VATICAN CITY: When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected in 2013 as Pope Francis, he was a near total Vatican outsider. He had never been a Vatican official, instead spending decades in local ministry. And he came from Argentina, the first pope from the Americas.
As the world’s Catholic cardinals meet this week to discuss who should succeed Pope Francis, the deliberations may boil down to a simple choice: Do they want another outsider? Or is it time now for an insider, someone more familiar with the Vatican’s arcane ways of operating? “Pope Francis… shifted the Church’s attention to the outside world,” said John Thavis, former Rome bureau chief for the Catholic News Service, who covered three papacies.
“Some cardinals will now be tempted to pick an insider, someone with the skills to manage church affairs more carefully and quietly than Pope Francis did.” Pope Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88, focused much of his papacy on outreach to places where the Church was not traditionally strong.
Many of his 47 foreign trips were to countries with small Catholic populations, such as South Sudan, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, and he was especially committed to Catholic-Muslim dialogue.
He was also known for giving freewheeling press conferences, where no topics were off the table and the pope might respond to a query with an unexpected quip. Asked about the Catholic ban on birth control in 2015, Pope Francis reaffirmed the ban but added that Catholics don’t have to have children “like rabbits”.
The late pope’s unusually open style attracted criticism from some Catholics, but also global interest. His funeral on Saturday and a procession through Rome to his burial place at the Basilica of St. Mary Major attracted crowds estimated at more than 400,000.
German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, one of the leading Catholic prelates in Europe and once a senior adviser to Pope Francis, said the cardinals who will meet in a secret conclave to elect his successor would not be looking for a “functionary”.
“We do not need a manager,” Marx told reporters. “What’s essential is that it be a courageous person… People around the world need to be comforted, lifted up.” Other cardinals are expressing sharp disagreement.
“We need to give the Church back to the Catholics,” Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Ruini, who is 94 and too old to enter the conclave, said Pope Francis sometimes appeared to favour those who were distant from the Church, “at the expense” of devout faithful.
Others argue that it is precisely a more managerial pope that is needed at this time to tackle the Church’s financial woes, which include a widening budget shortfall and growing liabilities for its pension fund.
Cardinals’ speeches
The cardinals are meeting daily this week to discuss general issues facing the 1.4-billion-member Church before those under the age of 80 enter the conclave on May 7.
Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2025
from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/qzMois6
Comments
Post a Comment