In the comments and discussions surrounding the conclave to choose Pope Francis's successor, there seems to be little awareness of the significance and weight that events within the Catholic Church can still carry for the political fate of Europe and the entire Western world. Or perhaps these events no longer carry such weight—and even that would mark a dramatic shift in our times.

Catholicity—that is, the universality of the Christian message, addressed to all peoples of every culture, tradition, and language, beyond all state or institutional borders—has been preserved, albeit amid countless contradictions, through the work of the Church of Rome. National identity and integration into specific political systems have ultimately prevailed in all other Christian denominations. There are, of course, theologically and philosophically valuable testimonies on the meaning of that message coming from within these churches, but they tend to stand as isolated voices, often in opposition to the spirit and actions of their institutions.

Rome’s Church, by contrast, represents a grand political form: there is no Christendom without it; there is no salvation without a universal Church. Even the modern state form—conceived by the European spirit—was originally meant to imitate, even compete with, that majestic idea: the individual would lose all substance unless seen as both part and subject of the state system, driven by the same ambition to become an empire—asserting its own secular catholicity.

Europe’s cultural and political life has long been shaped by this dynamic of tension and engagement. Christendom fractured; internal conflicts were inseparable from the never-ending struggle for dominance among its states—until their political suicide in the two World Wars. But the Church of Rome was always, at its core, aware that these were civil wars—and that they could end no other way. Every form of nationalism or state sovereignty runs counter to its very essence. Its centre—Rome, the Urbs—exists precisely in its capacity to radiate outward. Territorial boundaries are symbolic only; they represent the original unity from which all difference flows and to which it returns. The globe imagined by this spiritual-political form is built on full, reciprocal recognition of differences within it—a recognition that inherently precludes civil war.

The Church’s catholicity has stood in stark contrast to the economic and political forms taken by globalisation. This age-old tension returned in force under Pope Francis. But is it still relevant to Europe?

Even after the collapse of the medieval respublica christiana, the Catholic Church continued to embody Christendom as the essential factor in European unity. If a European “family” could still be recognised amid the civil wars that ravaged it, it was above all because it was Christian. That foundation enabled the Church’s preaching to retain social and political weight. The call to Christian unity grounded the Church’s critique of any form of state-worship—totalitarian or otherwise—as well as its resistance to the abdication of political responsibility in managing economic and financial processes. For the Church, Europe could still respond to this calling, insofar as it remained the heart of Christendom.

But does this complex of ideas still hold true—at least in part? Pope Francis has raised that question in dramatic terms. Catholicity can no longer be centred in Europe, because European Christianity no longer generates any radiating energy. Might it receive such energy “from afar” and be renewed in turn? That sounds like hope against hope. Today, the only hope that is not blind appears to lie in the extra-European forms that Christianity has taken.

It is astonishing how unaware Europe’s political elites are of this drama, as if it had nothing to do with them. What else, if not Christianity, could serve as the glue for our nations to recognise one another as part of a shared family? The euro? The market? Perhaps war with Russia?

The crisis of the Roman Church is once again deeply intertwined with the crisis of European politics. Perhaps a Pope who called everyone to face the drama of a radically de-Christianised Europe might awaken some conscience. While a Pope from even farther away might end up symbolising Europe’s inevitable decline.

May the Spirit enlighten the conclave. In the meantime, let us reflect on images that are revealing in their very vulgarity: once, emperors struggled to assert their auctoritas against the Church, experiencing—if you will—a certain nobility in that conflict. Today, the abyssal indifference of political power to any value other than the market is perfectly captured in the image of Trump as Pope.

That image is a clear sign not only of a deep crisis in Christendom but even more of the blindness of Western political culture—one that believes it can go on existing without any religion other than that of trade and limitless growth, and that mocks and destroys its own foundations in the process.

See, L’Europa che ripudia il cristianesimo rischia di minare la propria esistenza