The Church’s Choice
For the first time in a millennium or so, a candidate from a non-European land has ascended to the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was named today as the 266th pope, and he will now be known as Pope Francis.
As we noted last week, the church has been going through a particularly rough period—much of it of its own making. But even in the best of times, picking successors is tricky business, as Peter Drucker liked to point out. So has the church picked the right man for the job?
In one respect, the papal conclave was on the right track even before it started. That’s because outgoing Pope Benedict didn’t get to pick his successor, and as Drucker warned (and we’ve pointed out before) no one should ever pick his or her own successor because that tends to produce weak clones. “The old rule both in military organizations and in the Catholic Church is that leaders don’t pick their own successors,” Drucker observed. “They’re consulted, but they don’t make the decision.”
The choice of Bergoglio also signals the church’s awareness of the importance of the Southern Hemisphere and the developing world to the church’s future. This signals not only the immense rate of population growth in non-European countries, something Drucker recognized, but also their increasing clout.
“The centers of the world economy have shifted away from the developed countries,” Drucker acknowledged in his 2002 book Managing in the Next Society. “In the last two decades, the developed countries have not done particularly well; but world trade and production have boomed as never before, with the bulk of the growth occurring in emerging countries.”
Finally, early indications are that Bergoglio himself lives by some of Drucker’s precepts. In his speech to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square today, Pope Francis asked for the people to pray for him. “Now, let’s start working together, walking together in the Church of Rome,” he told them, adding that he hoped God would “help me to be fruitful for the evangelization of this beautiful city.”
Drucker would have approved of this sort of leadership, as we can see from a rule he spelled out in Managing the Nonprofit Organization. “Keep your eye on the task, not on yourself,” Drucker wrote. “The task matters, and you are a servant.”
What do you think? Did the Roman Catholic Church make a good leadership decision today?
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8 Comments
Joshua Lee Henry
March 13, 2013I am not a Catholic, nor do I know a lot about Pope Francis. So religious matters aside, I do think that Drucker’s sage advice on leadership succession is spot on. Unfortunately, I’ve seen several leaders subconsciously sabotage their organizations out of their own insecurities.
Carl
March 14, 2013Pope Francesco will concentrate on the poor and less on rich countries doctrinal questions.
Laurence Pagnoni
March 16, 2013Unfortunately Rome’s ideaological bent blinded their choice in picking a successor right for the times. They chose a leader more appropriate for the 1950s. There is much personal appeal in the character of Bergoglio, but his shrill parochialism about women, gays, and sexual freedoms will prevent him from ultimate success of inspiring the next generation of Catholics to join the rank and file. It’s a choice of more of the same. Of particular notice is the hemorrhaging of quality priests from the Church and without having selected a true reformer, that will continue. The Church has missed an opportunity and it’s not just a sad day but a sad decade ahead.
Bryan
March 16, 2013You’re asking Catholics to change their core beliefs and violate teachings from the Bible. The changes you’d like to make would effectively destroy the church.
Laurence Pagnoni
March 16, 2013Core beliefs for we Catholics have always changed over time. Our theology is supposed to be guided by current understanding of science and the studies of the humanities (psychology, sociology etc.). At one time we believed that conception was just the miracle of women and the fertility cults dominated our core beliefs. But then we learned through biological study that the man’s semen played a role in conception and so our core belief changed and the fertility cults were condemned. But this most sacred Catholic value, Aquinas called it “faith seeking reason” is being supplanted by idealogous and that is bad leadership.
Dennis Howard
March 16, 2013Educated Catholics are quite familiar with all the developments of modern science, so to conflate their beliefs with medieval notions merely reflects your own bias. The test of the new Pope will be his ability to engage the world within the framework of his own beliefs without apology. But that also requires that he stay totally honest about problems within the church including the corrupting influence of today’s obsession with wealth and power and the institutionalized narcissism of rampant clericalism. His choice of St. Francis as patron is encouraging in terms of his commitment to transforming the church from within and finishing the work begun by the late Pope John XXIII. He needs to call the entire church to a spirit of repentance, and he can best do this by starting at the top. I suspect one of his first acts will be completing the process of canonizing the late Dorothy Day, who herself was an exemplar of the Franciscan spirit and the same kind of amazing humility shown by the new Pope. I think we are all in for a few refreshing surprises. Drucker should love it.
Jon
March 16, 2013Maybe the Catholic church and other churches have made mistakes through history. What is right should come back to is the Bible and God’s Word which should guide the church, not mans perception for what is right. This is what the Pope and other pastors should follow in their ministries.
I Beleive it was Sodom and Gomorrah that was destroyed because each man followed his perception for what was right and not Gods.
Rocco DellaNeve
March 16, 2013A non Roman Catholic as well, but I am a believer. So far, this seems like a good choice. His focus on the poor and seeming humility are a good start. Hopefully, he will fully deal with the child molestation issue, which has never been fully dealt with. He won’t go the way of liberation theology, which flooded evangelical churches in Central and South America. He won’t be socially liberal (sorry liberal friends) and kill the church the way that the dead western churches have chased devout congregants. Hopefuly, he’ll continue to criticize the crony capitalist big government models (these are not free market models) as being bad for the poor through lack of freedom, opportunity and upward mobility. Not to mention the rampant corruption. Hopefully, he’ll bring vibrancy to the church in terms of evangelism and stressing the congregants’ personal relationship with God. Time will tell. I wasn’t impressed with the previous Pope. I have much higher expectations for this one.