The hit film ‘Conclave’ is a dramatization of Vatican politics as the college of cardinals (Curia) are tasked with electing a pope. Philip Shenon’s ‘Jesus Wept,’ a sprawling history of the last seven popes, needs no dramatization, the facts are compelling enough and his book clips along at the pace of a Le Carré thriller.
The book track the pontiff early careers as clergymen and the success and failures of their papacies starting with Pius XII (1939-1958), through pope Francis’ (2013-2025). Shenon chronicles their public and largely guarded private lives.
Shenon is a veteran investigative reporter for the New York Times and has authored books on the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 and just for the record, in his introduction, he identifies as agnostic.
The book reveals the contentious politics within the Vatican vis-a-vis global perspective of a billion Catholics looking to the church for spiritual clarity and moral guidance. Shenon doesn’t hold back on papal cover-ups, scandals and vanities of clergy hierarchy, a legacy of attendant power dynamics as well as the each pontiff’s inviolability as the Holy See,
The hubris of the power of the Vatican reaches back centuries exposing the outrageous moral lapses by popes- justification for torture against ‘heretics’ during the Crusades for instance. the manipulation of sacred text to their own doctrinal ends, the consolidation of political power and wealth by the church through millennia.
A central theme of the book is focused on the pivotal doctrinal battles over Vatican II in the early 1960s, convened by pope John XXIII (1958-1963) who sought to bring doctrinal reforms and resulted in theological showdowns, which ignited a crucible of global controversies across diocese that have been on the table in various iterations ever since.
Pope John’s overarching philosophy aspired to put forth doctrine of Catholic ministry as a merciful, forgiving faith, rather than strict doctrines of submission and penitent judgment, John advocating instead for pastoral guidance and redemptive forgiveness.
Vatican II reforms dealt with issues addressing world poverty, women’s rights, birth control, abortion under any circumstances, a litany of rules on sexuality. Most heated were reforms concerning celibacy, the hostilities toward other religions, and a slate of social issues affecting millions if Catholics and the theological ‘soul’ of the church. But, as they say, the devil was in the details.
One ongoing debate among clergy is the celibacy requirements among clergy that had not enacted until 1074 by Pope Gregory VII, which may have been about priestly purity in theory, but also about having the church be the beneficiaries of worldly goods of clergymen, many coming from wealthy families so had inherited wealth that would otherwise go to a wife, children, or relatives.
Many of the proposed reforms championed by clergy outside of the power structures, loyalties and ideological dicta of the Vatican. Many progressive Catholic theologians endorsed pope John reforms and he was well-liked by Catholics worldwide, but faced resistance from the Curia, the Vatican’s administrative body.
Among the reforms up for debate included the treatment of nuns and the blatantly sexist barring the ordination of women in the clergy. Divorced couples barred from receiving communion. Or the elitist absurdity of not allowing Mass to be translated in the native languages of thousands of diocese around the world, this even as members of the Curia admit to not understanding Latin.
John spent years planning of Vatican II with thousands of cardinals, bishops, priests, and theologians convening in Rome in 1962. In the months leading up the event, The pope was diagnosed with stomach cancer and told he had only months to live. John took it in stride, visibly weakened, he soldiering on, determined to remain joyful about planning and presiding over Vatican II.
Pope John’s successor Paul VI (1963-1978) elected for advancing reforms but would retreat from his advocacy. Paul’s positions also clashed with the social justice movements of the 60s and 70s among clergy and faithful Catholics. Many Jesuits, for instance, joining anti-Vietnam war activists in protests. Priests and Bishops in South America fighting for the church to aid poverty-stricken communities, disease, and hunger.
The most disturbing history of the church that came into glaring light was the systemic shielding by the church of known pedophile priests. And the systemic cover-ups among church hierarchy who had knowledge of accused perpetrators. The Church paying out millions in lawyer fees to keep the facts hidden as offenders were reassigned to other parishes.
Meanwhile, the church speciously, and grotesquely, equated homosexuality with pedophilia. The church’s official doctrine on homosexuality as being an ‘intrinsic disorder’ (still officially viewed as that). The (in)famous line by pope Francis questioning ‘Who am I to judge’ was just that, a line.
On balance, Francis was welcoming to gay Catholics on one hand, but doctrinally, nothing changed. One wonders the 20th century popes would have commissioned Michaelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel given his intrinsic disorder, no?
John XXIII was succeeded by a reluctant Giovanni Montori aka pope Paul Vl (1963-1978) who had privately endorsed many of the reforms of VII, but ended up reasserting the medieval strictures requiring celibacy among clergy, and continuing the requirement of Catholics not to use any method of contraception. Divorced Catholics also would be barred from receiving communion. The rigid status quo prevailed, to the frustration of millions of Catholics and clergy across the world. He was compared to Hamlet and King Lear in his inability to make up his mind. He was accused of advancing the careers of priests, bishops and cardinals who sided with him.
In Catholic countries in South America many priests working in poverty stricken communities and John Paul not condemning the juntas in Argentina and El Salvador where thousands of people were ‘disappeared’ including priests and nuns who were gunned down by government militias for being dissidents. The military coup in Argentina by General Jorge Rafael Videla, the architect of state terrorism commonly referred to as the ‘dirty war’ in which thousands of Argentinians were among ‘the disappeared.
Paul II had assigned Bergoglio (the future pope Francis) to minister in Argentina. Clergyman Bergoglio claimed that he knew nothing about these crimes against humanity. but later admitted that he was working behind the scenes to save the victims, particularly two priest that had been targeted. Had he been publicly against the junta’s genocide, they would have targeted him.
The obfuscation echoed that of Pius XII (1939-1958) who claimed he knew nothing about the Holocaust, still shock. Only when there was documented evidence that he was informed of the systematic murder of millions of Jews, did Pius questionable claim that he remained publicly silent on the death camps because he was trying to Italian Jews to safety during Mussolini’s leadership.
The weeks long papacy of Italian primate of Venice Albino Luciani who took the papal name John Paul was also admired for his humility and compassion, but was ultimately “staunchly conservative.” Shockingly he died in his sleep just weeks after being chosen pope on the fourth ballot.
Succeeded by Karol Wojtyla~ John Paul II (1978-2005)~ and even though he rode in with promises of backing reforms, it was almost immediately apparent that he too had no intention of advancing that agenda and in fact reasserted his belief in ultra-conservative Catholic dogma. He was a member of the Opus Dei, a sect within the church that required self- mortification with such rituals of lashing self-mortification with a sanctified whip. Paul was nonetheless cast a superstar aura in public. Privately, among his colleagues described him as stoic and cold.
Paul had plans for German priest Joseph Ratzinger, who also was walking away from his previous endorsements the reforms put forth in liberation theology. He even stopped the printing of his previous books that espoused the movement. Ratzinger played the part though it took some complicit maneuvering, and some ‘I’m not worthy’ faux humility.
Ratzinger, now pope Benedict (2005-2013) and after his public relations junkets that invited broad support, he was alienating other faiths, surrounding himself with yes-men bishops and finally being exposed on a worldwide scale as a clergyman who repeatedly dismissed or obscured his knowledge of pedophile priests and the Vatican’s ongoing efforts to keep it hidden from public view. Benedict stood by such blatant offenders as the Washington’s Archbishop McCarrick (d. March 2025), whose abuse rap sheet went back decades, and was known throughout the ranks of clergy with repeated incidents of sexual harassment of seminarians and minor boys, which Benedict dismissed as ‘rumors.’
Benedict was the first pope to abdicate the papacy in centuries. But at 78, in declining health, a barrage of negative publicity connected with his handling of the pedophile priest crimes going back decades, with journalists and his opposition colleagues unearthing the truth of what he knew and when he knew it.
The long admired pastoral priest Bergoglio, now decades away from admonitions about his dealings with the juntas during Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ of murderous junta and thousands of citizens among the ‘disappeared.’ Bergoglio too was accused of protecting pedophile priests. He had by the 2000s been lauded for his humble servitude to poverty-stricken communities and his merciful interaction with Catholics noted for his sincerity and humanity. Pastorally he was on board with Vatican II reforms in terms of divorced Catholics being welcome in the church, progressive views on contraception and gays, just for starters. Meanwhile, he knew the politics of the Vatican Conclave in choosing a pope and shrewdly played his cards.
Pope Francis (after Assisi) (2013-2025) came in promising to revive the reforms of John Paul VI’s Vatican II. But the reality of politics and a slate of controversial public remarks he advocated privately, but officially he didn’t push for doctrinal reforms. He eschewed theatricality of the Vatican, he made papal visits around the world projecting humility and publicly advocated for human rights and poor and engaged with different religions, and welcoming back to the fold Catholic outcasts, among other qualities. He soldiered on this year dealing with double pneumonia.
Pope Francis died on Easter Monday 2025 and world leaders attended Francis funeral at the Vatican as millions of Catholics and people of many faiths mourned his passing of a much beloved pontiff. Meanwhile Vatican drama continues in real time as a Conclave has just elected the first US pope, and the era of Leo IV begins.
Shenon rounds all of the stations of the journalistic cross in ‘Jesus Wept’ with magisterial and verifiable facts. In his afterward he notes he is grateful to “prominent Catholic clerics…. including several influential Cardinals and bishops in Rome and elsewhere, who took the risk of speaking to me for ‘Jesus Wept’ most on the understanding that I would not reveal their names. Those off the record sources proved invaluable to me in the hunt for on the record evidence to back up the most contentious material in this book. They directed me to long forgotten church records, interview transcripts, private journals, unpublished manuscripts, and video and audio recordings of once confidential meetings and court records and obscure foreign news reports so that allowed me to verify the accuracy of the information.”
