Columnist Luke Collins raises in «What happens if a pope becomes incapacitated?», published on November 6 in The Catholic Herald, an issue that Pope Leo XIV’s surgery has once again brought to the table: what happens in the Church when a Pope is no longer able to exercise his authority. This is an opinion piece, not a report on the Pontiff’s health.
According to Collins’s text, the Pope’s recovery “has brought relief,” but the operation “raises an unresolved question” about what occurs when a pontiff is no longer in a position to govern. The author does not limit himself to the current situation and, to introduce the matter, draws on a historical precedent.
The precedent of Pius VII, prisoner of Napoleon
Collins recalls that in 1811, when King George III of England was incapacitated by illness, the British Parliament appointed his son as regent. That same year, he emphasizes, Pope Pius VII was held captive by Napoleon, who had abducted him from the Quirinal two years earlier. Unlike the British monarchy, he writes, “the Catholic Church had no prince regent.”
Pius VII, the columnist adds, remained Pope during his captivity, communicated with the outside world through letters smuggled out, resisted Napoleon’s attempts to bring the Church under his control, and returned to Rome in 1814. The example serves the author to illustrate that the government of the Church lacks a mechanism to replace an incapacitated Pope.
Pope Leo XIV’s recovery after the operation
Leo XIV underwent surgery on October 13 at the Policlinico Gemelli in Rome. Two weeks later, the Holy See confirmed that the apostolic journey to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru, scheduled for November 6–17, would proceed, following medical checks that raised no objections to the trip, as reported by InfoVaticana.
The Pope departed for Montevideo this Friday, so Collins’s article appears at a time when the Pontiff has already resumed his international schedule. His reflection, therefore, does not refer to a current state of incapacity, but to the gap that, in his view, a Pope’s illness exposes and that Church law has not resolved.