Americans invented modern advertising, publicity, and celebrity, three dubious accomplishments of Homo sapiens rapidly adopted by the rest of the world.  St. John Paul II was the first pope to recognize its immense power and put it to work, but it has been left to Pope Francis to perfect the papal technique.  In this sense, in arriving in the United States—a country he had never before visited—he really was coming home.

So much has been spoken and written about the man that there seems no point in repeating it here, except to note that Francis is unlikely to take some of the unprecedented steps he has hinted he will take, thus offending Catholics and secular observers of every political persuasion.  That will be unfortunate for him in the long run, but this, too, has been a much discussed subject, while two other aspects of his (indeed, the modern) papacy have been ignored.

Cradle Catholics of advancing years remember when the pope was a remote presence in parish churches and in Catholic homes.  His portrait hung in churches where he was prayed for at every Mass, and often in the living rooms of the faithful.  His encyclicals were read by a few, though their gist was known to many.  But the pope was not someone Catholics expected, or aspired, to see much of.  He was not a celebrity, but restricted his contact with the public pretty much to appearances on the front balcony of St. Peter’s, the high altar at Midnight Mass, and limited travel.  Beyond that, the pope was mainly important in absentia.  Which is all that is needed, and all there should be.  Exhausting tours abroad are a waste of a pope’s time and energy, and celebrating Mass in soccer stadiums before tens of thousand of people degrades himself, the Faith, and God.  Without all of this, Benedict XVI—a truly great man—might still be pope.  Papal celebrity is a thing of the Devil, and it needs to be significantly curbed and reduced.

The second aspect of the modern papacy is the assumption that the pope’s primary responsibility is to this world, not to the Church of Rome and the Catholic flock.  Urbi et Orbi has been vastly misinterpreted, and so popes consider it their duty to advise the mundane powers on mundane subjects of which few of them know very much.  Popes are trained in seminaries, not at Sciences Po.  They should stick to pronouncing on what they know, while addressing the audience for whose welfare they are ecclesiastically responsible.  We are no longer in the early Middle Ages when the Church was, of necessity, a power in the secular world.  Pope Francis and his successors until the end of time need to remember that.