Power Basis of Pope Francis

Papal Power

The pope is the leader of the catholic church and therefore the leader of the largest religious group on the planet. While he has maybe lost some of his influence in the recent centuries he is still an inspiring personality to many people and the leader and role model of a huge group of people. In this assignment, we will analyze how the current pope Francis is inspiring and influencing people all around the world and we will take a look at his life, his values and the way he affects current affairs and the results of his influence.

As we know power is a function of dependency. This applies to the power of Pope Francis as well. This dependency on the pope is not always direct though. Many Catholics around the world heavily rely on their religion to help them and/or guide them. As there are over 1.27 billion members in the catholic church he has an influence on a huge amount of people. This may be just spiritually for some especially in wealthy countries where the church is more of a spiritual aspect of life or it may actually be a physical dependency to the church as many people in poorer countries rely on the welfare and support of organizations based on the catholic church to survive. The pope also holds political power as the sovereign of the Vatican state which gives him theoretically direct power over all the inhabitants. While he may not make use of this power like many other of his rights he would be able to directly reign Vatican City in theory. The church also holds massive parts of estate and capital around the world as it is similar to a company providing services and homes to many theology students and workers of the church. While the pope is the leader of the church and therefore has a substantial influence on how the church deals with its assets he does not directly own them and therefore he can obviously not directly make use of the church’s capital or assets in any way he wants.

While they rely on the catholic church they may not always see the pope as the person who has the power over them. The reason for this is the limited power of the pope inside of the catholic church. On paper the pope may have the so called “Papal Supremacy” which empowers him to exercise power over the whole catholic church unhindered. But in fact, the pope may be the leader of the catholic church his influence on some parts of the church is limited and there are many suborganizations he can not influence directly. While his direct influence is limited his indirect influence is very high. Since many Catholics are influenced by his word he can put pressure on organizations by condemning or supporting certain views. While many may describe this kind of papal influence as leadership it actually is power as the pope will in many cases not necessarily follow the people’s