"The pope needs to recover the notion that he is vicar of Peter, a humble man whose authority was founded on the realization of his own sinfulness and failure in denying his Lord…"

I awakened at 6 AM to the sound of rain on the roof. Tony Padovano and Paul Collins went off to
meet Paul’s wife at the airport at 6:30. I got ready for the press conference,
and at 8:45 we all piled into the car and went to the closest metro station, C.
Columbo, which is literally the end of the line at the beach.

Turns out that we’re on a beach that is enjoyed by surfers
in wet suits and other daredevils who do frightening things with what look like
huge kites. They hurl themselves into
the surf and then try to get the wind to pick them up, so they can go skimming
over the waves. I did not see anyone actually succeed at it, but I suppose they
must, from time to time. On Wednesday, Marlene and I were turned back from our
walk by security for Italy’s president, Berluscone, who must have been enjoying
a nice windy walk on the beach.

No windsurfing this morning. It was miserable as we arrived
in Rome, and I was afraid the press would decide to take a Saturday off. I was very wrong. Sylvia Puggoli of National
Public Radio showed up, along with a three-person team from Reuters. Zenit, the
news agency owned by the Legion of Christ, signed in, as did a reporter from
the main Japanese news agency, Associated Press, Newsweek and Newsday, BBC, CNN,
The Tablet, the National Catholic Reporter, BeliefNet.com, the Ecumenical News
Network, a news team from Finland, and the Catholic News Service, among others.

Paul Collins arrived looking delighted to have his beautiful
wife alongside, and not long after, Fr. Tissa Balasuriya, OMI arrived with
Luigi De Paoli, the president of We Are Church Italy. Maureen Fiedler, SL, the
official North American representative of We Are Church North America made the
introductions and we were off to a fast start. Paul Collins is a writer and
broadcaster, but above all, he is a historian. Among the challenges facing the
next pope, he says the most difficult one is taking on the Wojtyla papacy’s
legacy. Collins set the frame by quoting
Cambridge historian Eamon Duffy, who said in 2003: “‘John Paul is a prophet,
not an administrator: he sees his role as pope as that of a traveling
evangelist, encouraging, exhorting, rebuking, proclaiming an ancient message he
believes can renew the world. He has left the structures of the church largely
in the hands of others, sometimes with unhappy results.’” (The Tablet, 18 October 2003.)

“A globe-trotting, evangelical missionary is not the
‘traditional’ Catholic pope,” Collins asserted. For the first thousand years of
the papacy, the role of the pope was as “Peter’s vicar,” not the “vicar of
Christ.” Peter’s role in the early
church was to keep the faith and to reconcile the believers to one another.”

“This papacy was omnipresent. The Vatican micromanaged the
church. Bishops served as branch officers, reporting to the head office. It is
a corporate model, not the New Testament model.” The image of the papacy as absolute monarchy goes back to the
medieval papacy, which was deepened by the 19th century retreat from
modernity. “Never in the history of the church has a papacy been so
centralized,” Collins asserted. “Wojtyla was outside the mainstream. His was
the second longest pontificate at 26 years.

“What we need,” Collins said, “is an altogether humbler
approach to papal pretensions, a sense of the papacy as service, not as
dominator. The pope needs to recover the notion that he is vicar of Peter, a
humble man whose authority was founded on the realization of his own sinfulness
and failure in denying his Lord….A humbler papacy would involve a pope who can
engage democratically with the media, but not use it as a propaganda tool to
enhance the image of the pope as king-emperor.” Collins said he was not meaning
to belittle the fact that the pope was indeed a great man who made great contributions
to the world through his interfaith dialogue, his involvement with Poland and
the Solidarity movement. But lack of praise for the recent pope is not the
problem, Collins said, adding he would not add to the hagiography already in
place. “John Paul II has more hagiographers than Rupert Murdock,” he quipped.

What is desperately needed is a less centralized, more
collegial institution. “The simple fact is a church with a membership of 1.1
billion and growing cannot be governed centrally,” Collins says. “Devolution of
power downwards to the local church will be a condition of the continuance of
the communion into the 21st century. Collins called for abolishment
of the Roman Curia. “It is irreformable and therefore should be abolished. It …
not only stifles the church, but also the papacy. It should be replaced by a
smaller secretariat with a revolving staff who are not able to build long-term
careers.”