For Long Island Catholics, there's no one-size-fits-all for next pope

After the Vatican funeral Saturday, where the life's work of Pope Francis will be celebrated and his death mourned, comes the conclave of cardinals, and eventually, white smoke from the Sistine Chapel, telling the world they have elected a new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

Long Island Catholics watching the papal farewell from afar will be hoping and praying — some that the next pope will carry on Francis' relatively progressive agenda, others who want his forward-looking approach to continue, but carried on by someone younger out of the gate to make substantive change. For more conservative members of the faith, a more traditional pope in the fashion of John Paul II is what's necessary.

Papal qualities

Just as Catholics are not one-size-fits-all in 2025, neither are the qualities they want in their next pope, according Long Island Catholics who talked to Newsday about the type of person needed to lead the church.

"I'm very concerned that they may choose to go in another direction with an extremely conservative pope," said Kerry Gillick-Goldberg, who attends church at St. Martin of Tours in Bethpage.

The new pope should model Christ, who, like Francis, didn’t support the status quo but was "more of a rebel," the Bethpage resident said.

Francis was unafraid to broach third-rail subjects of the Catholic Church like gay marriage and women in the priesthood, but in the end, stopped short of a long-term doctrinal shift.

A new direction

Change is definitely needed at the top of the church, just not the mixed messages sent by Francis, said John Picciano, a parishioner at St. Kilian’s in Farmingdale.

He likened Francis to a papal version of former President Jimmy Carter, a "good moral man and in my view a very weak and confusing pope."

Conservative and more decisive is what the next pope needs to be, Picciano said: "Give me John Paul II any day of the week."

For Jack O'Connell, a lifelong Catholic and former CEO of the Health & Welfare Council of Long Island, the College of Cardinals would best serve their worldwide flock by electing a pope more persuasive at bringing about some of the changes sought by Francis. 

O’Connell said his model is Pope John XXIII, who ushered in the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s that helped modernize the church.

"John the 23rd did things that excited and electrified people," O’Connell said. He "literally opened the doors of the church and all of a sudden there was a massive change and a greater number of people came to church."

Pope Francis "was saying a lot of very good things about communities that are sort of disregarded by many mainstream people, but he didn't have that spark that ignited community growth," O’Connell said.

The pope's death "brings me deep sadness because I felt like he was a much more progressive pope," said Mildred Gallery, of Massapequa Park, who attends church in Far Rockaway. "He really spoke to really what the Bible is supposed to teach us" such as not judging people.

"There's a part of hopefulness that we had in him that may be gone and I'm praying that it's not," she added, "and that it doesn't start to look different" with the new pope.

'Old-school Catholic'

When it came to Pope Francis, Mary Ellen Collins Fetkowitz, a parishioner at St. Patrick’s parish in Huntington, was of two minds.

Fetkowitz described herself as "old-school Catholic."

"While I admired Francis," she said, "I sort of tend to go to the traditional side of things where I would like a little bit more conservative on the Pope John Paul II side."

She enjoyed some of the traditional papal trappings — red shoes and the luxurious Vatican apartment — that Francis pushed aside.

But other moves he made intrigued her and she would like to see the new pope pursue them. One was his creation of a commission to study bringing back women deacons, who would perform some of the same duties as priests such as celebrating Mass and baptizing people.

Elizabeth Boylan, a parishioner at St. Agnes Cathedral parish in Rockville Centre, said she would like to see the new pope bring back the Latin Mass. Francis prohibited it because he thought it was creating division in the church.

"Taking away some of the traditions, like the Latin Mass, it hurt," she said.

She also hopes the new pope takes on the problems of drug abuse and increasing suicides.

"We have replaced God with drugs in the public square and we need to take that back," she said. "We need to get that hope back and it's got to come from the Vatican."