Who runs the Vatican while Pope Leo recovers?

Well, the Pope, unable to perform his duties right now as he recovers from lung surgery. So we had a question, like, who's running things in the meantime? How does that work? Yeah, it's something you might not consider immediately. But the answer here is pretty interesting. So we want to dive in a little bit with someone who knows. We are speaking with Heidi Schlumpf. She's a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. Good morning, Heidi. Good morning. One correction. I've changed jobs since we last talked. So I'm a senior correspondent at Commonweal Magazine. Okay. Well, tell us a little bit. Is that also a Catholic-based publication then? Yes, it is. Monthly magazine with online daily content based in New York. Okay. Nice. So your credentials remain intact here. All right, let's dive in. You know, people think about, you know, the president becomes incapacitated. The vice president has certain roles. How does it work in the Vatican when the Pope, he's in the hospital now recovering? So what goes on with the leadership then? Yeah, so this is an area where the Pope is very different from how our U.S. president is. There is no acting Pope. The Pope remains Pope until he dies or resigns, which has happened, as we know, with Pope Benedict in 2013. But it's a pretty rare occurrence. So, no, he's still running things, although the Curia or Vatican officials from the many offices in the Vatican are the ones who really kind of keep the day-to-day operations happening. Okay, okay. So just help us kind of understand, it's definitely, like you said, it's definitely different than a president, vice president situation. But what kind of duties is the Pope kind of missing out on? And does someone else step in and kind of do that? Or are they just postponed for now? Yeah, well, some things might be postponed. So for example, there was a very important meeting going on this week at the Vatican about marriage and families. And they were supposed to release a final document from that meeting. And the Pope asked that it be postponed so that he would have a chance to look at it. So of course, he's recovering in the hospital until early next week. That meeting did continue and the closing mass was on Wednesday and Cardinal Tagle from the Philippines stepped in for the Pope and read his homily at the closing mass for that. Yeah, so things still happened this morning. The Vatican press office still announced the appointment of a new bishop. Usually there's several of those kinds of announcements made each day. So the day-to-day kind of functions are still happening. Occasionally, someone has to step in for the Pope. Got it. Now, is that the case, Heidi? If a really important decision needs to be made and it can't be postponed, what would happen then? Does someone step in to make that decision? Yeah, so the Secretary of State, so that's Cardinal Pietro Parolin, is the person who is probably most handling the top-level decisions that need to be made, although most likely in consultation with the Pope. And what we're hearing is that right now, Pope Leo is, you know, he's walking around. He even celebrated mass in the hospital. He sent a message to that to that meeting that was meeting about marriage and families. But Parolin is the person to watch. And he was also the secretary of state under Pope Francis. But Leo chose to keep him on for now. I mean, we are glad to hear that he's up and he's walking around, and like you said, he held mass, he's sending messages, so this is great. But is there an official plan in place, let's say, if a pope were to become too sick to carry out duties for, let's say, an extended period of time? Does that change anything? Yeah, so that has happened in the past, and I think it's raised the issue for some more recent popes. So, for example, John Paul II, who was pope for a long time, towards the end of his papacy, we later learned, had Parkinson's disease and was pretty unable, I think, to do many of his duties. And so this is what many people think led to the next pope, Pope Benedict, choosing to resign rather than die in office. And so he resigned when he was 85 years old. Pope Francis was said to have written a letter of resignation to be used in the case that perhaps he became incapacitated. But there were a lot of church legal questions about whether a letter that he wrote, you know, 10 years earlier could have been used for that purposes. And we don't know, we haven't heard anything about Pope Leo making plans for that. Well, it seems like it's going to be unlikely. The AP, and this just came out, Heidi, the Vatican is saying that Pope Leo resumes work from the hospital, as doctors say his lung recovered well from surgery. So how do you react to this? This seems like a positive development here. Yes. And what everyone's looking to is an upcoming trip that's planned on November 6th to Latin America. And so the latest from the Vatican yesterday, I believe, was that that trip is still on. So we don't yet know the stage of the cancer and what his prognosis or treatment might be. So things could change. So we'll be continuing to follow that. Indeed. Heidi, thank you so much. Congrats on your new role. Thank you. All right.