Christ is seen...

Special Envoy to RomeRomans welcome the mass arrival of pilgrims with the same ease with which they walk and chat among ancient ruins. Drivers honk their horns, brake suddenly, and get angry. The traffic is hellish, and there's a train strike on top of that. Near the Vatican, high-end black cars with SCV (State of the Vatican City) license plates are starting to appear, which Roman sarcasm has transformed into Se Cristo Vedesse (See Christ the Wise). But limousines no longer exist. Pope Francis imposed an austerity regime on the Curia, both for image and financial reasons, and those who were accustomed to unjustified, or even sinful, spending are more discreet, or have already left the Vatican. But successive leaks of reports relating to matters of finance or morality demonstrate that foul play remains a common practice.

The cardinals have gathered in the Sistine Chapel, possibly one of the most inspiring enclosed spaces in the world, closed cum key, without Wi-Fi or coverage, far from any interference. But the interference to be carried out has already occurred in the previous days. Lobbies, congregations, the press, and politicians like the American vice president JD Vance, ultra-Catholic, galvanizer of the American and European far right, who believe that the chair of Peter should be a pontiff like John Paul II or Benedict XVI: inflexible with dogma, conservative in ideology, and conservative in the ideology of corruption.

The College of Cardinals brings together 133 members, most of them appointed by Bergoglio, who, as is known, had a following in the peripheries, therefore, the conclave is more universal than ever, less European than ever, with many newly appointed cardinals making the job of those who like to make lists of papal candidates difficult. The Italian Parolin and the Filipino Tagle, supporters of a nuanced continuity, lead the bets, but some experts believe that conservatives could close ranks around an African cardinal, an option that paradoxically would be as groundbreaking as it is dogmatic (the African Church has a reputation for being morally very). In St. Peter's Square, I asked two Angolan priests if they would like an African Holy Father, and they told me that the origin of the pontiff is not important. But in the end they admitted that the African Church is "more vibrant and younger" than the European one.I don't doubt it.

The Plaza de Sant Pere is filled with pilgrims and tourists. The former usually come in national groups, singing and praying loudly. I wonder where their fervor, their faith, comes from. Part of the answer, which an agnostic like me can understand, comes from immutability—the Church must be a rock, which is why Jesus called his disciple. petrus–. It is the weight of centuries, of millennia, of things that last, in a world where everything changes at breakneck speed. The use of Latin, the photogenic nature of the cardinals' clothing, the solemnity of the frescoes and the marble generate in the spectators watching the entrance into the conclave on the giant screens a state of silent respect or, even in the case of believers, a certain hallucination.

And yet, if you keep a cool head, it is inevitable to see the weak points beneath the purple and the artifice. The Church is losing followers in the West, and its doors are closed in China and Russia. and is threatened by evangelicals in Latin America. Finances are in bad shape, and the shadow of corruption still looms over the Vatican Bank, despite Bergoglio's efforts to clean things up. Faced with enormous problems, the prelates entrench themselves in dogmatic nonsense: while churches are emptying, there are sectors that criticize priests for giving Communion in the hand, rather than directly in the mouth. The Vatican, on the other hand, remains obsessed with sex, with issues such as celibacy, homosexuality, and the use of contraceptives. It continues to act as a moral police force that, in addition to being a storm, seems hypocritical, given the massive cover-up of pedophilia scandals and the tricks of the Curia's notorious gay lobby.

Pope Francis has certainly opened a new cycle (whether it will continue remains to be seen), but his reformist approach has infuriated the most hardline sectors and disappointed the most progressive. And the army of the indifferent continues to grow. Although, in such a complicated global landscape, one does not have to be particularly devout to see that the world has too many charlatans and lacks a moral guide.On Tuesday, in the sermon at the Mass before the start of the conclave, Dean Giovanni Battista Re said: "Love is the only force capable of changing the world." Amen, I thought upon hearing this. But the question is whether the Holy See retains the moral authority to defend such a revolutionary message.

And finally, in a time-sensitive portrait like this, one cannot ignore the absence of women, which is becoming more and more scandalous, more difficult to justify. And yet the Plaza de Sant Pere is full of smiling nuns waiting for the fumata, apparently happy with their subsidiary role. "Each one has their role," a Honduran nun tells me, "and, in the end, it's not men or women who make the decisions, but the Holy Spirit."