The pope is by far the world’s most visible religious figure. His office can be a bully pulpit on everything from salvation to the economy. In his overseas travels, he’s greeted with the kind of pomp and reverence accorded major world leaders.
But as Pope Benedict XVI prepares to step down, questions are being raised about just how influential his successor can be. He will be taking command of a church that has been weakened in recent decades by rising secularism in the West, fallout from clergy sex abuse, competition from Pentecostal groups in the developing world and crises within the Vatican itself.
“Many Catholics, particularly in the Western world, take the pope’s counsel seriously, but they don’t consider it binding,” said Mathew Schmalz, a professor who specializes in global Catholicism at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. “But since we live in an age of technology and 24-hour media, the symbolic influence has increased. Benedict recognized this, that you need someone who is healthy and robust to engage this complex environment.”
No other religious group has invested a leader with as much organizational authority and reach as the Catholic pope. The pontiff leads about 1.1 billion parishioners, comprising around half of the globe’s Christian population, according to a 2011 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. While he is bound in many ways by precedent, he alone can set the direction for the church. Until recently, these powers were a central theme of anti-Catholic hatred. (John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic U.S. president, pledged his administration wouldn’t take orders from the Holy See.)
