So We Have a New Pope, Now What? A Branding Refresh?

I was raised Catholic. Hardcore Catholic. The kind of Catholic where you didn’t just fear God—you feared nuns, sacraments, and your grandmother’s disapproving side-eye if your knees showed in church. I was baptized, guilted, confirmed, and had the deluxe communion wafer package.

My grandparents lived across the street and ran a spiritual command centre out of their modest downtown home. My grandmother had a papal wall of fame lined with religious iconography, like a Catholic version of Madame Tussauds—if Tussauds specialized in judgment and martyrdom.

In her hallway, overlooking the living room, hung three framed icons above the radiator, watching over everything from dinner to listening to gossip. One man was draped in holy couture, resembling a snowsuit so white it would make bleach feel insecure, with a face suggesting he had just emerged from an exorcism. Another, a clean-cut charmer with a presidential smile, calibrated for connection and a long-haired, bearded dude who looked like he played rhythm guitar for the Mamas and the Papas. They represented the church’s male authority. The Enforcer, the Politician and the Martyr. They were different faces of the church that claimed to love you, while the church imposed in fine print ‘Terms and Conditions’ apply.

I was too young to know any better and assumed they were all family. It turns out it was Pope John Paul XXIII (cold as the marble he prayed on), JFK (because Catholics needed a political heartthrob), and Jesus Christ (whom I sincerely thought was a cool, wayward uncle with excellent hair). All white, all male, all hung up like holy Wi-Fi routers, providing moral signal strength to the household. This was the spiritual starter kit of the early 60s: one man to tell you what not to do, one to charm the press, and one to die for your sins—because apparently someone had to.

Catholicism has long been the religion of choice for mafia bosses and drug cartels, as well as the Aunt Agneses, who think incense would make a lovely bathroom scent. Where sacraments work just as well for hitmen as they do for billionaire hedge fund managers and their custom confessional booths tucked between their wine cellars and panic rooms. Perhaps it’s time for a spiritual audit?

And us Catholic kids? We cornered the market on sex, drugs, and gambling way before puberty. Raised on guilt, we made a game of it. We had to invent sins to stay relevant – stealing candy, swearing for sport so we’d have something to confess. We were gaming the system before we ever knew what salvation meant.

The priests and nuns who left to marry—the ones who chose Love over doctrine and real life over ritual—should be honoured for stepping into the mess of humanity, but instead, they’ve been cast out like traitors. They didn’t abandon the church; the church abandoned them.

It became a moral racket where the house always won. The currency was shame, the chips were communion wafers, and the jackpot was a chance at salvation. Fast-forward to today, when church attendance is plummeting, confessionals are dusty, and the Vatican’s biggest miracle is how to continue operating like an ancient monarchy while maintaining massive tax exemptions.

Now, let’s state the obvious: Faith and religion are not the same thing. You can hold faith when you lose everything, but religion is a government office, like renewing your driver’s license. It’s the bureaucracy of belief. George Carlin said, “God loves you, and he needs money.  He’s all powerful, all perfect, all knowing and all wise, but he needs your money.” That’s religion. Faith is fiercely intimate and profoundly human. Its power trembles as it shows up in hospital rooms, in gut-wrenching grief, and in awe at a child’s laugh or the night sky. It slips past reason and penetrates the heart, finding its home in the soul. Religion, by contrast, is the bureaucracy of that awe. It’s the HR department of the divine. And Catholicism? It’s been running like a morally confused Fortune 500 company, with PR scandals, vast real estate holdings, and a CEO who still won’t hire women.

I know because, once upon a time, I worked for the Archdiocese. I saw the politics, the positioning, and the absolute obsession with control wrapped in incense and Latin. Though mere support staff, when I suggested compassionate solutions that made human sense, I was met with polite horror and eventually the door.  Call it divine misalignment. When a spiritual institution has its own bank and diplomatic immunity, you’ve drifted far from the pure teachings of the barefoot carpenter who handed out loaves and fish without collecting envelopes. 

And when we might begin to imagine radical humility, along comes a Vice President, rosary in hand and sanctimony in the other, trying to spiritually speed-date the Vatican for clout, praising the church’s antiquated history and values while mocking a courageous and democratic world leader whose country was invaded, for lacking decorum. Wear something functional and unbranded, and you’re dismissed, but the guy in the gold-threaded dress standing in a fortress filled with priceless art and antique chalices—that’s sacred. It’s the theatre of modern power where optics replace morality. This is how wildly off-script Catholicism has gone, especially for those clinging to their moral megaphones.

Over the decades, I watched the Sunday pews thin out like the hairlines on the men serving mass. Feminism, civil rights, birth control, LGBTQ+ rights, climate justice – none of it registered with an institution run like a velvet-draped private boy’s club. The echo in the church grew louder as the prayers drowned in holy water and ritual smoke. Meanwhile, the faithful sat quietly, wrestling with burning spiritual questions no sermon dared to answer. 

The church isn’t losing followers because the world has become more wicked but rather because it has become rigid. Its crisis stems from turning corporate. It has confused hierarchy with holiness and compliance with compassion. The church and its board members are enveloped in spiritual Ego, a poetic metaphor for ‘Edging God Out.’ It has branded shame, exclusion, judgment, and obedience as virtues while preaching a gospel supposedly built on unconditional love.

And let’s talk about that Love.

If your idea of divine love comes with a disclaimer—”except if you’re gay, divorced, female, questioning, lost, poor, angry, or inconvenient”—then what you’ve got isn’t love. That’s theological gaslighting. The church says, “Come as you are,” then slaps on a dress code, a silence clause, and a moral scorecard.

People are leaving the church because they’re tired of being spiritually negged. You can’t hide behind a cross forever or hold a Bible and call it virtue. Faith doesn’t wear costumes, needs props or gold, or asks for press releases.

So what now? Now we tell the truth. The church must decide whether it will evolve and lead with humility or retreat into the shadows of its own denial. It’s an entity, and time is running out. Will it become a sanctuary or a relic—a true force for transformation or a monument of the past?

Christ didn’t die for dogma. He wasn’t running a fundraiser. He wasn’t recruiting altar boys into a code of silence. He walked among the outcasts. He broke the rules. He touched the untouchables. He flipped the tables of the self-righteous. He preached only one thing: Love without condition.

So now we have a new pope. Great. Let’s see if Pope Bob or his new celestial stage name, Leo, plans to follow Christ’s teachings instead of managing the legacy like a Vatian rebrand. I hope Pope Provost can turn the church outward, not inward, and trade doctrine for dignity and ritual for relevance. And let’s stop pretending that the church has a private phone line to God/Life/The Universe.  Anyone can access it. It’s a party line, and it always has been. Besides, God’s not taking the Vatican’s calls. God’s busy in the streets, under bridges, in recovery rooms and in refugee camps. God’s walking with the single moms and Queer teens and angry, disillusioned ex-Catholics who still somehow carry faith like a flame in the wind. I know I do. I don’t need an intermediary, but I appreciate community because I’ve witnessed firsthand how much stronger we are together than apart. 

Let’s see if Pope Provost will finally unlock the church doors for the homeless instead of keeping them shut to protect the mahogany and marble. Let’s see if he’ll bless gay marriages, ordain women, melt down the gold, help the poor, and turn Vatican real estate into shelters instead of monuments of self-preservation.

And while we’re at it, let priests and nuns marry already. You can’t credibly counsel people on love, loss, or partnership when your closest relationship is the institutional vow of celibacy. Especially when converted, married priests are already on the Church payroll and can serve under Rome’s roof. Even holy vows are flexible, but not for the ones born into them. Divine loopholes, anyone?

And maybe, finally, he’ll confront the one crisis the church keeps burying under holy water, its legacy of protecting pedophiles while preaching purity. No more hiding behind canon law. Justice isn’t heresy. It’s accountability.

Maybe this time, they’ll turn confessionals into real counselling rooms, swap judgment for compassion, and finally let the church be a sanctuary for the wounded, not just the obedient.

Let’s see if Pope Leo can embody what holiness really looks like: not robes, not relics, not rituals, But showing up. Heart open. Hands dirty. No cameras demonstrating One Love.