As the conclave continues in Rome, the media worldwide is flowing with opinions about which cardinal will be elected pope and what it will mean for the world.

For those whose concern is turning from helpful contemplation into preoccupation and worry, we have ever-helpful guides: Consider the saints!

While it can be exciting to speculate on our next supreme pontiff — whose election is a huge occasion deserving of our prayers — it’s also worth remembering that, when I die, Jesus is not going to judge me based on which pontificates I lived under. He’s going to judge me based on my fidelity to his Gospel. He’s going to judge me based on how faithfully I carried out my duties as a husband, father, brother, son, worker — and as a Christian. 

I am not aware of what percentage of saints had direct contact with the Vatican. I don’t know if St. Martin de Porres ever met the pope. I do know that soon-to-be-St. Carlo Acutis never met the pope, but he offered his sufferings for Pope Benedict XVI and the Church.

As a clinical psychologist, I tend to focus on personal accountability and living in the “here and now.” I routinely help my patients let go of what is beyond their control. 

And the election of a pope is beyond our control.

Whether or not the cardinal electors give us our “top pick,” we still have the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes and the Catechism. Regardless of who is the pope, Church teaching is more than clear enough to help us walk our path and live out the New Evangelization. There are numerous available resources to enrich one’s adult faith and intellect. As St. Josemaría Escrivá said, “Reading has made many saints.” So why not take your pick of amazing resources from outlets like the EWTN Religious Catalogue?

Most of all, there are churches with tabernacles with the Blessed Sacrament that we can visit. It amuses me that I have shaken the hand of only one pope in my life (Pope Francis in 2015), yet I have encountered Jesus countless times in the Blessed Sacrament. We are so blessed that Jesus himself is more accessible than his vicar, lest we forget whose Church it is. This is probably why the Church has been around 2,000 years and has survived many scandalous pontificates, notably those of John XII and Benedict IX at the turn of the 11th century.

For most of us, we are rarely called upon to navigate difficult-to-decipher ethical quagmires. Most of us aren’t threading the needle of bioethics in our daily lives. We’re faced with choices like how to avoid being harsh with our kids, to avoid gossip with our neighbors, to keep up with our work, and to be faithful to our spouses. 

Most of us are asked daily to answer the question Jesus asks Peter: Do you love me? 

Are we as close to Jesus as we can be? Are we nurturing our prayer life, or are we just trying to win the culture wars? Many of us still have lots of work to do.

For me, it’s a consolation that many canonized saints had little connection at all in their lives with the sitting pope. When I read the biographies of saints, rarely do I see a direct connection to the Holy See. Exceptions exist, of course — St. Catherine of Siena and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, for example. But those seem to be the exceptions and not the rule. We are called to be saints regardless of who occupies the Chair of Peter.

From what I know about St. Josemaría, while he cared about having good relationships with his local bishops, he never seemed overly concerned about who the pope was. In my own experience with holy people, they also were not overly concerned about what was going on in Rome — and they certainly weren’t concerned with ecclesiastical gossip. This kind of thinking is where a healthy psychological outlook can coincide with a trusting prayer life.

So, if you’re feeling overcome by anxiety about the conclave, it might be a good time to read (or reread) the first 30 or so pages of the Handbook of Prayers on how to be a better Catholic. We are called to work out our salvation, bring others to Christ, and build his Kingdom. We are better off doing that, and worrying less about what’s beyond our control. Because no matter who our new pope is, we still have the same marching orders: We’re still called to be saints.