The election to take place in the Vatican from next week is probably a lot more consequential than the one now taking place in Australia, even if there is a good chance that white smoke will be coming from the chimneys at the Australian Electoral Office earlier than those from the Vatican Apartments.

Pope Francis increased the number of men given voting rights, and, given the age many are at the time they are given a red hat, the fact that he survived 12 years means that he appointed most of those who will cast a vote. It is not a beauty contest, but the pope was, I think, rather more concerned to give every chance to those he would have preferred to replace him ahead of those who disagreed with virtually everything he stood for. Technically, of course, the person elected is the product of the invasion of the minds of the cardinal electors by the Holy Spirit, but it is remarkable how the process is accompanied by lobbying by mere humans, voting blocs and strategic voting, calumny, sometimes (it is said) blackmail, and even electoral promises. This is because the stakes are high, and the cardinals are not of one mind.

Australian Catholics might note with alarm that there will be no distinctly Australian voice heard once the doors are shut. The first Australian (well, Irish) cardinal was appointed in 1885, and, for most of the time since, the archbishop of Sydney has worn a red hat. George Pell went from Sydney to become, as it were, a senior minister in the Vatican Cabinet. But his replacement, Anthony Fisher, has not been presented with a red hat, even after George went to his reward about two years ago. There is no necessary reason why such a cardinal must come from Sydney, but no other mainstream western-rite Australian bishop or archbishop has been tapped either.

There is good reason to think that the omission to make Anthony Fisher, or any other Australian bishop, a cardinal, is deliberate. It has not been because the pope was too distracted to get around to making an appointment.

The pall of Pell

It has been the pall of Pell, who dominated the Australian church scene for several decades. Under the patronage of Pell, ambitious clerical careerists flourished and dominated new appointments of bishops. Pell’s influence pervaded almost everywhere, even diplomatic communications to and from the Vatican, especially those recommending new bishops. He favoured strong and very ambitious traditionalists, of entirely orthodox persuasion. He did not like novelties, or modern restatements of doctrine. Almost all Australian bishops are in the Pell mode, if rather more timidly so. They are people Pell recommended to previous popes. More liberal churchmen have been vetoed.

Red hats for Australia would vote against a Francis-like successor. It should not be supposed that Francis was some wild-eyed radical, bent on organising love-ins, or handing the church to Marxists. In fact, he was generally conventional in doctrinal matters, if rather more focused on the substance of Christian life than literal adherence to niceties of creed, theology and ritual. He has not been an innovator of doctrine or new forms of worship. He has emphasised duties to the environment, to making peace in some of the world’s trouble spots, and social justice.

The Francis faction is considered by Australia’s bishops somewhat as Liberals and Labor regard the Greens

But Pell, and many of those who developed in his shadow, treated people in the mould of Francis rather as members of the Liberal and Labor Parties regard members of the Greens. Pell worked loyally to reform Vatican finances, even as he was undermining the Francis style, which has inspired millions around the world.

Pell took no prisoners as Vatican treasurer, just as he ran his archdiocese. He took the responsibilities and duties given him by Rome over the conduct of his diocese very seriously, and was not, in doing so, famous for consultation, for listening, or for taking much notice of criticism, internal or external. Though personally capable of great charm, he was always, in matters of church governance, a self-confident bully, a bulldozer and a bruiser. He did not stop to comfort his victims, nor care much who they were.

Francis has faced open criticism by many church leaders, with some, particularly in the American hierarchy, seeming to want schism

Around the world, but particularly in the US, conservatives have attacked Francis’s style and substance.

For some the fire of the abuse scandals created fresh problems: a crisis of faith in what were thought to be fundamental doctrines of the church, and the modern church’s exposure to new anti-discrimination laws. What seemed worse, in some jurisdictions such as Australia, was the churches seemed unable to get exemptions from laws forbidding discrimination on religious grounds against homosexuals, and people (such as unmarried couples living in relationships disapproved of by officials in church schools or hospitals). Secular society created laws permitting euthanasia, divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion. Strictly, these imposed no hardship on Catholics following their religion’s teachings, while leaving others to behave as they liked. But that remained problematic when that other behaviour was seen as evil in itself – such as with abortion.

The church has long been in head-on conflict with an open and secular society. Too often it looks inward, with concern for the rights and privileges of its leaders, rather than outward, focused on the physical and moral welfare of people who are, or were, their flock. Catholics, indeed, only adopted phrases such as “freedom of religion” over the past 80 years, thinking before that (and in some places continuing to think) that a civil state was entitled to ban divorce, or contraceptives, and roles for women in society.

Worse, from the point of view of traditionalists, was that some in the church welcomed the challenge of such changes, and finding new ways of affirming church beliefs while displaying tolerance for those who followed their own consciences. Some church figures recognised homosexuals as citizens and members of the church. They made efforts to recognise changing gender standards, and new roles in society, particularly for women, and the impact of that on how men behaved or must adapt. Some dropped ideas of sexuality being essentially furtive and shameful, intrinsically bad because it was of the body rather than the soul, and mostly forbidden except within marriage.

Those who called themselves traditionalists resisted changes or restatements of doctrine, and what they saw as any decline in personal, ethical or moral standards of behaviour, especially sexual behaviour. In some areas, such as the US, bishops became obsessed with whether Catholic politicians who had not denounced abortion were entitled to communion or even allowed to attend church. Critics could not fail to notice the selective approach to moral litmus tests – that it tended to be applied to politicians who were Democrats rather than Republican, for example. Or that traditionalists seemed relaxed about brutal and cruel immigration laws and abuses of power while fixated on petty morality.

In the US and Europe, in particular, sections of the church are in virtual schism. They have been rejecting the authority of the pope – some seeming to suggest that there was some defect in his election. They have accused him of heresy and failure to defend critical statements of the formal faith. They suggest that the church’s governance mechanisms, whether in the Vatican or at the level of some dioceses have led to a church without order, and in chaos. Some bishops — even some cardinals and Vatican diplomats — have been unrestrained in their criticism of Francis, who was much more focused on the church’s mission to the poor and the marginalised.

Pell was a typical enough traditionalist. He arranged that, after he died, a denunciation of new trends be published in the Australian Spectator. The dream of synodality (involvement of lay people in church government) had become a toxic nightmare, he said. An emphasis on dialogue, listening and discernment had led to a point that some felt that matters of contention — abortion, contraception, ordination of women and homosexual activity, for example — should be avoided. This was also true of polygamy, divorce and remarriage. It was “a potpourri, an outpouring of New Age goodwill that did not reflect the Catholic faith or New Testament teaching".

“Continued meetings of this sort deepen divisions and a knowing few can exploit the muddle and goodwill. The ex-Anglicans among us are right to identify the deepening confusion, the attack on traditional morals and the insertion into the dialogue of neo-Marxist jargon about exclusion, alienation, identity, the voiceless, LGBTQ as well as the displacement of Christian notions of forgiveness, sin, sacrifice, healing and redemption. Why the silence on the afterlife of reward or punishment, on the last four things, death and judgment, heaven and hell?”

Francis was not surprised at Pell’s opinions: he had seen him lobbying for them in discussions during the last conclave. But he was surprised and hurt that Pell had never discussed them with him.

In recent years, immigration and the movement of refugees, because of war, persecution, famine, climate change and communal violence, have become a major issue. Some countries began turning back people in desperate need of practical help. The world stood by while more than 25,000 drowned in overcrowded boats while trying to cross heavy seas.

A strongly anti-immigration tone began dominating domestic politics, including in the US and Europe. It began earlier, if on a smaller scale, in Australia. Some Australians (including prominent public Catholics such as Tony Abbott) were promoting schemes for repelling boat people, refusing to take them in and settling them in punitive detention camps. Others were creating fear and hysteria about an invasion, and about the character of these people. Ministers tried to prevent easy access to refugees, worried that this might “humanise” the victims of war and persecution. Some other prominent Christians, including Scott Morrison and Kevin Rudd, also associated themselves with the conscious cruelty of a scheme focused on deterrence.

Putting Christian duties of charity on hold

Boasting in Europe about the success of Australia’s scheme, the Jesuit-educated Abbott acknowledged the policy violated the Christian imperative to “love thy neighbour,” which was at the heart of every Western polity. Readiness to take in refugees was one of the things that made us all decent and humane as well as prosperous. But right now, he suggested, the charitable instinct needed to be put in suspension. It was leading much of Europe into “catastrophic error".

“No country can open its borders to all comers without fundamentally weakening itself,” Abbott said. “This is the risk that the countries of Europe now run through misguided altruism.”

By now Australia’s repudiation of refugee conventions is small beer compared with what some of the European countries are doing. Britain tried to deport all unwelcome arrivals to Rwanda. Pope Francis was highly critical of Mediterranean nations, such as Italy, who have been trying to turn back boats, and who have been less than hospitable to those who have sneaked in.

But then we have had the US which, under Donald Trump, is trying to summarily deport all residents without proper paperwork. And quite a few black or brown-skinned people who look to American immigration as if they might be illegal stayers. The Trump administration suggests that these aliens, criminals including murderers, rapists and drug dealers, some of whom eat cats and dogs, have been flooding into the country. Moreover, it appears that they are diluting the rich white blood of American settlers, who were, apparently granted the country by God.

The immigration debate came to consume Francis as he tried to urge American bishops to resist mass deportations, and Trump’s moves towards absolutism, more strongly. He has also reproved J.D. Vance, the vice-president and a Catholic convert, with his loopy revisionist theories that the duty of charity never involved practical help to strangers, but merely those in one’s close vicinity, most of whom would be known to you. Vance has deduced this from words written by Saint Augustine, but the pope said that they are neither a correct interpretation, nor ever church doctrine. He was reiterating this to Vance personally on the day he died.

We do not know yet whether Francis succeeded in stacking the conclave with progressives able to outvote traditionalists. Not all his appointments have been progressives, and some have been discreet about their views, even as they have loyally obeyed the pope during his lifetime. Cardinals, like judges, do not always do what is expected of them. But if Francis has correctly selected for temperament, and feel for moral substance, and a sense that the church must work harder just to keep up with the modern world, the church may have a new Francis on its hands. It may not be privately welcomed by Australia’s men in purple (rather than red.)

But it may be very popular among women, still second-class citizens in the Australian church, and the young men and women who may or may not, depending on the outcome, represent the next generations of church leadership in Australia and the world. We might wish that one or both of the two Catholics vying for the Lodge might bring more humane and Catholic policies. Fat chance.