I MODI DI GOVERNO DEL PAPA. IL TEMPO DELLA SEDE VACANTE

The conference focuses on the ways of the pope's government when the pope is not there. This might sound like a logical antinomy, but historically it is not. For not only does the pope manage to govern even when dead in the time of the sede vacante, thanks to previous legislation dedicated to it, but also and in a special way he governs the impersonal and yet real papal auctoritas through the power of the symbology of spaces, ceremonial and more specific liturgy. And papal government continues as well through the cardinal corps, which, with its ecclesial and political self-consciousness, maintains relations with the sovereigns and the rest of the Church, including the Roman Church, in which it is incardinated and therefore of which it is an expression. It is in this time that the reasons of state and church confront each other, seeking the one to overcome the other, and then recompose themselves in balances of power. The conference stands in continuity with last year's conference, The Pope's Ways of Government. Roman synods, consistories and cardinal congregations. The perspectives of the two conferences complement and complement each other.