With its sixth cardinal on the way and a papal visit to Lisbon last month, a new special relationship between Portugal and the Vatican is being forged. William Cash investigates.
For this year’s World Youth Day (WYD) at the start of August, Pope Francis became a spiritual magnet for a million and a half youthful pilgrims who descended on Lisbon as if it were a Catholic Woodstock. The vast religious circus came from all backgrounds and countries, staying in pilgrim hostels, campsites and people’s homes. Dignitaries headed to the Lapa Palace Hotel, in the diplomatic quarter, where King Charles stayed on his last visit to Lisbon. It is apparently more comfortable than the British Embassy.
The Holy Father’s visit to Portugal for WYD, including a flying visit to the shrine of Fátima, also had another agenda: to cement what appears to be an ever-closer “special relationship” between the Vatican and Portugal, a bond that could be key to shaping the Francis legacy as well as heavily influencing the next conclave.
This was confirmed four days after WYD, when the Holy Father announced that although he was making local auxiliary bishop Américo Alves Aguiar a cardinal at the forthcoming consistory on 30 September, he would not be appointing the 49-year-old Aguiar (who organised the WYD events) as Patriarch of Lisbon. Cardinal Manuel Clemente resigned in July, having reached the age of 75; his successor is instead going to be Bishop Rui Valério, 59, the prelate responsible for the Portuguese armed forces and a Montfort Missionary. He will take up the role on 2 September.
This unexpected move seems to be an important signal about the Portuguese hierarchy’s importance to Pope Francis, and its future influence in the Church. As the Jesuit America magazine’s seasoned Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell put it: “It seems clear now… that the Jesuit pope had another plan in mind when he named Bishop Alves Aguiar cardinal; it is likely that he will bring him to Rome and give him a position of high responsibility in the Roman Curia.”
There is a strong spiritual magnetism that Pope Francis seems to like about Portugal. There will soon be six Portuguese cardinals, of whom Aguiar will be one of the youngest in living memory. A week after his appointment, the front page of the Lisbon Church newspaper, Voz da Verdade, was splashed with a photo of Aguiar, posing for a selfie. Like Pope Francis, he understands the world of press and is a media professional. He has a degree in communication sciences from the Catholic University of Portugal and is director of the communications department of the Patriarchate of Lisbon.
After hearing news of his forthcoming elevation, Aguiar, from Leça do Balio, described his appointment as “a tribute to Portuguese youth”. Some might say the role was given as a savvy political thank-you which will ensure Portuguese influence remains strong in the College of Cardinals for another 30 years.
So why is Pope Francis making Vatican-Lisbon such an important new spiritual axis? Of the six cardinals, four (as aged under 80) will be voting in the next conclave, which will choose his successor. They will make a formidable contingent partly because they are dynamic, clever, social media-savvy and well-liked both in Portugal and elsewhere.
According to the Herald’s Special Vatican Correspondent Elise Ann Allen, who was on the papal plane and attended a briefing by Cardinal Clemente, the decision for Portugal to host WYD in 2023 year was indicative of the Pope’s “affinity” for the country. “In recent years, there have been two occasions here in Portugal that are important not only for Portugal, but for the Church,” Clemente said. The first was in 2017, when Pope Francis visited for the centenary of the Fátima apparitions; the second was his choice of Lisbon for WYD 2023 and his personal involvement in the celebrations, which has given him “a broad glimpse of the Portuguese Church and its pastors.”
After speaking with Church insiders on a visit to Lisbon a week before WYD, it seems that what Pope Francis likes about Portugal is that it is an unusual country with a deep religious history, including a strong Jesuit missionary influence. It was neutral in the Second World War (albeit crawling with spies) and its Church leaders today are well placed (if liberal-leaning) to act as “a form of global liaison” between the warring conservative and progressive factions of the Church.
Another element, of course, is the Fátima factor, with the Holy Father recently advancing the canonisation cause of the last child visionary, Sr Lúcia dos Santos. Pope Francis has a close affinity for Fátima clergy. After he canonised the shepherd children Jacinta and Francisco in 2017, he gave a red hat to the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, António Marto. Such quick-fire creation of cardinals is the Francis way.
I visited Fátima shortly before the Pope’s flying visit to the Chapel of the Apparitions on 5 August, where he led a recitation of the Holy Rosary attended by sick and disabled pilgrims. As I walked through the futuristic pilgrimage piazza (one of the largest in the world), giant stadium-style TV screens were being erected on scaffolding. It is on such religious theatre that Pope Francis seems to thrive.
While in Fátima, I also met Archbishop George Frendo OP, formerly the Archbishop of Tiranë-Durrës in Albania, who was leading a pilgrimage from his native Malta and who smiled when I asked how the appointment of yet another Portuguese cardinal would be received in cities like Milan and Paris, which have none. “The Holy Father is very non-conformist. He doesn’t always follow,” the archbishop said, as we talked by the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Of the other Portuguese members of the Sacred College, Manuel Clemente was appointed Patriarch of Lisbon by Pope Francis in 2013 – one of his first appointments to such an historic and significant see. José Mendonça is a “transformative” poet (back in May he spoke on “the Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination” at a conference at the Pontifical Gregorian College in Rome) as well as a political ally of the Pope’s, who attends spiritual retreats with him. He was made Vatican Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church in June 2018 and ordained a bishop a month later: his red hat followed a year after his arrival in Rome. He is now prefect in charge of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, and a rising star (aged just 57) around whom there are whispers of papabile.
Meanwhile, Manuel de Castro was a friend of Benedict XVI. A former nuncio to Spain and in South Africa and the Caribbean, he became Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary (which deals with matters relating to dispensations, etc) and a cardinal in 2012, having been Secretary of the Sacred College since 2009. José Martins goes back even further: he was prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints from 1998 to 2008, and made a cardinal in 2001 by John Paul II. Castro is 85, while Martins is 91 – therefore neither will have a vote when the time comes.
Unsurprisingly, some Vatican watchers are asking if Pope Francis is embracing the Lisbon axis to the point of favouritism, and at the expense of other important Catholic countries, including Poland, France, Italy and the US. Los Angeles, a Catholic melting pot of millions, has been without a cardinal since the retirement of Archbishop Roger Mahony in 2011; he, too, is well past voting age.
Clearly the Vatican-Lisbon relationship is not as murky or politically driven as the Sino-Vatican Pact. But while the Holy Father appears to be pro-Portuguese, he continues to ignore (and thus upset) Church leaders in important European locations which, to the point of being a deliberate snub, have no red hats at all. There are no cardinals of voting age in Ireland, for example.
The rise of Portugal’s stock in the Vatican has not gone unnoticed by Vatican watchers. The Herald’s Special Vatican Correspondent John L Allen Jr observed: “It’s striking that Portugal, with a Catholic population of only seven million, currently has six cardinals. By way of contrast, Mexico, with a Catholic population of 97.8 million, has just two cardinal-electors.” In fact, as Allen notes, it’s not just with Portuguese nationals that Pope Francis has packed the electoral college, but also Portuguese speakers. There are no fewer than 12 Portuguese-speaking cardinal-electors, including six from Brazil and one each from Cape Verde and East Timor.
When asked what Pope Francis’s agenda is in creating this new Portuguese axis in the Vatican, Allen replied: “In part, it may be the reputation of Portuguese-speaking Catholicism for being less stuffy and clerical than its Spanish-language counterpart. Perhaps, too, it’s an Argentine pope not wanting to be seen as sticking it to Argentina’s traditional South American nemesis in Brazil.”
Another factor that seems to appeal to the Holy Father is Portugal’s outward-facing Jesuit missionary tradition dating back to the 17th century, which is inexorably linked to the country’s maritime and trade heritage. Maritime commerce was also a way of spreading the Gospel, with missionaries (often Jesuits) heading off to Asia, Africa and India – much like Pope Francis himself, whose choices of cardinals have favoured more marginal countries than the traditional European cities.
The Pope met with fellow Jesuits privately in Lisbon on 5 August at the Colégio São João de Brito, where a centre is named after Manuel da Nóbrega SJ, the Portuguese martyr responsible for opening up both spiritual and cultural dialogue and trade with India. Pope Francis speaks some Portuguese, and these Portuguese role models, evangelising around the world, fit well with his world vision.
For today, the “recent magisterium” of Pope Francis is part of that Jesuit tradition of reaching out to far-flung and not especially well-represented Catholic pockets of the world. So in a sense, Portugal is becoming a new spiritual focus for his radical mission, at the expense of traditional centres such as Milan, Paris, LA, Naples and even Rome. Lisbon fits his populist and progressive mission perfectly.
Pope Francis the Jesuit seems to see in Lisbon a soft political axis that he can perhaps mould more easily than Italy, Germany or the US. It is a religious port that looks out towards the New World in the tradition of Vasco da Gama, the late-15th-century Portuguese Catholic explorer who set his eyes on the East and forged European links with Asia. Meanwhile, South Korea has been chosen as the host for World Youth Day in 2027.
The maths of the next conclave is also a factor. Pope Francis broke with historical convention, as he has done elsewhere, by not making Manuel Clemente a cardinal until the second consistory after his appointment; normally, the Patriarch of Lisbon would receive a red hat immediately. Although now retired, Cardinal Clemente nevertheless remains a member of the Sacred College and, at 75, he has another five years of being able to vote.
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