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THESE DAYS, AS the Conclave comes to an end, I am being asked by various people who I think the new pope will be.

One man, who directed the question to me, continued on by giving his own answer: ‘It will make no difference anyway’.

I didn’t contradict him, but it set me thinking about what difference the occupant of the Chair of Peter has made at the various stages of my life.

Pope John XXIII was pope from 1958 to 1963. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

I don’t believe I would have become a priest but for the election of John XXIII in 1958, and his historic convening of the Second Vatican Council. I had something of a crisis during my seminary years, and was on the point of leaving, but the new energy and fresh thinking that followed that Council convinced me to stay.

The next pope, Paul VI, though a good man in many ways, certainly created difficulty by banning all forms of artificial contraception under pain of mortal sin. Many a long hour I spent in dark, stuffy confession boxes trying to reassure married women that they were not in a state of sin and wouldn’t be condemned to Hell.

Pope Paul VI, head of the Catholic Church from 1963 to 1978. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

And then came what I would describe as the long winter of John Paul II, who, over 25 years, restored the traditional doctrinaire Church which we thought we had left behind. We had no great hopes of a change when he died, because his main advisor, Joseph Ratzinger, was lined up to take his place.

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