Twelve years after being elected Pontiff in 2013, Pope Francis remains very controversial, with his leftist ideas alienating the conservatives both inside the Church and in the wider field of Catholic faithful.
He is regarded as having packed the College of Cardinals with men with his own political pedigree to ensure that the next head of the Church would be a leftist like him.
As he suffers from double pneumonia, acute respiratory difficulties, and partial kidney failure, choosing a successor is a task that may have to be faced soon.
Out of 138 Cardinals eligible to vote for the next Pope – under the age of 80 – no less than 110 were appointed by Pope Francis – about 80 percent.
The Telegraph reported:
“’With his appointments, he wants to ensure a process that produces a Pope that the Church needs for these times’, said Austen Ivereigh, who is close to Pope Francis and wrote a biography of him, titled The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope. ‘He wants the College of Cardinals to confront the realities of the world. He has named people who will bring to the discussion about the future Pope the voice of migrants, of the poor, of the victims of war’.”
With so many members of the College of Cardinals appointed by him, ‘progressives’ are expected to easily have the numbers to overcome the conservatives, although some say that the Cardinals are ‘highly intelligent people who think for themselves.’
While Pope Francis is still alive, with his condition reportedly getting better, it hasn’t stopped the intense speculation over who will emerge as the next Pope.
“’It is appalling that priests, bishops and cardinals should be thinking of and working towards the next conclave”’ while the Pope is still alive, said Jean-Claude Hollerich, a cardinal and the archbishop of Luxembourg. ‘The Pope has said on several occasions that he doesn’t want people indulging in calculations and conjecture while he is still alive’, he told La Stampa newspaper on Monday. ‘I find it deeply disrespectful that there are people who are worrying more about the future of the Church than the Bishop of Rome (as the Pope is also known)’.”
Vatican insiders say Francis told the doctors to tell the truth about his situation, with medical bulletins saying exactly what is happening.
One of the Pope’s harshest critics says that speculation over who might succeed him was inappropriate, while he still lived.
“’Now is the moment to pray, not to think about his successor’, Gerhard Ludwig Muller, a German cardinal and conservative theologian, told Corriere della Sera newspaper. ‘If there are people who are thinking of the future while Francis is in hospital that is not good, not good at all. We must pray for him. We don’t know when or how, but everyone will die. The Pope has a special task, but he is a man, like all other men’.”
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, is one of the cardinals being described as a contender to become the next Pope.
“Liberals within the Church are big fans of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, a 67-year-old cardinal from the Philippines. Dubbed ‘the Asian Francis’ for his good humor and progressive views on issues such as homosexuality and divorced Catholics who remarry, if elected he would be the first Asian pope. Unlike in the West, where secularism is on the rise, Catholicism is booming in many parts of Asia. ‘He’s a frontrunner and he would represent continuity’, said a Vatican observer. ‘But there’s a question mark over whether he would have the backbone, the spine, for the governance of the Church’.”
Another name that has emerged just this week is that of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a 59-year-old Franciscan and the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. He is Italian but has broad experience of the wider world, having spent decades in the Middle East. He speaks Italian, Hebrew and English, and could be expected to continue the legacy of Pope Francis.”
Read more:
Pope Francis Remains in Critical State, Now Presenting ‘Mild’ Kidney Failure
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