Dedication of the Lateran Basilica 2025 (Replacing 32nd Sunday)
Ezekiel 47: 1-2, 8-12; 1 Cor 3: 9-11, 16-17; John 2:13-22
Who was St. John Lateran? That was a question which troubled me as a child, and I was probably an adult before I discovered the answer: he was no one; he didn’t exist. The Basilica of St. John Lateran is actually the church—indeed the Cathedral—of St. John on the Lateran Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome. It is regarded as the mother of all churches because it is the Cathedral of the Pope as Bishop of Rome, and hence the focus of unity for the whole Church.
Just as the whole month of November can be regarded as one great Feast of the Communion of Saints, beginning, as it does, with the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls, and thus encompassing all who have gone before us, so today’s Feast celebrates our communion with the whole Church on earth, in communion with the Pope, the successor of St. Peter, the visible head of the Church on earth. Jesus is the actual head of the Church, the true Temple, replacing the Jerusalem Temple, but He has left us visible signs: the Pope as a human sign of unity and communion; and church buildings, especially the Lateran, as reminders of His, and our own, role as Temples of the Holy Spirit.
Hence, today’s Feast continues that November theme of communion, union, and unity, with special emphasis on the role of Peter and his successors. Like the whole of God’s people, Popes come in different shapes and sizes, and vary in quality. Some have been great saints; some have been great sinners, bringing the Church into disrepute and so contributing to schisms in the Church, great wounds in the Body of Christ, rents in what should be the seamless garment of the Church. Probably, most have been similar to the rest of us, a mixture of the good and the bad, and occasionally the ugly, men subject to weakness, yet burdened with the task of carrying on their shoulders not only the whole Church, but even the whole world.
Stalin is alleged to have asked contemptuously “How many divisions has the Pope?”. The answer would have shocked him. The Pope’s physical army may consist only of the ceremonial Swiss Guard, but his followers are counted in billions, and his influence permeates the globe, outlasting the power of “Uncle Joe” and all his battalions. Spiritually and morally, nobody has the potential to reach and to affect so much of the world as does the wearer of the Shoes of the Fisherman.
It is remarkable that in recent years two blockbuster films involving famous actors have had the Papacy as their focus. Apparently the future Pope Leo XIV watched the film “Conclave” in order to gain some idea of the role he would have to undertake as a cardinal-elector, while “The Two Popes” imagined the sort of relationship which may, or may not, have existed between his two immediate predecessors, Benedict and Francis.
Like many of you, I have lived in the Church under the leadership of eight Popes: Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Bendict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV, four of them Italians, two from other European countries, and one each from South and North America. That sentence contains a number of elements which would have been unthinkable to most Catholics until they happened, reminding us that God’s ways are not our ways; that the Holy Spirit blows where it will.
Who would have expected the smiling Pope John Paul I to die a little over a month after taking office? Who, after 450 years (I think) of an unbroken run of Italians, would have expected four successive non-Italians? The author Morris West, in his 60s novel “The Shoes of the Fisherman”, may have envisaged a Pope from behind the Iron Curtain, but did anyone expect it to happen in reality? A Pole followed by a German within 60 years of the end of the Second World War would also have seemed improbable. No one would have expected the abdication of Benedict XVI, or the election of a Pope from a different continent. I am sure, also, that I was far from being the only person to rule out mentally a Pope from the United States because of that country’s role on the world stage. Candidates from Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are now routinely mentioned as likely Popes: surely that is only a matter of time.
What has all this to do with today’s Feast? Whatever the shape, size, colour or temperament of a future Pope, he will be the Bishop of Rome, with St. John Lateran as his Cathedral. He—will it always be “he” or might the Holy Spirit spring another seemingly impossible surprise?—will be called by God to build the Temple which is the Body of Christ on earth, while carrying the Cross and leading God’s people on their pilgrim journey. Pray for him, for Pope Leo XIV today, for his successors in time to come, and for his predecessors—the good, the bad, and even the ugly.
