What happened?
Pope Francis created 14 cardinals in St Peter’s Basilica, telling them that the “highest honour” was to “serve Christ in God’s faithful people”. Credible authority, he said, came from “sitting at the feet of others”, serving those “who are hungry, neglected, imprisoned, sick, suffering, addicted to drugs, cast aside”. The new cardinals came from countries including Pakistan, Madagascar, Iraq and Japan. Three were Vatican churchmen, including doctrinal chief Cardinal Luis Ladaria.
What the vaticanisti are saying
Rocco Palmo, writing at his blog Whispers in the Loggia, said the consistory was a “critical tipping point”, bringing the number of cardinals created by Francis and eligible to vote in a conclave to just shy of half: 59 out of 120. While his predecessors also passed this milestone, Palmo noted, “Francis’s shattering of norms in the identikit of his picks” – in particular, his tendency to avoid elevating the archbishops of major sees – “makes his contributions to the scarlet ranks all the more impactful”. The degree to which the Pope had pressed a “reset button” extending beyond his reign was a “remarkable feat” by itself, he said.
John Allen, writing at the news website Crux, said Francis’s appointments of cardinals had made anticipating the outcome of the next conclave “metaphysically impossible”. While papal elections were rarely predictable, he said, at least in previous years most of the cardinals were known quantities. New prelates from Burkina Faso, Mauritius or Laos were not just unknowns, Allen argued, but “represent cultures and experiences in which the usual issues that preoccupy Western Catholic discussion either don’t count at all, or certainly don’t count for as much”. In Central African Republic, for instance, “tussles over women deacons seem an afterthought” compared with bitter Christian-Muslim violence.
If the 1978 conclave broke the Italian monopoly on the papacy and the 2013 election did the same for the European monopoly, Allen suggested, the next conclave may well break the “monopoly of Western psychology and politics”.
✣Cardinal: faithful Catholics are being ‘pushed out’
What happened?
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Vatican’s former doctrinal chief, told Catholic World Report: “The faithful who take Catholic doctrine seriously are branded as conservative and pushed out of the Church and exposed to the defamation campaign of the … anti-Catholic media.” He was speaking in the context of German calls for wider intercommunion.
Why was it under-reported
Cardinal Müller has become increasingly outspoken since he was forced to step down from his Vatican post last summer. His latest remarks repeat earlier criticism of Germany’s bishops over their efforts to widen the grounds for Protestants to receive Communion. But this time the gloves are off. The cardinal said that, to many bishops, “the truth of revelation … is just one more variable in intra-ecclesial power politics”. They see the secularisation of Europe as “irreversible” and, rather than evangelise, he said, seek to reform doctrines opposed by the mainstream.
What will happen next?
Reconciliation between Cardinal Müller and Germany’s reformist faction is unlikely any time soon. The country’s bishops have said they will press ahead in developing guidance on Communion for Protestants and that they feel “obliged to stride forward in this matter courageously”. Cardinal Müller has no formal job in the Church and seemingly little influence on his German colleagues. His remarks, which represent a new level of dismay, will likely fall on deaf ears.
✣The week ahead
Pope Francis will meet Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs in the Italian city of Bari tomorrow. Together they will venerate the relics of St Nicholas and pray for peace in the Middle East. Russia’s Patriarch Kirill and Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople are both likely to be there. Calls for a self-governing church in Ukraine have led to new tensions within Orthodoxy.
The old Chapel Museum at Stonyhurst, available for group bookings since January, will be open to the general public on certain days throughout the summer starting from Wednesday. Its collection includes the skull of Cardinal Morton (1420-1500).
The Vatican cricket team will play against prisoners and staff at a young offenders’ institute in south-east London on Monday. The St Peter’s Cricket Club, made up of priests and seminarians, is on its fourth tour of England and will also play against a Royal Household team at Windsor Castle. The game at HMP Isis is being organised by chaplain Fr Valentine Erhahon.
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