Why Protestants care about the pope

At first glance, it may seem strange—if not outright contradictory—for Protestants to care about who becomes the next pope. After all, the Protestant Reformation was built on rejecting papal authority. From Martin Luther’s 95 Theses to the clarion calls of the Reformers, Protestants have long distanced themselves from Rome’s magisterium. To put my own Protestant bona fides on the line, I reject the office of the papacy and affirm Scripture alone as the highest authority, not any bishop, including the bishop of Rome. And yet, as another papal conclave approaches, starting tomorrow, Protestants would be short-sighted to think it irrelevant. The truth is, we have a stake—an indirect but real stake—in who wears the white cassock next.

Why? Because we do not live in cultural isolation. Protestantism and Catholicism, despite our theological divides, share a civilizational framework that has been shaped by the Christian moral imagination—the dignity of the human person, the belief in objective truth, a concern for religious liberty, the rejection of statist tyranny, and the immutable realities of marriage and family. The Catholic Church, for all our doctrinal differences with it, remains the most globally visible institution representing historic Christianity. Whatever my disagreements with Catholicism (and they are many), the moral firmament provided by an ancient and visible institution cannot be overlooked. In the eyes of a secular world, the pope is not just a leader of Catholics; he is a symbol of the broader Christian moral witness. Protestants may bristle at that, but it is an undeniable reality. And when that symbol is weakened or distorted, as it was under Pope Francis, it affects all of us—Protestants included.

This is not a plea for unity at the expense of truth. Rather, it’s a sober acknowledgment of reality: Western civilization has been built, in part, upon the scaffolding of medieval Catholic social and ecclesial authority. Protestantism, though corrective in many respects, was still birthed in the womb of Christendom and grew in tension with, and not complete detachment from, Catholic influence. Thus, the shape and strength of the Catholic Church—its moral witness, its institutional priorities, its public theology—inevitably reverberates through the shared culture we inhabit.

Which is why the next papal conclave matters. Under Pope Francis, the Catholic Church shifted in troubling ways—not merely in tone, but in theological and moral ambiguity. Francis’s pontificate too often embraced a posture of accommodation toward the very forces unraveling the moral fabric of the West: moral relativism, the cult of sexual autonomy, the destabilization of the family, and the erosion of truth in public life. Francis’s papacy was a lesson in either strategic or foolish ambiguity, however one wants to assess its legacy. While his defenders may call this “pastoral sensitivity,” the cumulative effect has been a Catholic Church that often appears more eager to mirror the spirit of the age than to confront it.

Protestants rightly critiqued Francis’ many errors. Beyond even his own eye-rolling equivocations, when the papacy under any pontiff undercuts clear biblical morality—not by formal proclamation, but through silence, confusion, or misplaced priorities—it contributes to a larger collapse of moral authority in the culture. We should not pretend this has no impact beyond the Roman Church. When the most visible Christian leader on the planet fails to provide clarity on issues such as gender, sexuality, the sanctity of life, or the nature of the family, it is not only Catholics who suffer. The entire Christian moral witness is weakened, and the culture is further emboldened in its drift toward secularism and subjectivism. I have spent my adult career laboring alongside Roman Catholics in a spirit of co-belligerence. While we will always debate theology, the morality we both strive for gives us a common cause to link arms in the broader fight against secular progressivism. But Catholics need their pope to act, well, Catholic.

In a world increasingly hostile to objective truth, Catholics and Protestants alike find themselves sharing common ground. We share concerns about the disintegration of marriage, the redefinition of gender, and the commodification of human life. We both uphold the reality of natural law, even if we express it differently. We both believe in a transcendent moral order to which all societies must conform. We both are called to speak the truth in love for the common good.

Therefore, while we Protestants do not look to the pope for doctrinal guidance, we cannot ignore the cultural implications of his leadership. A strong, morally clear Catholic Church helps hold the line against the floodwaters of relativism. A weakened or progressive papacy, however, gives cover to forces that would dismantle Christian civilization altogether. This is why the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI stood in such stark moral contrast to the loose-lipped feel-goodism of Francis.

To be clear, our hope is not in Rome. Our hope is in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone. But in the providence of God, institutions still matter. Institutions still shape cultures. And as Protestant Christians, we are not only members of churches—we are citizens, parents, employees, teachers, and neighbors. The cultural air we breathe is not confined to denominational boundaries. We are all downstream from the same cultural currents. When the Catholic Church fails to speak prophetically, the entire body of Christ suffers a diminished credibility.

So yes, Protestants care who the next pope is. Not because we’re returning to Rome but because the West—our shared civilization—desperately needs a moral compass with courage and clarity. We pray, then, not for a pope who flatters the world, but for one who will stand against it in the name of truth. For the good of the shared moral witness. And for the good of the world.