score only 50%. He might be all right as well.
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I mean, he spent most of his career in the Holy Land. So by necessity, he's been doing
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Yes, yes. So he was the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
00:10:30.540
Now, because he was there, he's focused on interfaith dialogue, but that's kind of out
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So there's not really, yeah, you kind of expect that. So I'm not 100% sure about my score
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So maybe. Oh, this guy's pretty good. Odds start getting a little bit longer.
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Now, but Robert Serra, he's the one that's attracted a lot of attention in social media.
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So he's from Guinea. How do you pronounce that? Guinean?
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And he basically spent most of his career resisting a Marxist dictatorship.
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You know, he's not against all the gender stuff.
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So, so, so, so he gets a base score 90%, but he probably, you know, being, being of a shade
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darker than most of us, he can probably get away with being a bit more in the face of
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But no, he's definitely got a very strong base score.
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It would be interesting if he won it and became the Pope.
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I don't mean that as a pejorative, but I mean, that's what the Guardian would call him, I suppose.
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And like the lefty mainstream media would attack him, but obviously he's a black fella.
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So they're going to have a bit of cognitive dissonance.
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Yeah, they're going to have problems with that, aren't they?
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Do you remember when David Lammy thought that, you know, the white and black smoke that comes
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out the chimney to denounce whether you've got a new Pope?
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David Lammy thought that was indicating the race of the Pope.
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He put a tweet out criticising it, saying, I think we should be focused on something else
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So a tradition started, I believe, in 1903, indicating whether we got, because it's,
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for those who don't know, they, they, they keep having these ballots and whenever a ballot
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is unsuccessful, they burn them and black smoke comes out.
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And when they've got a Pope and the ballot is successful, they let release white smoke.
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And that way, everybody in the, in the Vatican Plaza, whatever it's called.
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They can, they can see when white smoke comes out and they know they've got a new Pope
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So, I mean, I normally do my Brokonomics, basically aiming at Rachel Reeves so that she
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So Rachel, if you finally got your Brokonomics subscription, run down the hall, get David
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Lammy and pull him in for this one so he can learn something about the Pope.
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But yes, we, we might possibly have a black Pope and it would probably be a good, unless
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Yeah, he's a proper wokester, but, but Sarah isn't too bad.
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Getting into slightly longer, Oz, we've got Mario Gambetti.
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So, I mean, at least he's an Italian and he hasn't taken strong stances on the woke stuff,
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I mean, he spent most of his time in Morocco, but I mean, he's been doing a lot of woke outreach
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And at the bottom, we've got another uber-wokester, Jean-Claude Hollerick, Luxembourgish, or whatever
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And he's been, well, he basically wants gays in the church.
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I mean, I'm sure there are already, but he, but he wants that official.
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So based on this, it's likely we're going to get another lefty.
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Yeah, you've got to hope for either Sarah or Urdu, the Hungarian.
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And it'd be interesting to see the name they pick as well, because the names all have significance
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Because I believe the first one, I mean, you can tell me this, I believe the first one
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So nobody's picked Peter since, but there are certain names that become associated with different
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So if we get a Pope Pius, that would be an indication that he wants to return to tradition
00:15:05.800
If he picks a name like Leo, that's associated with, you know, civilizational protection.
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When you pick your name as Pope, it's quite often.
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Benedict, for truth, which might, you know, in this day and age might be interpreted as no
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You can see Sarah or something going for Benedict or something.
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Pope Urban II is the first Crusade Pope, isn't he?
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I'd like to see a Leo or an Urban being that Erdo chap, that Hungarian chap.
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And there's also Constantine, which kind of invokes renewal of Christian faith.
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So any of those names going on an Erdo or a Sarah, I think we're in good hands.
00:16:14.140
Famously, there's always a lot of horse trading behind the scenes.
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So it's not, it's often, well, it can quite easily not be one that seems like the obvious pick.
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So quite often they'll think, like, this guy is the heir apparent.
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Well, that's why I'm hoping he won't necessarily be that Piede bloke, the current favourite,
00:16:43.580
because, you know, he is the Vatican Secretary of State, but he's also therefore had the opportunity
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I mean, historically speaking as well, going back centuries and centuries and centuries,
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you make all sorts of promises to get the top seat.
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Apparently once a conclave lasted for three years.
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Well, it's got even more complicated than that.
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Sometimes you've had a Pope voted in and then a big chunk of the Cardinals don't accept
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They'll go and make a counter-papacy of their own.
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This is like the late 14th century I'm talking about.
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In fact, I covered it a bit in my recent ongoing mini-series about Henry V, the Council
00:17:40.640
You have a rival papacy in Avignon in southern France.
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And everyone decides, well, okay, instead of these two rival Popes, let's pick a third
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And we can all get behind that third one and it just didn't work.
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So now you've just got three Popes and they're all claiming to be Pope.
00:17:58.980
We very slightly had a version of that recently, didn't we?
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Was it Benedict, the former Pope, who stood down and resigned?
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He stood down, but he was basically still living in the Vatican.
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I wasn't paying much attention to the Pope for you back then.
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But not in modern times, I'm pretty sure, I probably have to use the word allegedly
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But I think there would have been all sorts of scandals coming out of the woodwork with
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It's not something you do just to put on your CV, is it?
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The thing I'm thinking of in the 12th century is apparently it lasted for three years at one
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point, because the Italians and the French were feuding over, and they just would not
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And eventually, the locals decided to lock them in and starve them until they picked.
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And they picked some poor sod who wasn't even present.
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He was in the Holy Land or something, and he just got a telegram one day to tell him that
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And that's apparently where the tradition comes from now of they just get shut in, and
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In fact, it used to be water and bread after a few days, if you didn't make a quick decision.
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But they locked them in, and they were like, no, you're on a fast decision.
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And apparently, just before the Second World War, whichever Pope that was, I forget now,
00:19:45.280
So my understanding is that between two and three weeks after the Pope dies, we get a
00:19:57.780
So about a week after this airs, it should begin the process.
00:20:02.680
I mean, I think once in my lifetime, if I recall properly, it was protracted.
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Like, day after day, the black smoke keeps coming out.
00:20:12.580
But mostly, in my lifetime, as far as I can recall, it's pretty quick.
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Mind you, there hasn't been that many, has there?
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If you go back to the medieval period or before, it really, really mattered.
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Like, the Pope was one of the power players in Europe, arguably, as powerful, or more powerful
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So it really, really mattered what policy the Pope had.
00:20:43.940
Well, that's the three-year thing when the Italians and the French were fighting.
00:20:47.460
But, okay, let's get into the history side of it, then, because, okay, so I know that
00:20:51.680
the Pope is the Pontifax Maximus, one of the old Roman titles.
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And I know that the Pontifax Maximus, in, like, the year zero, was this pagan dude who
00:21:02.680
was, like, sacrificing balls and throwing chicken bones and keeping the Roman calendar
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And I know that by about the year, by the, you know, 400s, you've got what I would consider
00:21:15.900
I'm a bit hazy as to what happened in between that Pontifax Maximus and that Pontifax Maximus
00:21:23.160
because something crossed over there and I'm not clear on what happened.
00:21:26.400
Okay, so the ancient Roman Pontifax Maximus is different to a Pope.
00:21:35.240
Well, yeah, but only since, like, the 15th century.
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There's all different names you could call the Pope.
00:21:47.500
And since about, I think, the 15th century, they decided to start using that.
00:21:52.860
So the idea of a pagan ancient Roman Pontifex Maximus is a different thing to a Pope, even
00:21:58.740
though a Pope can and does call himself chief pontiff.
00:22:01.500
So, okay, so the ancient Roman Pontifex Maximus is the chief priest.
00:22:09.060
But it was an office, usually for life, just like any other, like being a consul or a creator
00:22:21.560
Yeah, because I know it went over to being an emperor's title.
00:22:25.740
So one of the things I was going to ask you is, and it sounds like this is going to be
00:22:29.980
a hard note, is there any way of saying the Roman Empire lives on through the Pope?
00:22:49.940
You can make the argument, but it's a difficult one for me.
00:22:57.700
By the age of Augustus, i.e. one generation after Julius Caesar, who Augustus is considered
00:23:03.560
the first emperor, true emperor, he had then accrued everything into one person.
00:23:09.480
All the powers of the consul, of the tribunate, and to take the Pontifex Maximus,
00:23:16.580
or put all of that into one person, me, Augustus.
00:23:31.600
But then, so Pope is something entirely different.
00:23:34.520
If you go to the Vatican, if you go to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, I've been there a
00:23:39.580
number of times, you'll see up on the wall, a big, literally written in stone, list of
00:23:50.540
Now, the real reality is that there were various breaks.
00:23:54.740
But nonetheless, the official line is that there's an unbroken line of Popes from Peter
00:24:00.160
So did they pick one of the four from that thing you were telling me earlier and just
00:24:05.560
At the Council of Constance, like 1416, 1417, or whatever it was, they, in the end, decide
00:24:12.260
on one guy and keep going forward with that guy.
00:24:15.600
But Peter, he's from about the year 30-something, is he?
00:24:21.660
And so a lot of the early Popes, the very, very early Popes, their history, their historicity
00:24:29.620
is a little bit shaky, like Anglo-Saxon kings during the Dark Ages.
00:24:39.300
They're not sort of firmly in the full light of history.
00:24:43.600
Well, King Arthur is almost entirely fictional, or an amalgam of more than one person or whatever.
00:24:48.140
But, yeah, sometimes they're a little more than a name on a paper.
00:24:55.580
So the line of Popes, from Peter to today, are different to the ancient Roman pagan Pontifex
00:25:02.500
Maximus, although from the 15th century onwards, Popes would call themselves that.
00:25:11.480
So how did you go from the Rome, the pagan Rome of Julius Caesar and Augustus?
00:25:15.240
Well, that's, okay, so that's what I wanted to ask, because my envisaging was, is that
00:25:21.460
I know at some point the emperor adopted Christianity, and I just assumed at that point he picked
00:25:27.160
a Christian rather than a pagan for his Pontifex Maximus.
00:25:34.340
So famously, it's Constantine, Constantine the First.
00:25:37.280
And we're talking the early 4th century, so the early 300s or the 330s.
00:25:45.940
But it's not a, it's much more complicated than that.
00:25:48.180
So, I mean, after that, you've got the age of Julian, the emperor Julian, Julian the
00:25:52.660
Being an apostate means you've renounced the faith.
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Which faith did he renounce, Christianity or paganism?
00:26:02.400
He's after Constantine and he goes back to paganism.
00:26:04.700
So Catholics call him an apostate, or Christians call him an apostate because he took him back
00:26:15.500
So it's a bit of a back and forth, a bit of a seesaw, but not much of one, really.
00:26:19.140
I mean, Julian the apostate, you could see as a bit of a blip from the Christian point of
00:26:23.040
But the story of how you go from the age of Christ or the age of Peter to Constantine,
00:26:30.460
I mean, that's a few hundred years, the best part of 300 years.
00:26:34.040
And it's a very long storied narrative of how you go from being this small sect in
00:26:40.320
Judea, small sect of heretic Jews in Judea, to being the state religion of the Roman Empire.
00:26:51.260
I mean, it was, I suppose, a very, very, very short summary of it is, is that it became
00:26:56.960
So even in the age, even in the age of Nero, Nero does a massive persecution of Christians.
00:27:05.140
Some blamed the Great Fire of Rome that happened during Nero's reign on the Christians.
00:27:13.640
Well, it just became like anything else, really.
00:27:16.120
It just became the rich and famous, the rich and powerful people.
00:27:24.540
And then it makes the mainstream and then it blows up.
00:27:28.100
So I thought that they were sort of putting Christians to death in the Colosseum.
00:27:37.640
And the rich people who want to be a bit edgy, they think, OK, let's do this Christian stuff.
00:27:42.640
So like it's an underground, it's sort of an underground cult.
00:27:48.300
Yeah, a type of cult among many in the Roman world in the first, second century AD.
00:27:55.020
It was one of the mystery cults, like Mithraism or something.
00:28:05.360
There's like the cult of Isis, an Egyptian cult.
00:28:09.220
And sometimes, depending on the Roman emperor, sometimes they'll sort of turn a blind eye to it.
00:28:21.840
You're sort of freely allowed to be Jewish in Rome.
00:28:23.560
And other times, like maybe Titus or Hadrian, they persecute you.
00:28:28.180
So you go ups and downs, peaks and troughs in their favourability within Rome.
00:28:33.280
But at a certain point, it becomes kind of fashionable and the persecutions tail off.
00:28:46.040
So in the Roman period, the first, second century AD, the Romans would say things like,
00:28:51.620
look, look, you're allowed to be a Christian, but you must also, you must also at least pay lip service to the cult of the Roman emperor.
00:29:03.420
And particularly Christians and Jews would say, no, we can't do that.
00:29:18.640
Well, because the early martyrs, the early Christian martyrs refused to.
00:29:30.460
And we can't worship Caesar, the Roman emperor, whoever he is.
00:29:40.360
And the Romans quite often, very often, in fact, if you believe people like Zosimus or Tertullian or whoever or Edward Gibbon,
00:29:47.980
quite often the Roman authorities would say, look, just throw us a bone here.
00:29:52.480
You don't even actually have to really believe it in your heart.
00:30:08.520
Well, I was going to say, that's the Roman Empire negotiating from a position of weakness,
00:30:15.540
But if they were dealing with absolute headbangers like that, who were like,
00:30:19.480
yeah, no, I'm not going to even lie to you in order to avoid being eaten by a lion.
00:30:23.520
I mean, I would lie to avoid being eaten by an lion.
00:30:27.440
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