The Papal Metamorphosis: How Religious Authority Adapts to Shape Modern Politics

Text: Neve Faulconer

Forty million dollars. That's how much money was wagered online as the world watched 120 cardinals disappear behind the sealed doors of the Sistine Chapel to choose the next Pope. The last papal conclave that elected Pope Francis was in the Spring of 2013, three years before TikTok launched. This go around, for a generation raised on Netflix and TikTok, the papal conclave this past May lasted just two days and coincided with the global techno-cultural trends of our time, where games and world news of magnitude are delivered side by side, simultaneously and in the palms of our hands. 

Live tracking the single smoke stack on the Sistine Chapel in person is an ancient ritual, with on screen viewing added since the first televised conclave in 1978. The stakes have always been relatively far-reaching, and the outcome influential to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. However, the context has shifted exponentially. This year because of the dramatic growth of the internet world wide, those stakes are truly global and the audience far exceeds anything prior. According to Stream Charts, the live stream of this year’s announcement had a peak concurrent viewership of 5.87 million people, from over 1,700 live streaming channels. The event generated over 16 million hours of viewing time. This is not the reach of the news about the Pope over the days, weeks and months, this is essentially the size of the crowd outside the Vatican in real-time. 

​​While papal transitions have captivated people since the time of St. Peter, the most recent fever perhaps originated in Hollywood. The film Conclave introduced millions to the secretive world of papal elections, giving fictional life and light, drama and intrigue to otherwise completely obscured religious rituals. Then reality caught up with fiction: Pope Francis was hospitalized, died, and suddenly people who had never cared about Vatican affairs found themselves glued to Vatican live streams, betting on cardinal favorites, and debating the future of the Catholic Church with the same intensity usually reserved for presidential elections, speculating the plot as if it was just another season finale of Game of Thrones. 

For someone like me—nonreligious, twenty-something, more familiar with political scandals than papal encyclicals—this was unfamiliar ground. The Vatican has long been entangled in global politics and controversy, but I’d never paid it serious attention. Yet I found myself captivated—not just by the pageantry, but by a nagging question: Why did any of this matter beyond the walls of the Vatican?

The answer, it turns out, is more enthralling than the conclave itself.

When Pope Leo XIV emerged as the new leader of the Catholic Church on May 8th, 2025, he wasn't just assuming spiritual authority over 18% of the world's population. He was stepping into one of the most influential political roles on the planet—a position that operates at the intersection of diplomacy, moral authority, and soft power, in ways that would make most world leaders envious. The same technology that has exposed tens of millions more people to the conclave event, has exponentially increased the significance of the Pope’s role across the globe. This is in fact very new in scale.

The Vatican's diplomatic reach is already staggering. With formal relations with 183 countries—more than any nation on earth—the Holy See operates the world's most extensive diplomatic network. The Pope holds permanent observer status at the United Nations, receives invitations to international conferences as a matter of course, and maintains open channels to virtually every world leader. This isn't just ceremonial access; it's real political influence wielded by someone who never stood for public office or election. “Observing” even just 20 years ago, wasn’t anything like “observing” today, thanks to live streams, social media and the spread of the internet image, information, video sharing and hand-held super-computing. The internet reached a few hundred million people as recently as the 1990’s. Now it reaches 5.5 billion people. 

In our supposedly secular age, where the separation of church and state is perhaps assumed to be a popularly held principle and a growing trend, in exchange for democratization, how did a religious leader become one of the most powerful political players in the world today?

The papal metamorphosis isn't just about the transition from Francis to Leo XIV—it's about understanding how an ancient institution continues to shape modern politics, and why that should matter to all of us, believers and skeptics alike, beyond the characters and after the smoke has drifted away. 

The Paradox of Unelected Authority

Here's what makes the papacy so fascinating— and troubling: in theory, the Pope represents the Catholic Church as an institution and its constituents, which derives its political authority from Jesus Christ, according to Catholic belief, who established the church and conferred authority upon the apostles and their successors, the bishops. However, in practice, in an era where we claim to champion democratic legitimacy and aim to question every form of unelected power, we've somehow carved out an exception for one man who answers to no constituency, faces no elections, and operates with virtually no oversight. Yet world leaders line up to meet with him, nations compete for his attention, and his statements can shift global conversations overnight. 

What makes this power so unique is its moral scale. While politicians navigate partisan divides and national interests, the pope operates from a position of perceived moral authority that transcends political borders and affiliations. His religiosity doesn't limit his influence—it expands it, placing him somehow "above" the usual constraints that bind other leaders. When the pope speaks, even secular leaders listen, because he carries the weight of what believers (and Catholic voters) see as divine mandate and what non-believers often respect as moral clarity or wisdom. While it can contribute to humanitarian efforts and peace efforts, a more complete understanding of this power must clearly include, it can just as easily repress, disregard and cause pain and death in other ways.  

This isn't theoretical power—it's been repeatedly demonstrated, for better and for worse, throughout modern history. Pope John Paul II is frequently credited with helping to inspire resistance movements across Eastern Europe during the Cold War. But his legacy also reflects the dangers of papal influence: under his leadership, the Church entrenched hardline stances on reproductive rights, sexuality, and gender—positions that continue to shape policy in countries like Poland, where Catholic doctrine has helped justify some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Alongside Cardinal Ratzinger, John Paul II reoriented the Church toward a deeply conservative vision with global consequences.

More recently, Pope Francis positioned himself as a key intermediary in the attempted restoration of US-Cuba diplomatic relations—a moment hailed as historic at the time, though much of the progress was later reversed. Still, the Vatican’s involvement signaled its ongoing ambition to serve as a moral broker in geopolitical affairs. Whether enabling conservative backlash or facilitating momentary breakthroughs, the papacy’s interventions continue to shape the world in ways that few unelected figures ever do.

Popes consistently position themselves at the center of international conflicts, offering to host peace talks and providing moral commentary that shapes global opinion. During the Iraq War, Pope John Paul II was one of the most vocal international opponents, lending religious weight to anti-war sentiment. Today, Pope Leo XIV has already offered the Vatican as a neutral venue for Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations and issued calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. While these gestures have yet to yield concrete results, they reflect the Vatican’s continued effort to present itself as a moral actor in global affairs. This performance of neutrality and moral clarity—regardless of outcome—reveals something crucial: the papal office has evolved into a form of global moral arbitration that operates parallel to—and sometimes more effectively than—traditional diplomatic channels.

Perhaps most significantly, the Pope's positions can vary if not differ from the prevailing majority view of the Catholic institutions globally, and often serve as a barometer for attempting to shift global ideological currents. Pope Francis exemplified this perfectly, bringing progressive stances on climate change, economic inequality, and migration that both reflected and amplified a global progressive moment. His relatively tolerant positions on LGBTQ+ issues opened conversations within conservative communities that would have been impossible coming from political leaders. It was not shared by all in his faith by any means, but his ability to push that boundary is singular, compared to any other political figure. 

But this same moral authority can be wielded to reinforce traditional religious doctrines that many societies are trying to move beyond—limiting women's reproductive rights, opposing gender equality, restricting LGBTQ+ rights. When a conservative pope speaks against progressive social changes, he doesn't just influence Catholics; he provides moral justification for political movements that seek to roll back these advances globally.

The Leo XIV Shift: A New Global Moment?

The selection of Pope Leo XIV signals a potential recalibration of this influence. As the first American pope, his election was no accident—the Vatican chooses its leaders extremely strategically, responding to global political currents while attempting to shape them. Leo XIV's more centrist positions and his early emphasis on "traditional family values" suggest a deliberate move away from Francis's progressive momentum.

This shift matters beyond Catholic doctrine. If papal politics serve as a global ideological barometer, Leo XIV's more conservative approach may reflect—and reinforce—a broader retreat from progressive politics worldwide. But his American identity adds another layer of complexity. Far from aligning neatly with U.S. soft power, Leo’s election may be a strategic response to it: a way to neutralize the rise of far-right American Catholic factions like Opus Dei, which were some of Pope Francis’s fiercest opponents. In that sense, his Americanness might be less about projecting U.S. influence abroad and more about containing its internal extremism within the Church.

The metamorphosis from Francis to Leo XIV isn't just a change in church leadership—it's a recalibration of one of the world's most influential sources of moral and political authority. 

The Democratic Paradox We Ignore

This brings us to an uncomfortable question that most of us would prefer not to ask: In our supposedly secular democracies, should so many accept—or even celebrate—the political influence of an unelected religious leader?

Is not separation of church and state widely considered a cornerstone of modern, democratic governance? Nations where religious authority shapes political decisions, are often labeled backwards or undemocratic. Yet is there a massive exception for the Vatican, treating papal political intervention as not only acceptable but often admirable?

The recent papal transition has led many people my age especially, to confront this contradiction for the first time. Suddenly, the stakes became clear: the ideology of the person chosen to lead the Catholic Church would have real consequences for global politics. People who had never paid attention to Vatican affairs found themselves caring deeply about whether the next pope would be progressive or conservative, because they finally understood that it would affect them—believers and non-believers alike.

Time for a Secular Reckoning

The scale of influence and power, inherent to the papal metamorphosis from Francis to Leo XIV, is unique to our times and should serve as a wake-up call to the new generations and old alike, to fully examine, or re-examine, just how secular our supposedly secular democracies really are. The first step is awareness—recognizing that religious authority continues to shape global politics in profound ways, often operating in a blindspot of public consciousness and the scale of influence grows annually, exponentially. 

The pope wields immense influence across global politics—shaping borders, brokering agreements, and guiding both progressive and conservative movements—yet does so without democratic accountability. Unlike elected leaders, he faces no voters, no term limits, and no institutional checks on his power. As the Vatican profits, invests, and intervenes in international affairs, it raises a pressing question: how can such a powerful entity remain exempt from the responsibilities and scrutiny that accompany sovereignty?

The Path Forward

Critical awareness must precede critical evaluation. Once we acknowledge the extent of papal political influence, the real questions emerge: Why have we continued to tolerate unelected religious authority shaping global politics? What would it look like to seriously challenge that influence—through diplomatic scrutiny, media accountability, or international pressure? And how do we reconcile the principle of religious freedom with the reality of religious soft power operating across borders, often against democratic values?

The papal metamorphosis reveals something fundamental about our political moment: Religious authority has simply adapted; not disappeared. Actions of the Catholic Church have always been motivated by more than religion—a struggle of power and politics. Pretending otherwise is naive and dangerous.

As Pope Leo XIV begins to shape global conversations in ways that may last decades, new generations cannot afford to treat papal politics as entertainment, games, or a curiosity confined to the religious sphere. Our technologies measure their success in time, “eyeballs” and revenue extracted, not in moral outcomes or societal benefits or peace. The message behind Sinead O’Conner’s historic act of protest in 1992 on Saturday Night Live, calling out systemic abuses by the church, was three decades ahead of recent revelations and the first public accountability for the church on those issues. A similarly influential artist today, sadly, would likely face the same devastating dismissal and punitive repercussions. Just because many people are witnessing, does not automatically translate to democratic action or concensus.  The church's influence remains strong and present, operating at the highest levels of international relations and shaping policies that affect billions of lives.