A day after the news of Francisco’s death, last Monday, a traditional Hongkon Cardinal contacted an American journalist in Rome and expressed his anger. “Why do general congregations begin so early? How do we, the cardinals of the peripheries, to get to Rome on time?” He said, annoying, Joseph Zenmaliciously suggesting that the decision of Cardinal Dean, Giovanni Battist A ploy To influence the succession process, even before the funerals of this Saturday. “The career to the conclave Lush begins, “concluded the ultratradictionalist website I can not remain silent (Shut up I can’t).
The incident stressed to what extent it has been fragile – and tense – the relationship between Francisco’s Church y The conservative wing In these years, despite the efforts of the Argentine pontiff to avoid definitive ruptures. Zen, a Cardinal (today not a voter) who openly criticized Francisco for having accepted in 2018 an agreement with Beijing on the appointments of Catholic bishops in China, already in the past had accused the Pope of betraying the clandestine Catholics of China, in a long dispute with Beijing about the presence of the Catholic Church in that country.
Another intervention was in the opposite direction. From Brazil, where so much strength had the theology of liberation and the famous base Christian communities, the theologian Leonardo Boffrehabilitated by Francisco after a difficult relationship with John Paul II, he described Francisco “not as a name, but as a church project.” The late Pope He did not believe “in a closed church like a castle, imagining it surrounded by enemies everywhere […] To this closed church, he opposed a church on the way to existential needsa church as a campaign hospital that welcomes all injured, without asking what their sexual orientation, their religion or ideology is: it is enough that they are needy human beings, “said Boff.
Facing Worlds
Zen and Boff thus reflected, in the same week of the death of the Pontiff, some of the many faced worlds that will be found this Saturday, before the late Pope is buried in the Roman Church of Santa María la Mayor, in the funeral ceremony in the Basilica of San Pedro. They will be seen there, practically side by side, enclaustrated in the same esplanade; without having resolved their pending affairs, a short distance from political leaders also very distant from each other, such as Volodímir Zelenski y Donald Trumpwho In addition, Javier Milei and Giorgia Meloni- They will be part of the significant contigent of the world right present on the spot. All this on the eve of a conclave that, in addition, presents very high unknowns due to the greater presence of glitter from remote areas, which do not know each other and will probably have difficulty facing common.
The issues are still open are not few. From the role of women and laity within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to the relationship with same -sex people, through the issue of married deacons and priests, and even the relationship with China itself and dialogue with countries as conflicting as Russia or Israel. There have been many Open themes In these years, in an opening code, by Francisco, without a solution has been reached Definitive due to classes within the clergy. All this, in addition, with a substantive issue perhaps even more divisive and transcendental: the synodal process, which has begun to lay the bases of a more democratic church (in which not only hierarchies, but also lay and women have a voice and vote) in decision making, cracking the old centralist culture of the institution.
Ecclesiastical paradoxes
The decentralization of the Church, its democratization and the greatest weight of the peripheral churches – so requested by the progressive sector when John Paul II died and rejected during Francisco’s papacy by many conservatives – have also evidenced some paradoxes. One of the most obvious is perhaps that, in the group of cardinals with the right to choose the next Pope – of the moment 133, due to two casualties due to health problems – although the great novelty is that in the future conclave The progressive sector could be majorityalso within that “new” block there are cardinals – in addition to the old conservative guard – that resist Francisco’s reforms. And this group is, in recent years, the one who has made more noise, along with the German church, of ultra -professional trend.
That’s why, A great question That this week it was circulating among the Vaticanists, aware of all the variables that exist in the papal succession process and the fact that the Vatican remains a fairly skilled institution in maintaining its secrets, it was: Will the cardinals want to move forward, stop or turn back in what has been achieved so far? “That is a key point and the great unknowns, since geometry is very varied. There is, for example, cardinals open in immigration issues, but closed in matters of morals; and also some sixties that have participated in the synod of the synodality (the great meeting in which Francisco began to launch its reform, in 2023 and 2024), which are conservative and that they were initially Little by little they have begun to be able to speak openly, “a Vatican source told this newspaper.
The devil’s work
Another aspect are The envy from outside. In this group are those of international political power – which, of course, these days is being bidded by an related Pope – whose visible face is often the most radical. In the case of conservatives, there is, for example, the framework of that kind of International Catholic rightwhose visible faces are currentMake America Great Again), and his man in Italy, Benjamin Harnwell. “Pope Francis named bishops who are radically out of tune with practicing Catholics. That illustrates the degree of contempt he had for the faithful,” Harnwell said on Thursday in connection with Bannon from the Plaza de San Pedro.
The matter may seem an anecdote, but it is not. Internal sources counted this week even about Dyresses with information sensible of each cardinal, Prepared by extreme right groups and sent to Rome To influence each other. A more subtle way – and hidden – of try to mark the fate of the Church Catholic, in addition to the media they have exercised in these years as a speaker of that sector. As the station ETwn (Eternal word television networkin Spanish), the world’s largest Catholic television network, than Francisco himself, without citing it, criticized the “devil’s work”, as the Jesuit America magazine wrote.
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