The Decline of the Petrine Ministry?

Editor’s note: The following is a guest commentary from Bishop Marian Eleganti, the former auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Chur and former Abbot of St. Otmarsberg Abbey. It is published on Per Mariam at the direct request of Bp. Eleganti. VATICAN CITY (PerMariam) — On July 31, 2026, Pope Leo XIV met with American rock musician, poet, and artist Patti Smith — the so-called “Godmother of Punk” — in a 40-minute private audience at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Both are from Chicago. The meeting was attended by Father Antonio Spadaro. There are several official photos and a video of the encounter. This harmless encounter — I imagine that it mainly involved an exchange of pleasantries, with hardly anything of great significance for the Church — raises questions for me. Credit: Vatican Media. For a long time now, I’ve been personally troubled by the fact that, since John Paul II, popes have increasingly been speaking in a purely informal manner on all sorts of occasions (e.g., on an …