Will Someone Like Pope Francis Succeed Him?

Given the way he has packed the College of Cardinals with his own creatures, barring divine intervention, the next Pope will be Francis 2.0.

From Settimo Cielo

By Sandro Magister

Francis, Pontiff for Life. But Without a Successor “of His Own”

Still alive,” in his own words, after his latest hospital stay, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing all he can to discourage those who are counting on his imminent exit from the stage. But what is happening in the twilight of this pontificate does not at all foreshadow a succession congenial to him.

A month before Easter, Francis brought five new cardinals onto the council of nine who are supposed to help him govern the universal Church. All close to him, one more so and another less, and at the top the cardinal and Jesuit Jean-Claude Hollerich, whom he has also put in charge of the world synod with which he would like to change the structure of the Catholic Church, from the hierarchy to the rank and file.

Quite active in promoting a paradigm shift in Catholic doctrine on sexuality, Hollerich is in effect Bergoglio’s favorite cardinal, the one many see as the successor most to his liking. But he is also the cardinal most in the line of fire, together with the American Robert McElroy, he too beloved of Francis. Both have been publicly branded as “heretics,” precisely because of their reckless doctrinal theses, not by some isolated professor of theology but by other cardinals of the highest rank: yesterday the Australian George Pell and today the German Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith.

In the United States, the bishop of Springfield, Illinois, Thomas J. Paprocki, skilled in canon law and president of the episcopal conference commission on Church governance, has even argued in writing, in the prestigious magazine “First Things,” that a “heretical” cardinal is also automatically excommunicated, and should therefore be removed from his role by the “competent authority,” which in his case is the pope. But this latter is not taking action, with the paradoxical consequence that “the unseemly prospect arises of a cardinal, excommunicated ‘latae sententiae’ due to heresy, voting in a papal conclave.”

What has made this conflict burn even hotter has been above all the decision of the bishops of Germany and Belgium to approve and practice the blessing of homosexual couples, forbidden by the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith, but then allowed to run free by the pope, even though at first he had signed off on the ban. With the result that on this and other issues the progressive camp itself is in disarray: on one side Hollerich and McElroy, and on the other side Walter Kasper, historic opponent of Joseph Ratzinger in theology, and Arthur Roche, prefect of the dicastery for divine worship and an implacable enemy of the ancient liturgical rite, both ever more critical of the excesses of the innovators, because “the Church cannot be reinvented” at the risk of “falling into a schism.”

Of course, on the narrative level the innovators dominate the stage. They recite a script entirely written from without, by the secular “mainstream,” which rightly rewards them. But then, when one gets the lay of the land inside the Church, one discovers that the innovators are not the majority even in Europe.

At the end of March, the election of the new president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union surprised many. The outgoing president was Cardinal Hollerich, and in the running to succeed him was the archbishop of Dijon, Antoine Hérouard, a trusted man of the pope, who had already used him to inspect and bring to heel a traditionalist diocese, that of Fréjus-Toulon, and the Marian shrine of Lourdes.

Instead, the election went to the Italian Mariano Crociata, bishop of Latina, where Francis had confined him at the start of his pontificate to punish him for how he had carried out his previous role as secretary general of the Italian episcopal conference, which the pope judged as too deaf to his expectations. A grudge that still persists, seeing how Francis, receiving the Commission in audience after the conclusion of the assembly, gave the newly elected Crociata the cold shoulder and instead showed warmth in bestowing “gratitude” on what was done by his predecessor, Hollerich, who “never stops, never stops!”

The vote of the bishops of Eastern Europe certainly weighed in Crociata’s favor. But also important was the role of the bishops of Scandinavia, the authors of a letter to their faithful on the question of sexuality circulated on the fifth Sunday of Lent, which made quite a splash all over the world precisely on account of its freshness of language and solidity of content, perfectly in line with biblical anthropology and with the Catholic doctrine that stems from it, and therefore opposed to the theses of Hollerich and company. In reviewing it in the secular newspaper “Domani,” the former director of “L’Osservatore Romano” and professor of ancient Christian literature Giovanni Maria Vian recognized in this letter of the little Catholic world of Scandinavia the beneficial fruit “of those creative minorities present in secularized societies, as the young Joseph Ratzinger had already prefigured over half a century ago.”

Nothing, in short, would lead one to suppose that Francis’s successor could be a Hollerich or anyone else in the papal circle. The Sino-Filipino cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, repeatedly indicated as a papabile, has also been out of the game for some time, having fallen into disgrace with Bergoglio himself.

But it is above all the confused “processes” set in motion by the current pontiff, with the consequent growing doctrinal and practical disorder, that are undermining the election of a successor who would wish to proceed along the same path.

The botched reform of the curia, laid bare in the trial over the London deal gone bad, which is making it ever clearer by the day that the pope knew everything and approved everything, and the pileup of failures in international politics, from Russia to Nicaragua to China – which in recent days has even imposed “its” new bishop in Shanghai without so much as consulting Rome, in defiance of the much-vaunted agreement – these too are part of this disorder, inexorably destined to bring about, when the change in the pontificate arrives, the desire to mark a decisive turning point among a very broad swath of the college of cardinals, including the many appointed by Francis.

Just as bristling and criticism are brought forth by the hollow jokes made in dealing with the scourge of sexual abuse: from the case of the Jesuit Marko Ivan Rupnik, whom the pope is still protecting despite the extreme gravity of the facts ascertained, to the resignation from the commission for the prevention of these crimes by another Jesuit, Hans Zollner, a key man of this commission that Francis wanted and created, yet is unhappy with because of how it works.

Against the background of this confusion there had been an upswing, on the shortlist of possible successors, of the candidacy of Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian episcopal conference.

He was seen as the man capable of continuing the journey Francis has begun in a form more amicable and orderly, less monocratic and without the continuous alternation of openings and closings that characterizes the current pontificate. Moreover, in the forward march to the conclave Zuppi can count on the formidable lobby of the Community of Sant’Egidio, of which he is a historic member. With shrewdness, both he and the Community have always avoided taking clear-cut positions on controversial issues like homosexuality, married clergy, women priests, democracy in the Church, the war in Ukraine, with the effect of garnering some consensus even among the more moderate cardinals. The founder and undisputed head of the Community, Andrea Riccardi, a Church historian, also takes care not to formulate solely positive judgments on the pontificate and person of Bergoglio.

Recently, however, Zuppi’s talkativeness – expressed in a deluge of interviews in imitation of the even more talkative Francis – has made ever more plain the ambiguity in which he floats. He abounds in words, but on divisive issues he grows vague. Some have compared him with Zelig, the chameleonic character invented by Woody Allen, applauded by all without ever troubling anyone. Too puny to bind and loose, on earth as in heaven.