“The choices of Pope Francis have encountered strong resistances and were weakened by the limits of his personality”

INnovant and promising in the first years, François's pontificate turned out over time disappointing and steeped in contradictions. His governance has left something to be desired, just like those of his predecessors, Benoît XVI and John Paul II, but for opposite reasons. The German and Polish popes had delegated their power to employees, mostly Italians concerned about their own interests. On the other hand, François, this Argentinian Jesuit seduced by peronism, ruled alone, in an autocratic style.

Hostile to the Roman Curia, the Sovereign Pontiff, for example, emptied of his power and deprived of his financial autonomy, the secretary of state, however very high placed in the Vatican hierarchy: it was a central element of the reform wanted by Paul VI shortly after Vatican Council II, in the early 1960s.

The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is preparing in 2001, when John Paul II created the Cardinal. In Buenos Aires, the journalists then asked him “What should be, to [son] Notice, the profile of the new pope “as Pope Francis said in the book-entrance El Pastor [non-traduit, 2023] Angela Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin, confirming that his campaign had started at that time. And to continue: “I answered them with confidence: a pastor. At that time, it was difficult to imagine that, twelve years later, it would be me this pastor. »»

Often ineffective decisions

During the very brief conclave in 2005, Cardinal Bergoglio had already collected several voices despite the opposition of his influential Jesuit colleague Carlo Maria Martini who, probably, voted for Joseph Ratzinger, future Benoît XVI, and made him elect. The 2013 conclave was just as short. The Italians expected to see Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan elected. The renunciation of Benoît XVI revealed the crisis situation in which the central government of the Church was in which. The calls for reform during the general meetings in which all the cardinals participated, even those who were not allowed to vote because they had spent the age of 80, were just as clear.

You have 64.45% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.