In recent months, a hypothesis has been frequently mentioned: Leo XIV is, or would be, Francis's Bonaparte. In other words, his mission would be to Bonapartize the reforms introduced by the Argentinian pontiff . This is likely to be the case; it may be entirely, or only partially. In any case, I believe it is still too early to determine. But the mere possibility warrants further consideration.
First, let's clarify the term. I'm not referring here to Bonapartism as Karl Marx understood it, but as liberal historians have understood it. They see Napoleon as the man who consolidated and disseminated the gains of the Revolution by neutralizing its violence. They argue that the Coup of 18 Brumaire was not a betrayal of the Revolution but its stabilization: Napoleon supposedly took the revolutionary principles and ideals of 1789 and institutionalized them permanently, while bringing the cycle of violence to a close (the Reign of Terror, the internal civil war, the instability of the Directory). In other words, with Bonaparte, "the Revolution ends" precisely because it is institutionalized and exported without the need for a guillotine.
Let's apply this hermeneutic to the case at hand: after the brutality of Francis's pontificate, with its arbitrary actions, rudeness, and various heresies, Leo would play the role of Napoleon: he would stabilize all those measures with a red mozzetta and good manners. This is, as I said, a hypothesis that we may finally be able to verify, to our horror, in a few years. We cannot know for sure now. But following the master Marcus Tullius Cicero, who asserts that "history is the teacher of life," let's see how history has behaved in similar cases.
Napoleon and Bonapartism
Napoleon Bonaparte exported revolutionary ideals with a gentle touch—beyond the wars. All of Europe and the new American nations that emerged during those years adopted the ideals proclaimed in the French Revolution, imposed in France through the Reign of Terror, and disseminated throughout Europe under Napoleon's aura of civilization.
It is true that the Congress of Vienna (September 1814–June 1815) was a deliberate and largely successful halt to this expansion, but structurally it was only temporary. This was because it could not dismantle Napoleon's legal and administrative framework. Furthermore, although it was able to suppress symptoms, it could not suppress causes, since constitutional liberalism and nationalism, the underlying forces, continued to operate in lodges, the underground press, universities, and secret societies throughout the Restoration. In short, in 1848, the "Springtime of the Peoples" confirmed that the reactionary order of 1815 could no longer contain the liberal and national forces it sought to stifle. If "Bonapartism" was the administrative dissemination of revolutionary principles without the Terror, the Viennese Restoration was the attempt—partially successful, but not definitive—to politically neutralize that dissemination without being able to undo its already established legal effects . If we outline what happened in those slightly more than fifty years (from 1789 to 1848), we have a revolutionary explosion imposed by terror; an expansion and stabilization with good manners; a reaction that manages to partially return to the Old Regime and a final triumph of the revolutionary ideals.
Bonapartism in the Church
Let us return to the hermeneutical exercise: Did a similar process occur in the Church? It would be too easy to think that it all began with Vatican II, but that was not the case; it began much earlier. Let us recall the figure of Cardinal Ercole Consalvi (1757-1824), Secretary of State to Pius VII. It was he who, accepting the revolutionary government of France and betraying the priests and bishops who had remained faithful to the Holy See and to traditional principles, “made a deal” with Napoleon; that is, he made a pact with the revolutionary ideals. With the Concordat of 1801 signed with Napoleon, Consalvi managed to wrest official recognition of Catholicism from the post-revolutionary French regime, even forcing the mass resignation of the entire previous French episcopate (both constitutional and non-constitutional) in order to reorganize the Church in France from scratch under papal authority, but according to the dictates of the new Emperor. This is where Vatican realpolitik is born : pure pragmatism when dealing with governments. At the commemorative congress for Consalvi held in the Vatican Museums in January 2024, Cardinal Parolin himself defined this policy as an approach that “defends and promotes the demands of the Gospel and knows how to adapt intelligently to the times,” providing answers “without romanticism” but through “continuous, discreet, and laborious work .” He further clarified: ecclesiastical realpolitik seeks “all possible solutions for the survival of local Catholicisms and, if necessary, for their development”—that is, contingent responses to contingent problems , without doctrinal preconceptions that would prevent negotiation with the current government, whatever its political leanings. Ultimately, this amounts to the practical acceptance of liberalism's triumph. Without declaring war against it, negotiations take place, seeking to obtain as many advantages as possible, even at the cost of abandoning certain principles. This is the policy applied to the countries of the communist bloc during the pontificate of Paul VI—we need only recall the suffering endured by Cardinals Mindszenty in Hungary, Slipij in Ukraine, and Stepinac in Croatia. And it is the policy currently being implemented in China : an arrangement with the communist regime, the practical acceptance of its principles in exchange for potential benefits for the Church and, of course, the betrayal of the Catholics who remained faithful.
Consalvism also had its Congress of Vienna: it was checked by two reactionary papacies, that of Gregory XVI (1831-1846) and that of Pius IX (1846-1878), a pope who turned out to be a coot, since, despite being a staunch liberal, he switched sides a couple of years after his election. With Leo XIII (1878-1903) things changed again, as foreign policy was handled by Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, a Consalvist. One need only recall the sad episode of the Ralliement , which responded to the dilemma: pragmatically accommodate the regime that emerged from the Revolution to preserve what was essential, or reject it outright as illegitimate? By 1890, France had been under the Third Republic for two decades, and the majority of French Catholics remained Legitimists or Orleanists at heart, hostile to the republican regime on principle and not only because of its anticlerical policies. In this situation, Leo XIII entrusted Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, Archbishop of Algiers and Carthage, with the mission of giving a public indication of the Holy See's intentions. Lavigerie did so on November 12, 1890, in the famous "Toast of Algiers," declaring that "when the will of a people has been clearly expressed... it becomes necessary to accept the existing form of government." The impact was enormous, and Leo XIII confirmed the new direction on February 16, 1892, with the encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes. French Catholics, the Pope stated, could and should accept the Third Republic as a legitimate form of government, without this implying acceptance of its secularist laws, which remained entirely open to challenge. The underlying, explicit political objective was to form a large conservative party uniting Catholics and moderate republicans, isolating both anticlerical radicalism and intransigent monarchism. That's how it went for the Consalvistas and the rallies .
This liberal policy suffered another setback with the election of Saint Pius X. Rampolla was removed as Secretary of State and replaced by Rafael Merry del Val. Some say he was also from the Consalvi school of thought, that is, liberal, but I'm not so sure. What is certain is that the interregnum was short-lived, because with Benedict XV, a direct disciple of Rampolla, and his Secretary, Cardinal Gasparri, Consalvi's policies were consolidated, as Gasparri would also become Secretary of State under Pius XI. Two resounding and compelling historical events confirm the stabilization of Consalvi's policies within the Church . The first of these is the agreement reached by Gasparri with the Masonic government of Mexico, which ended the Cristero War by condemning all the Catholics who had risen up and given their lives in defense of and fidelity to Catholic doctrine. The second is the Lateran Pacts, also signed by Gasparri with Mussolini, by which the Church relinquished the sovereignty it had held for 1300 years. In both cases—and there are surely several more—it was a matter of pure pragmatism and a partial renunciation of many principles.
We can say, then, that Consalvism stabilized under the pontificate of Pius XI and was consolidated under that of Pius XII. This is a topic that can be debated, but I believe it was so. Eugenio Pacelli was Gasparri's right-hand man, and his pontificate, although it evokes nostalgia in many, was an example of Bonapartism, and I am referring to the discreet and slow, but relentless, permissiveness of the liberals' rise to power. It is no coincidence that Giovanni Battista Montini always held very high positions. If Pius XII had not been the Bonaparte of Consalvism, not only in the realm of the Church's foreign policy but also in theology, the catastrophe of Vatican II would have been impossible. All the bishops who participated were chosen by one of the last two Piuses.Two similar schemes
Here we see a scheme more or less similar to the previous one: a revolutionary explosion by the historical standards of the Church; a reaction that manages to partially return to the old Catholic regime and a final triumph of the ideals of liberalism.
Let's look at what has happened in recent decades, when political liberalism definitively permeated theology and internal politics of the Church. The Second Vatican Council and its subsequent spirit were a French Revolution without the guillotine, but cruel and ruthless nonetheless, which succeeded in imposing a new regime and even a new Creed . Everything was done quickly, brutally, and without regard for the consequences during the pontificate of Paul VI. John Paul II was Napoleon, for with good manners, overwhelming leadership, and firmness on certain moral issues, he Bonapartized the spirit of the Council, or, if you prefer, allowed its Bonapartization . I wrote
a post on this subject in 2012, which I refer readers to so as not to repeat myself. The pontificate of Benedict XVI attempted to act as a brake, with its timid and hesitant style, almost like a Schubert impromptu. Then came Francis; They expected a hurricane that would turn the Church upside down, but it ended up being a blizzard that only served to disrupt everything and cover it in dust, with no benefit for anyone other than their own lusts.
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Will Leo be Francisco's Napoleon?
Note 1: It is not my intention to make a moral judgment of the Vatican realpolitik inaugurated by Cardinal Consalvi. That is another discussion; here I have simply narrated the historical facts. It would be very easy to say simply that it was a capitulation of the principles upheld by the Church. The issue is much more complex.
Note 2: I have been struck by the fact that some good friends have been viciously criticizing Pope Leo XIV for mentioning in France the revolutionary motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". But as I discussed with one of them in X, such a gesture is not a novelty but the repetition of a two-hundred-year-old pattern: just as Pius VII, after the Terror, negotiated the Concordat of 1801 with Napoleon—heir of the Revolution—without thereby endorsing its ideological origin, and just as Leo XIII, in Au milieu des sollicitudes (1892), asked French Catholics for the ralliement to the Third Republic, distinguishing the form of government from the obedience due to the constituted power (Rom 13:1), Leo XIV, in the Élysée Palace, did not challenge "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" as hostile vocabulary, but rather renamed it, affirming that its true foundation lies in the Gospel—the same patristic logic of "the plundering of the Egyptians" applied to political language.
