PHILIP PULLELLA, of Reuters, reports…
Vatican City
Reuters
Pope Francis marks the 10th anniversary of his election on 13th March having outlasted the conservative opposition that failed to bring him down and which is now at a crossroads, seeking new direction following the deaths of two of its figureheads.
The conservative-progressive divide has been a recurrent theme of the past 10 years, since Francis first appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in 2013 wearing a simple white cassock, shunning the red-and-gold coverings used for centuries.
Pope Francis kisses a child during the weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican, on 8th March, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Conservative cardinals and archbishops have accused Francis of sowing confusion by weakening rules on issues such as homosexuality and remarriage after divorce while focusing excessively on social problems such as climate change and economic inequality.
But events have left the conservative movement disoriented and, some experts say, rudderless.
Former Pope Benedict, who resigned in 2013 and became a standard bearer for conservatives who yearned for the return to a more traditional church, died on 31st December at the age of 95.
“The conservative world lacks a unifying vision, which is something that Benedict provided,” said Sandro Magister, a veteran conservative author, journalist and blogger who has been critical of Francis.
“He [Benedict] has no real heir, no-one able to inherit his legacy in a substantial way,” Magister said.
A senior Vatican official, one of three high-ranking prelates who spoke on condition of anonymity, said many conservatives looked to Benedict “as a sense of security”, even though, in the official’s opinion, the former pope did not seek that role.
Conservatives also mourned the sudden death in January of Australian Cardinal George Pell, 81, who many had believed would succeed Benedict as chief conservative standard bearer.
Pell’s apartment – in the building where Benedict lived until he became pope in 2005 – was a salon for visiting conservative churchmen.
“In the last years of his life Pell was working to build a unifying network by meeting conservatives and also moderates. He wanted them to reflect on the central issues of the Church looking ahead to the choice of Francis’ successor,” Magister said.
Pell had written a memo in 2022 calling Francis’ papacy a “catastrophe”.
The senior Vatican official said: “He [Pell] networked and socialised with a lot of people and that made him a formidable force. Having that network collapse immediately one day probably has people disconcerted.”
Two days after Pell’s death, Italian bookstores began selling a memoir by Benedict’s long-time personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein. It included scathing criticism of another conservative icon, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, exposing more internal fault lines on the right.
The conservative opposition to Francis has become more fractured, in part because of what Magister says is a flourishing of divisive extremism in Catholic social media, which has scared off some once vocal protagonists.
Age has also taken its toll. Two of the four conservative cardinals who became celebrities on right-wing media in 2016 when they launched an assault on Francis’ teachings have since died. The other two have gone quiet, possibly because of age and illness.
Another former celebrity of the right was Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the ex-Vatican ambassador to Washington, who became a rallying point for many conservatives in 2018 when he published a broadside demanding that Francis resign.
Vigano has been largely discredited and kept at arm’s length by many former backers, including some U.S. bishops, because of his support for political and COVID-related conspiracy theories.
“They [the conservatives] don’t have anybody at the moment,” said another senior Vatican official.
While most progressives within the Church have cheered Francis, 86, some have accused him of being too timid. In 2019 he held out the possibility of a married priesthood, albeit limited to remote areas in the Amazon with a shortage of priests, only to pull back.
Both sides appear to agree on one thing – that early in his papacy Francis underestimated the persistency of the Church’s sexual abuse crisis, and was too trusting of bishops, particularly in Latin America, who tried to downplay it. They say he should have moved faster to implement stricter safeguards and penalties.
A survey of Catholic women in 104 countries taken by the University of Newcastle in Australia and released at the Vatican on Wednesday showed 80 per cent of the more than 17,000 respondents said church leaders were not doing enough to address sexual abuse and its cover up.
Pope Francis smiles during an exclusive interview with Reuters, at the Vatican, on 2nd July, 2022. PICTURE: Reuters/Remo Casilli/File photo
While the conservatives look for a new standard bearer to form a consensus ahead of the election of the next pope, Francis is forging ahead with his vision of a more inclusive and forward-looking church.
He has now named about 64 per cent of cardinals aged under 80 who would be eligible to elect a successor after his death or resignation. Church law puts a cap of 120 on the number of cardinal electors, although popes have gone slightly over the limit temporarily.
If Francis’ health holds out, even for a few more years, he can appoint more electors, increasing the chances his successor will be someone who agrees with his vision.
POPE FRANCIS’ HEALTH AFTER 10 YEARS IN THE JOB: SLOWER STEPS, SAME DETERMINATION
Ten years ago when he became the first pope from Latin America, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had a spritely step and a slimmer girth.
Today Pope Francis, 86, is using a cane and a wheelchair because of a persistent knee ailment and his waistline has noticeably increased due to a more sedentary lifestyle in the Vatican that began even before his leg problem.
Pope Francis leaves laughs with Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, at the Sakhir Palace south of Manama, Bahrain, on 3rd November, 2022. PICTURE: Reuters/Yara Nardi/File photo.
But the leader of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics appears to be in good and steady overall health for a man of his age.
“You don’t run the Church with a knee but with a head,” he reportedly told an aide after he began sometimes using a wheelchair in public for the first time on 5th May, 2022.
Last July, returning from a trip to Canada, Francis acknowledged that his advancing age and his difficulty walking might have ushered in a new, slower phase of his papacy.
But effectively he has not slowed down. After Canada, he went to Kazakhstan in September, Bahrain in November and made a gruelling trip last month to Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.
He is already committed to visiting Hungary next month, Portugal in August and the French city of Marseille in September. He has said if it can be arranged, he would want to then fly from Marseille to Mongolia.
Francis alternates between using a cane and a wheelchair and he has continued with the same number of private and public audiences as before his knee became a constant problem last year.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, an Irish-American Vatican official, has called the pope a great example to elderly people facing mobility issues.
“He accepts his limitations at this moment with a great spirit and a great heart. I think he is an example to all of us. We should not hide the fact that with age comes a lessening of our ability to play an active part in the life of the world today,” Farrell told reporters last year.
One main difference with the past is that since April, 2022, the Pope has not been the main celebrant at public Masses, which would force him to stand for hours. He has delegated that role to a senior cardinal, while continuing to preside over the services and deliver a homily.
Francis told Reuters in an interview in July last year that he preferred not to have an operation on his knee because he did not want a repeat of long-term negative side effects from anaesthesia he suffered after an intestinal operation in July, 2021.
He said he had no plans to resign anytime soon and that if he eventually did it would be for serious heath reasons, such as if he were gravely incapacitated.
Asked by Italian Swiss television RSI in an interview to be broadcast on March 12 what condition would lead him to quit, he said “A tiredness that doesn’t let you see things clearly. A lack of clarity, of knowing how to evaluate situations”.
In the 2022 interview with Reuters he also dismissed as “court gossip” rumours that cancer had been found during the 2021 operation for diverticulitis, a colon condition that is common in the elderly.
Two months ago, he said the condition had returned and that it was causing him to put on weight but that he was not overly concerned. He did not elaborate.
Francis had part of one lung removed because of an illness more than 60 years ago when he was a young man in Argentina, but that has not appeared to have been a factor in his overall health since then.
– PHILIP PULLELLA/Reuters
