Pope Francis appointed nearly 80 per cent of the cardinal electors who will choose the next pope, increasing, but not guaranteeing, the possibility that his successor will continue his progressive policies.
Some Vatican experts have predicted a more moderate, less divisive successor.
His inability to help bring an end to the war in Ukraine was a great disappointment.
From the day of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, he made appeals for peace at nearly every public appearance, at least twice a week.
Pope Francis changed the face of the modern papacy more than any predecessor by shunning much of its pomp and privilege.
But it is also true that his attempts to make the Catholic Church more inclusive and less judgmental made him an enemy to conservatives nostalgic for a traditional past.
Francis brought the Catholic Church’s dialogue with Islam to new heights in 2019 by becoming the first pope to visit the Arabian Peninsula, but conservatives attacked him as a “heretic” for signing a joint document on inter-religious fraternity with Muslim leaders.
A trip to Iraq in March 2021, the first ever by a pope, aimed to solidify better relations with Islam while also paying tribute to the Christians whose two millennia-old communities were devastated by wars and Islamic State.
Francis inherited a deeply divided Church after the resignation in 2013 of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. The conservative-progressive gap became a chasm after Francis, from Argentina, was elected the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.
The polarization was fiercest in the United States, where conservative Catholicism often blended with well-financed right-wing politics and media outlets.
For nearly a decade until Benedict’s death in 2022, there were two men wearing white in the Vatican, causing much confusion among the faithful and leading to calls for written norms on the role of retired popes.
The intensity of conservative animosity to the pope was laid bare in January 2023 when it emerged that the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, a towering figure in the conservative movement and a Benedict ally, was the author of an anonymous memo in 2022 that condemned Francis’ papacy as a “catastrophe”.
The memo amounted to a conservative manifesto of the qualities conservatives will want in the next pope.
Francis was 76 when he was elected to the post and his health was generally good for most of his papacy.
He recovered well from intestinal surgery in 2021 but a year later a nagging knee problem forced him to slow down. He was never keen on exercise and the restriction of a wheelchair and a cane led to a visible increase in his weight.
His inability to help bring an end to the war in Ukraine was a great disappointment. From the day of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, he made appeals for peace at nearly every public appearance, at least twice a week.
The conflict brought relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church to a new low in 2022 when Francis said its Patriarch Kirill, who supported the conflict, should not act like “Putin’s Altar Boy”.
The year 2018 was Francis’ “annus horribilis” — chiefly because of the simmering crisis around Church sex abuse.
It began with a trip to Chile in January, where at first he strongly defended a bishop who had been accused of covering up sexual abuse, testily telling reporters that there was “not a single piece of evidence against him”.
His comments were widely criticised by victims, their advocates and in newspaper editorials throughout Latin America.
ends
No comments:
Post a Comment