With six cardinals and Pope Francis visiting next month, William Cash heads to Lisbon to investigate the new special relationship between Portugal and the Vatican.
After climbing up the 110 steep steps to the bell tower of the Basilica do Sagrado Coração de Jesus in Lisbon, consecrated in 1789 after a promise from Queen Maria I of Portugal to build a magnificent baroque church if she conceived an heir, you can stand on the roof and enjoy one of the most spectacular views of the city.
As you look out across the skyline at the facades of the biggest churches in the city, you don’t need binoculars to notice they are draped with enormous green, white and yellow banners with huge images of Pope Francis, heralding his arrival in Portugal to mark World Youth Day Lisbon 2023.
Started by Pope St John Paul II in Rome in 1986, this pilgrimage of faith happens every two or three years in a major global city and is like the Olympics of the Christian world for those aged 16-35. There is a heavily Catholic influence, though the event, strictly speaking, is non-denominational. It ends with the Pope celebrating mass for millions in an outdoor venue. The record is five million people attending WYD in Manila in 1995.
Francis arrives in Lisbon on Wednesday August 2 for a whirlwind visit that will also have another agenda: to cement what appears to be an enduring “special relationship” between the Vatican and Portugal, a bond that could be key to shaping Francis’s legacy as well as heavily influencing the next conclave.
The state-style five-day visit, his second to Portugal, includes an audience with the President of the Republic, a meeting with the Prime Minister at the Apostolic Nunciature, vespers with leading bishops and prelates at the Jerónimos Monastery; a day of meetings and praying the Stations of the Cross with selected young people from around the world in the Parque Eduardo VII. The finale will be a giant outdoor Holy Mass at the Parque Tejo in Lisbon. Not bad for a man who is 86, the oldest living pope for 120 years, and is in declining health after various extended health scares.
Lisbon is now experiencing a form of “Francis Fever”. At Lisbon Cathedral – known locally as the Sé – armed police on motorbikes stand guard outside the stone fortress. Unusually, it was closed on Sunday morning – “preparing for the papal visit”, said a police officer. Outside the 20-feet-high locked doors, I meet a Portuguese family posing for a photo after being disappointed not to attend Sunday Mass. “We love Francis as he is more in touch with the people than other popes,” says the eldest daughter. In her twenties, she will be attending the outdoor Mass on Sunday August 6.
Over 400,000 people have already signed up, with several million youthful pilgrims descending on Lisbon in the next week or so, along with an army of media, church and lay leaders, politicians and religious diplomats. This vast religious circus will be from all backgrounds and countries, staying in pilgrim hostels, campsites and people’s “open” homes. VIP dignitaries, politicos and lay leaders will head to the Lapa Palace Hotel, in the diplomatic quarter – where King Charles III stayed on his last visit.
Some locals are taking an entrepreneurial approach to Francis’s visit. Amando, the manager of an Italian pizzeria whose tables are set in the shade of eucalyptus trees growing beside the cathedral walls – it also happens to be the oldest church in Lisbon – is creating a special new “Papa Francis” pizza for the occasion. “It’s part-mozzarella and part-steak to mark his Italian-Argentine heritage. I am hoping he will try it,” he says.
There is certainly some strong spiritual magnetism that Pope Francis seems to like about Portugal, as indicated by the recent announcement that at the consistory on September 30 the Holy Father is creating yet another Portuguese cardinal, adding to the five existing already. That now makes six Portuguese cardinals, including, aged just 49, one of the youngest in living memory, Américo Aguiar, who also happens to be the prelate in charge of Lisbon’s World Youth Day.
On Sunday morning the front page of the leading Lisbon church newspaper, Voz da Verdade, was splashed with a photo of Bishop Aguiar, auxiliary bishop of Lisbon since 2019, posing for a selfie with a member of staff of Lisbon’s JMJ Foundation – of which he is president. Like Francis, he understands the world of press and is a media professional. He has a master’s degree in Communication Sciences from the Catholic University and is Director of the Communications Department of the Patriarchate of Lisbon.
After hearing news of his 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 Lisbon/Vatican such an important new spiritual axis of his progressive agenda? Of the six cardinals, four (as aged under 80) will be voting in the next conclave – which will decide Francis’s successor. They will make a formidable contingent partly because they are dynamic, clever, social-media savvy and well-liked both in Portugal and elsewhere.
After speaking with various church insiders in Lisbon over the weekend, the feeling is that what Francis especially seems to like about Lisbon 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, albeit 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 Pope recently advancing the canonisation cause of the last peasant child visionary, Sister Lúcia dos Santos, the eldest of the three children who received visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1917. After flying by helicopter from Lisbon to Fátima on Saturday August 5, he will lead a recitation of the Holy Rosary at Fátima’s Chapel of the Apparitions which will attended by sick and disabled pilgrims.
I was at the Sanctuary on Monday and the Information Office was saying that they expected record numbers in the vast, futuristic, sloping modern pilgrimage piazza (one of the largest in the world) with an outdoor altar that sits under the wedding cake-style Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary. It is through such religious theatre that Pope Francis thrives. Making the eldest child a saint would be a hugely popular move and also “good for business”, as the owner of a local café told me.
Whilst in Fátima, I also met Archbishop George Frendo of Tirana-Durres in Albania, who was leading a pilgrimage from Malta and who smiled when I asked how the appointments of the two new Portuguese cardinals would be received in cities like Milan and Paris, which have none. “The Holy Father is very non-conformist. He doesn’t always follow – he prefers to choose people from the outskirts and remote countries,” the archbishop said, as we talked by the basilica.
Of the other Portuguese cardinals, Manuel Clemente was appointed Patriarch of Lisbon by Pope Francis in 2013 – one of his first appointments to such an historic and significant see – and received the traditional associated cardinal’s hat two years alter (although Francis has been ripping up the rule book in this area). António Marto was Bishop of Leiria-Fátima until 2022; Francis made him a cardinal in 2018. José Tolentino Mendonça is 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.
Meanwhile, Manuel Monteiro de Castro was a friend of Benedict XVI. A former nuncio to Spain and in Southern 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 Saraiva 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.
Some Vatican watchers are asking if Francis is embracing the Lisbon axis to the point of favouritism, at the expense of other important Catholic countries: including Poland, France, Italy and America. 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 relationship (under serious strain right now after the Vatican, last November, issued a statement sating that China had violated the terms of the agreement, something that has now been repeated with Archbishop Shen Bin). But it is worth noting that while Francis 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 total. By way of contrast, Mexico, with a Catholic population of 97.8 million, has just two cardinal-electors. Do the math: That means Mexico would get one vote for the next pope for every 48.9 million Catholics, while Portugal would get one for every 1.75 million.”
In fact, as Allen notes, it’s not just with Portuguese nationals that 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 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 see as sticking it to Argentina’s traditional South American nemesis in Brazil.
“The sight of Francis in Lisbon next month, where there will be two resident cardinals plus one in tow from the Vatican, while many European population centres have none, certainly will put an exclamation point on this Spanish-speaking pope’s penchant for Portuguese.”
It’s also worth noting the Jesuit missionary and evangelical tradition of Portuguese Catholicism, dating back to 17th century, 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 Francis himself, whose choices of cardinals have favoured more marginal countries than the traditional European cities).
Pope Francis is meeting fellow Jesuits privately in Lisbon at 6pm on August 5 at the Colegio de S. João de Brito, where a centre is named after the Portuguese martyr responsible for opening up both spiritual and cultural dialogue and trade with India, Manuel da Nobrega SJ, and the evangelist of Brazil Antonio Vierira SJ, another famous missionary. Francis speaks 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 centre for Francis’s New World radical mission – at the expense of cities like Milan, Paris, LA, Naples and even Rome – as Lisbon perfectly fits his outward-facing and populist progressive mission.
In short, Francis the Jesuit seems to see in Lisbon a soft political axis he can perhaps more mould than Italy, Germany or America. It is a religious port that faces out towards the New World in the tradition of Vasco da Gama, the late 15th-century Portuguese Catholic explorer who first discovered India and made the first European link with Asia. Likewise, Francis is keen to pack the College of Cardinals with new faces (such as South Sudan’s Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, Archbishop of Juba) from what he regards as the new frontier of the Catholic Church.
(Photo of Pope Francis speaking to Argentine girls about World Youth Day courtesy of Vatican Media)
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