Posted on 06/20/2022 3:19:35 PM PDT by ebb tide
Pope Francis is furious with those who are lumping him together with Putin. “Slanderers” and “coprophiles” is what he called them in a handwritten letter to an Argentine journalist friend of his. But then, on receiving at Santa Marta on June 8th a trio of Ukrainians presented to him by another Argentine friend of his (see photo), he took flak from one of them too, Myroslav Marynovych, vice-rector of the Catholic University of Lviv, to the effect that yes, “in the Vatican Ukraine has been seen for too long through the Russian prism.” Finding this time in the pope “an attentive listener” and an understanding one, even ready to admit - a key point he has almost always skirted - that the Ukrainian people “have the right to self-defense,” because “otherwise what happens could resemble suicide.”
The trouble is that, when he speaks, Francis’s mouth runs away with him. With the consequences that follow. Again in the conversation on June 8 with the three Ukrainians he was asked to clarify whether there really cannot be a “just” war, as he has said several times, contrary to what is written in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. To which the pope replied that he had “already instructed several cardinals to investigate this topic,” with one of his many personal decisions, even disruptive, made without consulting anyone or even giving notification.
On the war in Ukraine, every time Francis speaks freely, in the secretariat of state they break out in a cold sweat. The same day, June 14, on which Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for relations with states of the Holy See, reiterated that “we must resist the temptation to compromise on Ukraine’s territorial integrity” - as contrary as can be to the claims of Moscow - the magazine of the Rome Jesuits “La Civiltà Cattolica” made public the transcript of a conversation the pope had with the editors of this and other European magazines of the Society of Jesus, in which Francis went back once again to arguing that “this war was perhaps in some way either provoked or not prevented.” And by whom? By NATO with its “barking at Russia’s gates.”
In relation to his memorable interview in “Corriere della Sera” of May 3 in which he launched this zoomorphic image for the first time, this other time the pope revealed, without giving his name, from whom he had got the image, presumably the Social Democrat president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor, received in audience last February 7:
“A couple of months before the start of the war I met a head of state, a wise man, who speaks little, really very wise. And after he talked about the things he wanted to talk about, he told me he was very worried about how NATO was proceeding. I asked him why, and he replied: ‘They are barking at Russia’s gates. And they don’t understand that the Russians are imperial and don’t allow any foreign power to get close to them.’ He concluded: ‘The situation could lead to war.’ This was his opinion. The war began on February 24. That head of state was able to read the signs of what was happening.”
On this thesis of the pope’s, the major archbishop of the Greek-Catholics of Ukraine, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, is in complete disagreement. On June 15, in his daily message to the faithful, he said that “anyone who may think that some external cause provoked Russia’s military aggression is in the grip of Russian propaganda or is simply intentionally deceiving the world.”
But in Moscow they’re having a field day bending the pope to their own interests, as Alexei Paramonov, director of the European affairs department of the Russian foreign ministry, did for example on June 13, with a nebulous declaration of willingness to dialogue on “humanitarian issues.” In reality, Putin does not even take calls from Francis, who however hopes, at least, to meet his “altar boy” Kirill, the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow, “in Kazakhstan in September.”
Had the war not broken out, the meeting with Kirill was to have been held in mid-June in Jerusalem, at the end of a trip by the pope to Lebanon which was also canceled.
But the trip to Kazakhstan is also in doubt, like the one to Canada still on the schedule for the end of July. On account of the same health reasons that led to the cancellation “in extremis” of the early July trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, to the keen disappointment of the pope, who up to the very the end had persisted in disobeying the doctors who are treating him.
His ailments have rekindled the rumors of a not too distant conclave. Which Francis himself is pursuing, with the breathless rhythm of his days, with his incessant challenge to his physical limits, with his reckless risking of sudden death on the front lines, crushed by his own frenzy for saying and doing everything, on his own terms, without respite.
On example of this uncontrollable frenzy of his is that on the same day, June 13, on which a Vatican communiqué informed that for health reasons neither Mass nor the Corpus Domini procession would be celebrated with him, Francis announced that he wanted to celebrate Mass “with the Congolese community of Rome” on Sunday July 3, “the day I should have celebrated it in Kinshasa.”
Even in those areas that as a rule should enjoy their own sovereignty, Francis loves to meddle and command. This is the case of the Order of Malta, where the pope has appropriated for himself and his lieutenant Cardinal Silvano Tomasi practically everything, including the appointment, on June 13, of the new Lieutenant of the Grand Master in replacement of his prematurely deceased predecessor. In the decree of appointment, in a sort of “excusatio non petita,” three previous similar appointments by popes are mentioned, in 1803, 1834, and 1879, evidently the only three of this anomalous type found in centuries of the Order’s history.
Completely on his own terms, almost always without any forewarning even for those directly concerned, are also the appointments that Francis is entitled to in full, “in primis” those of the new cardinals. Those chosen almost always hear about it on live television, when the pope lists their names after the Angelus or the Regina Caeli. And each time the occupants of historically cardinalate sees find themselves left high and dry. In the last century Milan and Venice have given the Church five popes, but in the conclave that will elect Francis’s successor their bishops will not be there.
But it also happens that someone promoted unawares to the cardinalate by Francis declines. As the Belgian Lucas Van Looy, 81, bishop emeritus of Ghent, did last June 16, declaring himself unworthy of the purple for having in the past covered up abuses committed by priests of his diocese: a fault that the pope had evidently not investigated.
In addition to the appointments, there are also the dismissals, carried out or even just threatened, always as his fancy suits him. In his conversation with the editors of the magazines of the Society of Jesus, here is how Francis explained what he is concocting for the troubled diocese of Cologne and for its cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, aged 66 and therefore quite a way off from retirement:
“I asked the archbishop to go away for six months so that things would calm down and I could see clearly. When he came back, I asked him to write a letter of resignation. He did so and gave it to me. I left him at his post to see what would happen, but I have his resignation in hand.”
And Francis also continues to have “in hand” a large number of promotions, dismissals, transfers of the much vaunted reform of the Roman curia that went into effect on Pentecost Sunday and that the college of cardinals was for the first time called to discuss at the end of August, after the fact.
In the absence of transitional norms, a substantial rank of leaders of the old congregations are now as if suspended in the void, no one knows in what role. While it is not clear who is in charge in the new dicasteries that have taken their place.
One example that serves for all is that of the newborn dicastery of evangelization, which incorporates the extinct congregation “de propaganda fide” and the likewise extinct pontifical council for the new evangelization.
The prefect of the new dicastery is the pope. While the heads of the two organisms merged into it would be the pro-prefects, at least temporarily. But the days go by, and neither Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle nor Archbishop Rino Fisichella has so far received any confirmation of his new role, after having lost the old one.
On the flip side is the case of Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell. In addition to being chamberlain, a key position in the interregnum between one pope and another, and confirmed as prefect of the dicastery for the laity, family and life, he is now also president of the new committee for financial investments, official news of the creation of which was given on June 7 with a wholly unusual formula: “There has been instituted ... It is made up of ...,” curiously keeping silent about the subject of these acts, the pope.
As for the diplomatic apparatus of the Holy See, here too the flaws are conspicuous. There is a shortage of candidates and by now there are seventeen vacant nunciatures, including significant ones: Bosnia-Herzegovina, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Ireland, Liberia, Malta, Mexico, Nicaragua, Netherlands, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, the European Union, Venezuela.
And the post of the “ad interim” charge d’affaires in Taiwan is also empty, a role known to be unpalatable for the Beijing authorities, with whom the renewal of the “provisional and secret” agreement for the appointment of bishops in China hangs in the balance, an agreement with which even cardinal secretary of state Pietro Parolin said he was dissatisfied.
In short, at the sunset of this pontificate there is great confusion under heaven, all the greater the more Francis centralizes all powers in himself, as if moved by the irrepressible anxiety to do on his own what the incapable “institution” is not doing.
To an Argentine priest friend of his whom he met with at Santa Marta in recent days, the pope confided that he is reading the last book of the late cardinal and Jesuit Carlo Maria Martini, “Night conversations in Jerusalem,” and fully subscribes to the thesis: “The Church is 200 years behind the times.”
Francis’s anxiety is to close by himself, in his few years as pope, this two-century gap of backwardness in the Church. With the effects that are plain for all to see.
There has been no pope in history who has had such a filthy mouth (and mind).
Ping
Can’t understand Comrade Pope’s anger!
Indeed. At least in modern recorded history. The “coprophilia” insult has been attributed to him so many times and in so many different contexts that one must assume that it’s part of the man’s daily vocabulary... which is weird... very weird. I know some people with salty vocabularies, but I don’t know anyone who throws around the “s—t eating” thing with the regularity of Bergoglio. Very weird and very sick. It was not for nothing that this man was under regular psychiatric care in the ‘70s.
I don’t believe I have ever called anyone a “coprophile” ... not even Frankie. There’s something very strange going on with him.
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