The death of Pope Francis leaves the Catholic Church on a crossroads after having a progressive way

For Elijah Smith, who grew up Lutheran and Southern Baptists, Pope Francis’ teachings in the direction of social justice and the recognition of the marginalized contributed to influencing his decision to be converted to Catholicism a year ago.

“He led to a good example,” said Smith, 22, a college student from Rockwell, North Carolina, “and he accepted the LGBTQ community, accepted immigrants and very understanding for different cultures.”

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But with Franci’s death on Monday at 88 a.m. the Catholic Church is on a crossroads: After 12 years of his lead, it continues to continue on a progressive path to revitalize new supporters with a message of inclusiveness or to return to traditional roots at a time when some have longed for conservative customs and liturgy?

Megan Mlinarcik, who grew up Catholic, said she hoped “the tradition that has been going on for hundreds of years” as a worshiper in a Latin fair in the area of ​​Pittsburgh.

The traditional trade fair of the church was said in Latin for centuries and asked the priests to face the altar with their backs to the community, until the second Vatican Council tried the modernization of rituals in the 1960s. The changes included the masses carried out in local languages ​​and lay people that were integrated for the readings of the services.

In 2007 the predecessor of Francis, Pope Benedict XVI.

However, Francis found his own limits for the traditional mass and said in 2023 that it was “used in an ideological way to go backwards”.

The 41-year-old Mlinarcik takes on the Latin mass services with her husband and six children in a church that has only grown postpandemically, she said. Women wear veils, general mantillas as a sign of respect. Mlinarcik also moderates a Latin mass group on Facebook with 3,000 members.

“As traditional Catholics, we pray for the Pope and want a Pope who accepts the Latin trade fair and our traditional practices,” she added. “Of course we want our religion to grow, but there must be a place for us.”

The next leader of the approximately 1.4 billion Catholic in the world is facing a high order to unite a religion that has decreased in some countries with significant Catholic population groups, including the United States, and an explosive increase in others.

While the loss of followers in the United States in recent years, where, according to PEW Research Center, 53 million adult Catholics are available, the greatest growth of religion in Africa is still, said Vatican published this year in statistics.

According to the Vatican, Africa and Asia also recorded a significant increase in the new priests.

Mathew Schmalz, the founding editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism, said, Francis – the first Latin American Pope – made a significant decision to appoint new cardinals from developing countries and other non -traditional locations.

“The western world is no longer the center of the Catholic world,” said Schmalz, professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Francis made the emergency of the migrants a focus of his papacy and criticized the efforts of the Trump government two months ago to carry out mass deportations in a letter to American bishops. It happened after he defended the then presidential candidate Donald Trump during the autumn for his plan to deport migrants and at the same time condemned the attitude of the then Vice President Kamala Harris to support the abortion rights.

If you choose the cardinals as the next Pope in a secret meeting, you have to deal with the very specific needs of the Catholics in which religion thrives and has a sustainable future.

While equality and abortion in marriage are often at the center of the polarizing religious debates in the West, Schmalz said: “These are not necessarily the main problems for people in the global south, who often have to deal with Islam with poverty, inequality of prosperity, questions of social justice and the relationship between religion.”

He said the cardinals could choose to choose a Pope, continue Francis’ reforms, roll it back or simply “take a breather, let the reform sink and allow the Catholic Church to take your breath”.

“You will probably choose someone who has a pastoral style, as Pope Francis did, but will not turn the reforms back or necessarily,” added Schmalz.