Even before Pope Francis was an Entom bed in a Basilica in Rome on Saturday, the conservative cardinals who felt that their pontificate was a divisive disaster that endangered the traditions of the Church had begun to the police
They have a simple seductive slogan: unity.
It is difficult to imagine a less offensive scream of rally, but in the ears of Francis’s most committed supporters, it sounds like a code to reverse Francis’s most inclusive vision of the novel Catholic Church.
The concerns are a clear sign of the maneuvers of the ideological camps that is alreamy that takes place among the cardinals, since its shared duel gives way to the imminent task of voting for Francisco’s successor in the conclave, which is the fire.
It is likely that discussions prior to the elections touch whether Francis’s successor must advance, or retreat, his openness to guide women as a deacon or make a clergy of married men or offer Catholols Cathols or offering Cathols Catholizs or Divoracator of Divorated Catols or offering that Cathols have fun cathols, problems, problems.
The cardinals have already met in daily meetings behind the walls of the Vatican. Starting the sandals he had with black socks after one of those meetings last week in his book lined with books, a conservative cardinal, Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Germany, said he had the morning making the case of the unit.
The cardinals needed “to seek the unification of the church,” said Cardinal Müller, whom Francis expelled from the main doctrinal position of the Church in 2017. It was necessary to talk about the division of the Church today, “Hey said.
Some progressives within the Church concern that the Didens of the new cardinals that Francis chose worldwide will be less versed in the Vatican and that they can be tasks due to the sweetness of the siren of the unit.
“It sounds really good,” Cardinal Michael Czerny or Canada said, who was one of Francis’s closest advisors, “but” means reversion. “For those who opposed Francis, many of them designated by their predecessor, Benedict XVI, Unity means a” new introversion “with the promise of” the unit solves all our problems, “he said.
“If you ask me,” how would you name the wrong path for the conclave? “I would say that the idea that unity is priority,” said Cardinal Czerny, who under Francis directed the Integral Promotion Human Development Office. “Unity cannot be a priority problem.”
The two cardinals sit at the opposite ends of the ideological division. Those like Cardinal Czerny gave priority to another word: diversity.
“They are the two keywords, diversity and unity, and there is much at stake on the balance between them,” said Reverend Antonio Spadaro, under the secretary of the Vatican Culture and Education Office, which was close to Francis.
Hey, like Francis, he believes that the future of the Church lies in diversity. Francis chose boxes from new cardinals that were formed outside Rome, and he empowers local churches. The trick, said Father Spadaro, was to avoid a “freezing of the church” to maintain unity, while a dispersion and “divided” was directed in the search for diversity or progress for which the Church was not ready.
“Francis maintained this delicate balance and advanced the church,” he said. The next Pope, he said, also “needed to keep both together.”
And that’s why Cardinal Müller said: “We have to talk now.”
It is not a new topic for conservatives. The Church would be seriously weakened, the deeply conservative cardinal Robert Sarah or Guinea said in a 2024 symposium in Kenya, “if we do not strive for unity.”
Duration The Pontificate of Francis, Cardinal Sarah, emerged as central criticism, and Francis stripped him of his official influence on the church liturgy. “If we present ruptures and revolutions, we destroy the unity that governs the Santa Church through the centuries,” said the cardinal in 2019.
But the unit was also essential for Francis’s vision of the Church. He only saw it differently. In 2021, Francis suppressed the celebration of the Latin Mass, adored by Cardinal Sarah and other traditionalists, because Hey argued that it was used by motivated ideological Catholics to undermine the unity of the Church.
That decision only emboldened conservative criticism or Francis as authoritarian. “That is his style, divide,” Cardinal Müller said Thursday in his department. “All dictators are divided.”
When Francis entered the posterior phase of his pontificate, his progressive supporters expected him to begin making concrete changes. Instead, the groups on the unity of the Church seemed to promote it to point out.
When the bishops of remote areas in South America arrived in the Vatican in 2019 for an important meeting desired by Francis, they recreate that, to address a shortage of clergy, the Pope should allow older married Catholic men to become good position.
Francis gave all the indications that the practical solution was what he wanted, but at that time Cardinal Sarah co -authorized a book with the priestly celibacy that reaffirmed the retired Benedict.
The Pope said he needed more to think about it, because the problem “had become ideological poliazing and capable of separating from the church,” said Father Spadaro. He said that Francis had not influenced Benedict, but the conservatives claimed a victory for unity.
In other issues with the potential to divide the Church, even if allowing women to order decisions, a ministerial role, Francis allowed a debate from Taboo, but finally did not make a decision, saying that the problem needed more study. The multitude of the unit again responded a sigh of relief.
And when Francis made an important change, allowing and only promotion, priestly blessings for same -sex couples, was applauded by liberals in Europe and North America. But a great expression of dissent of church leaders in Africa, the place that many see as the future of faith, forced him to go back. For the sake of the unit, Francis exempt Africans for a non -specific time to reach the program, which essentially allowing them to opt for not participating.
Father Spadaro argued that African stature was “a more revolutionary gesture” than the measure of real homosexual blessings, “because it legitimized a pastoral plurality.” It was Francis’s path, he said, or recognizing cultural diversity and differences within a united church.
Cardinal Müller, on the other hand, considered the controversy, and Francis’s efforts so that bishops and laity meet to make decisions, for distractions of the true mission of the Church or defend Italy that tones takterd.
“This agenda with blessings of exual homosexuals, etc., and the female priesthood,” he said, “they are not the great questions for humanity.”
For other cardinals who will vote in the conclave, the unit also matters, but it means something different.
For Cardinal Lázaro, Heung-Sik, the South Korean directed by the department of the Vatican in charge of the clergy, the unit “means, for me, to open the heart,” he said. He said Francis “taught me, I must open my heart to love others.”
And after one of the meetings of the General Assembly this week, Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, who served under Francis as the prefect of the office for Eaastern churches, said he was still too much, since he still discussed real problems. “We have to decide what to put on the table and then discuss it,” he said.
For Cardinal Gugerotti, an Italian who is sometimes mentioned as a possible successor of Francis, or as a creator of kings in the conclave, “the lack of unity is always a disaster.”
But, he said, “it doesn’t mean everyone has to say the same.” He added: “There may be a difference. No opposition, because that is destructive.”
