Perhaps he is not the future Pope (or perhaps yes), but without a doubt the Cardinal Archbishop of Rabat, the Spanish Cristóbal López Romero (Vélez-Rubio, 72 years), the humor does not lack, also in these days in which on him-and another 135 (the exact number of absent is still unknown)-falls the task of choosing the new head of the Catholic Church. “Me, Pope? Yes, Frita Pope,” he joked in an interview, then viral on social networks, granted to RTVE, when asked to be among the pool of favorite papables to succeed Francisco. “It should be noted that it is not mine, the cardinal of Córdoba, from Argentina, first said it,” he clarified with this journalist a few hours after starting a key week for the electoral process that will lead to Francisco’s succession.
Salesian and born in Almeria, López Romero has a biography deeply linked to those difficult years of the twentieth century in which so many Spanish emigrants moved, in search of a better life, to Catalonia, where he lived from nine months of age to 32 years. “My father worked in The Warrior’s bleach: ‘Wash the lady, wash the gentleman’; 88 hours weekly came to work when the compulsory work week was 48 hours. My mother, cleaning floors for others, taking care of children, as I could, “he said during the conversation.” That’s why I suffer when Spain closes to emigrants; They seem to forget that there was a time when three million Spaniards were between France, Germany and Switzerland, “added the priest, first settled in Badalona and then, from 12 years (” it was then that I met the shower for the first time “), at the Salesian school in Girona.
-What dad do we have to wait?
A challenge is the unity of all Christians and all humanity. That is, to overcome this polarization that is at the political level, at the social level, and that also begins to touch, or that has always touched, the religious field. A person who is able to be an instrument of unity, who is able to be inclusive, not exclusive, who is able to approach all, to listen to everyone […] Not polarize. Another aspect is that the Pope has to help us to connect with the roots, and the Christ and the Gospel roots.
-And face for outside? It is a difficult time at the world order level.
Peace will have to work, that is permanent and is becoming more urgent than ever. We have had in the church more interest in increasing the number of Christians, but the important thing is that we live as brothers. Sometimes we forget it.
-Francisco made peace with chitas and sunitas, will this influence the conclave?
I don’t know if that is going to enter, but what the [difunto] Pope was to promote and favor Islamo-Christian dialogue. So today, Muslims and Christians, and that touches me very closely, we do not live as adversaries, much less as enemies, but as allies. It is a newly initiated process, which is not consolidated, that has many resistances in the political world and also in the bosom of the Church and that we have to consolidate.
Lopez responds here with a kind of Flashbakreturning to the question about the internal challenges that the future Pope must face. He wants to insist on another aspect that he believes a priority: that the next Pontiff remains on the path of what, in ecclesial slang, they call SinodalityThat is, a less centralized church that advocates a greater inclusion of local churches and basic Christian communities. Something that, if completed, would be a true “revolution,” he says.
-Are there consensus to get to a continuist Pope?
Well, I don’t know because of the one hundred and thirty cardinals that we are going to enter the conclave, I may know 50. And of those 50 that I know, I do not know what each one thinks, [a algunos] Maybe I’ve seen you three times.
Here López Romero gives another key, because an early or fast conclave could favor the candidates of the Roman curia, that is, the only ones with the closest cardinals with the cardinals farthest from Rome or from the peripheries.
-The have mentioned in the pools and has taken it with humor. Wouldn’t you like to be a dad?
With a lot of humor … it’s not that I wouldn’t like it, you can’t think that a person wants. Yes, I have said it and I repeat it, you have to be wrong with the head or heart to wish to be a potato.
-And if they finally asked, what would you answer?
I don’t know, I haven’t raised it. Also [es cierto que] The Holy Spirit blows as he wants and where he wants, but does not do nonsense. I think that other people would not like, but they are asked, because they will accept by spirit of obedience and service. But it scares me only to think about that possibility.
-How do the work of the general pre-Cóclave congregations advance?
I have participated in three of the four that have been carried out so far. And these three have been, we would say, more organizational to see the issue of burial and the new days of grieving, and we have not yet entered the sharing the vision that each of the world and the church has, and the robot portrait that we can do about the most appropriate person. This will be from this Monday
-Is any pressure meaning, from inside or outside the Church?
Not absolutely nothing. I feel completely free to do what I think I have to do.
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