As you may know, over the past week I’ve been traveling through Poland. And I had the opportunity to visit many of the most important places associated with the life of one of my personal heroes — Pope Saint John Paul II.

It was incredible to pray in these places: his hometown, the altar where he celebrated his first Mass, the parish where he first served as a priest, the cathedral where he was Archbishop of Krakow right before becoming pope! 

…But it was especially providential and poignant to pray at all of these places while the entire Church mourned the death of our late holy father, Pope Francis and laid him to rest. 

In every single church, there was an image of Pope Francis on display with black cloth surrounding it… And you could just sense that the entire Universal Church throughout the entire world was feeling the absence of our Holy Father. There was a kind of emptiness. An obvious lack…

The Church needs a pope, and right now… we don’t have one.

This experience really put the papacy in perspective for me in a whole new way. I came home with a renewed appreciation for the great gift of the papacy: the gift of this successor to Saint Peter, the First Among all the other Apostles, who provides that visible, concrete unity for Catholics throughout the entire world.

Then I went to look at our Gospel for this weekend, and I was so happy… Because really, this Gospel perfectly sums up the Pope’s unique and indispensable role within the Church. 

We just heard that beautiful, intimate little conversation between Peter and Jesus on the shores of the sea after the Resurrection. 

The Risen Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”

And Peter replies each time, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus then gives Peter his particular calling — the calling of the Pope!!!! 

… “Feed my lambs.”

In other words: Take care of my sheep! Look after them! Make sure they are safe! Lead them to Me! Point them always to Me! I’ve given you the Keys to the Kingdom, Peter! You are the Rock! ….Now… fulfill your destiny and FEED MY LAMBS.

Notice Jesus words: “Feed my lambs.”

The Church — the flock of the Lord — does not belong to the Pope. 

Pope St. John Paul II… Pope Benedict XVI… Pope Francis… every single one of the 266 popes we have had over our 2,000 year history — NONE of them ever owned the Church.

The Church was never theirs to do with as they wanted!

Sometimes we think of the pope sort of like a worldly CEO — We think of him as the guy who gets to set the agenda… who decides what direction he wants to take this massive corporation called the “Catholic Church.”

But this is utterly false.

That’s not what the pope’s job is.

The pope is simply the man whom the Church — together with the help of the Holy Spirit — designates for a specific time to be the Vicar of Christ on earth — a representative of the unity of the entire Body of Christ. 

But the lambs belong to Jesus… not the Pope! 

The Church belongs to Jesus. 

JESUS… is the Head and Leader of the Catholic Church… not the pope.

I love the story of Pope St John XXIII, who every night before going to bed would start to think of all the problems the Church was currently facing… and the stress of it all began to build and build and build until finally he gave up and said to Jesus: “It’s Your Church, Lord… I’m going to bed.”

That’s it! 

That’s the role of the Pope!

A good Pope is a man— however imperfect or sinful he may be — who loves Jesus so much that he accepts the beautiful and difficult task of caring for and feeding Jesus’ little lambs, who undertakes the immense responsibility of being the visible leader of the Church on earth…. But he is somebody who knows deep down that the Church… belongs to Jesus, not him.

The responsibility lies on Jesus’ shoulders. Not his.

Right about now, people all over are asking, “What kind of pope do you want next?” “What kind of pope do we need right now?” 

And I propose that the correct answer to this question is:

“One who loves Jesus.”

Someone apparently asked the great theologian Frank Sheed this very same question back when Pope Saint Paul VI died in 1978. They asked him: “What kind of Pope would you like to see elected next?”

And his blunt answer was absolutely perfect: “A good Catholic, if there is one available.”

A good Catholic. …That’s all! 

And a good Catholic is someone who loves Jesus and is willing to obey Him no matter what. Someone who knows that he “must obey God rather than men.” Who is willing to have unpopular opinions out of supreme love for the Church… someone who takes holy risks to proclaim and defend the Gospel in the face of great rejection and even suffering!

In short:

We want a Pope who when Jesus asks him: “Do you love me?” …he replies simply and honestly just like Peter, the first pope did:

“Yes Lord, you know that I love you.”

That’s the kind of pope we want. And I trust that the Holy Spirit will help the cardinal electors find that man when the conclave begins this week, on Wednesday, May 7th.

But we do need to pray. And we need to pray hard.

So, I invite you and your families to commit to regularly interceding for this conclave in the coming days and weeks. Pray the Rosary. Come to Eucharistic Adoration. It’s the pope’s job to feed the Lord’s lambs… well, right now, it’s time for the lambs to pray for our next pope, whoever he may be!

And when we do so, what we’re NOT doing is praying for the pope we think we want. …Someone who we think will match our own political or theological preferences. This is a great temptation today. It’s very easy for us to view the conclave through the lens of worldly politics… but let’s resist this tendency!!!!!

No… we should pray, instead, with simplicity and humility… for a pope who loves Jesus. And who will help us to love Jesus more. Let’s pray for a pope who feeds the lambs. 

And that will be enough!

‘Cuz in the end, it doesn’t matter much who the Pope is.

That sounds kind of shocking, right?

But really, it’s true.

It doesn’t really matter who becomes Pope next.

Who was the pope when St. Catherine of Siena was busy casting out demons?

Who was the pope when St. Vincent Ferrer was performing great miracles of healing?

Who was the pope when St. Augustine was preaching his greatest sermons?

When St. Francis and St. Dominic were roaming the countryside, preaching the Gospel?

When St. John of the Cross was writing his spiritual poetry?

When St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was teaching in her schools?

Unless you’re a total history nerd, nobody knows. 

And really… nobody probably cares.

Because the only thing that ultimately matters is this:

When the Lord asks YOU, “Do you love me?” — What’s your answer gonna be?

No pope can ever answer that question for us.

It has to be our response to the Risen Lord… face to face.

Saint John of the Cross once said, “In the twilight of life, God will not judge us by our earthly possessions or our human successes, but by how much we have loved.”

At the end of our lives, Jesus will not ask us, “Who was the Pope during your lifetime? Did you read all his encyclicals? Did you follow all of his tweets?”

… No, Jesus will ask us that same simple little question that he asked Saint Peter, the first Pope: 

“Do you love me?”

So we can ask ourselves now: 

Do we love Jesus? Do we love God as He deserves to be loved? Do we desire to love Him even more? Does our parish love Jesus as much as we ought to?

That is our mission, regardless of who emerges from the Sistine Chapel while the white smoke billows above… To love Jesus. To become saints.