Noise of saber and poison jets in the Vatican. The war for papal succession is reaching its peak. The clash between the most traditionalist and conservative sectors, determined to avoid the choice of “another Francisco”, and the wing of the party hierarchy of continuity, is increasingly public and bloody.
Faithful reflection of this has been, in the last hours, Matteo Bruni’s decision, The Vatican spokesmanto deny the false information that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state of the late Francisco and one of the greatest representatives of the “Curial Party”, had suffered this week a discomfort (an alleged episode of high pressure), which would even have required the intervention of doctors. “That has not happened,” Bruni said categorically.
The spokesman has thus rejected information released on Thursday by Conservative means Americans and Italians, whom he had granted credibility even the journalist Diane MountainExecutive Director of The College of Cardinal Reports. That is, a medium also considered close to conservative environments, which in recent weeks has gained some visibility for its papable cardinal lists. All this, after the news was released first by an ultratradictionalist website of the United States, CatholicVote.
“According to multiple sources, yesterday afternoon an alert was activated In the Vatican related to the health of the former Secretary of State of the Vatican, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, considered one of the main candidates for the papacy, “had come to write Montagna.” Apparently, the Cardinal, 70, suffered a sudden disease due to a rise in blood pressure and was treated by a medical team for an hour, “he added.
The Filipino Tagle
A very hostile climate that adds to the attacks to another figure also considered related to the late Argentine pontiff and the reformist wing: Cardinal Filipino Luis Antonio Tagle. Against him, throughout the week, his Mala International Cáritas Managementfrom which he was president from 2015 to 2022, the year in which the institution was intervened by Francisco himself after a series of financial scandals and alleged sexual abuse. “Conclave, the time of poisons”, Concluded the newspaper The Republic.
The situation evokes struggles not precisely new for the millenary institution. Already In the Middle Agesthe gossip, anonymous letters and all kinds of accusations about alleged immoralities of the candidates spread to discredit each other. In the 1378 conclave, a year after the return of the papacy to the Vatican after his transfer to Avignon, the pressure of the Roman crowd by the choice of an Italian pontiff flowed into violent threats and, according to some chronicles, in a real psychological lynching of the French cardinals. The result was a chosen pope in the midst of chaos, Urban VI, followed by a schism that torn the church for almost forty years.
Old fights
During The Renaissancethe defamation campaigns became more sophisticated. Emissaries of aristocratic families, ambassadors and even cardinals spread rumors about alleged favors, secret lovers or heretical sympathies. False information, often transmitted by “worried devotees”, aimed destroy the public image of favorites to the papal throne.
In the most recent times, the most famous interference episode was the 1903 conclave the right of the exclusionan unwritten right by which some Catholic monarchies (Austria, France, Spain) could veto A candidate considered undesirable. The victim was Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tundaro, Secretary of State of Leo XIII, near France and hostile to Habsburg. Finally, after Cardinal Jan Puzyna, Archbishop of Krakow, announced the veto on behalf of the emperor, the conclave was divided. Thus, Rampolla received several votes, but Giuseppe Sarto was chosen, who became Pío X.
Another was the case of 1939 conclave that would choose Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII), when the foreign press became A propaganda battlefield. Some newspapers related to Nazism spread the rumor that Pacelli was “too close to the English” or even an “undercover Mason”, while anti -fascist sectors accused him of having maintained a too conciliatory attitude with Benito Mussolini and with Hitler’s Germany, due to the 1933 concordat signed when he was a nuncio in Berlin. Finally, Pacelli was chosen in the third vote, but The echo of insinuations against him continued in the postwar period.
