In March 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio or Argentina spoke a speech of approximately four minutes in one of the closed meetings in the Vatican before the conclave to choose the next Pope. The brief comments, imagining a church that came out of its insular comfort zones and self -referential habits, were great.
When the cardinals voted in the Sistine Chapel days later, they chose him to lead the way to follow, and he emerged as Pope Francis.
On Monday, after hundreds of thousands of faithful arrived at the funeral and burial of Francis during the weekend, the cardinals will begin a critical week of such meetings, where the leaders of the Church, including those who consider the Papilli or the material of the Pope, will give letter statements. These meetings were the day after Francis’s death, but now they accumulate in intensity, becoming a brief campaign path that leads to the conclave next month.
They give the cardinals, so special to those under 80 years of age, who can vote in the conclave, the opportunity to feel and measure priorities, agendas and charisma. Meetings, the so -called general congregations are also a forum for possible calls. The first rule of the papal campaign is that there is no papal campaign. In other words, self -aggrandizement and transparent policy are taboo in the non -campaign campaign.
Or, as Vatican experts like to say: whoever enters the conclave as Pope leaves a cardinal.
Not always, thought. In 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Dean of the Faculty of Cardinals, gave a Humdinger of a funeral home for Pope John Paul II; He denounced “a dictatorship of relativism,” then entered the balcony with impulse and emergency.
In this case, the homily at Francis’s funeral on Saturday was delivered by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the current dean of the Faculty of Cardinals, who at 91 cannot vote in the conclave and is not a plausible election. Even so, the time to put your thumb on the scale, pointing to the huge crowds attracted by the charism and vision of the Francis church.
“He was also an attentive Pope to the signs of time,” said Cardinal Re, “and what the Holy Spirit was waking up in the Church.”
Francis did not have such a stellar platform for a stump speech. Instead, he impressed his classmates with his humiliation and the incisiveness of his comments in the general congregations. “A natural homo politician,” said Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Vatican and an assistant close to Francis, in a recent interview when referring to his political skills, even on the world scenario. “Hello, he likes politics. He’s no stranger to him.”
This year’s conclave could begin as soon as May 6, and the challenge for possible candidates who go to this week’s meetings is to be an expert as Francis to win the support without seeing that he saw it. They also need to find the right message for the moment, about whether to follow, reverse or jump in front of Francis’s steps. Many of the cardinals who cast votes were appointed by Francis in remote countries: “The peripheries,” he called them, that they do not have the high -ranking prateles. Some experts in the Vatican said they could have large candidates, such as Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle de Filipinas, which is sometimes called “Francisco Asian.”
There are many other contestants, including some that are more progressive and that are more conservative.
Anyway, the most daddabling cardinals are usually low, allowing the creators of allied kings to do dirty work, but cannot step so gently that they do not leave a brand.
On Sunday, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was the second in the command of Francis and is seen by many in the Vatican as a strong candidate, cools a homily in the Plaza de San Pedro to about 20000 in a special mass for young people. But dozens of cardinal voters were also there.
Hi, Francis’s admirer spoke. “We must welcome your legacy and make it part of our lives,” he said.
Cardinal Parolin knows the world well at a time when it is in flow. He also knows many of the cardinal voters and implemented Francis’s vision, but is seen as more measured, which could be friendlier with a big more moderate block or voters. And he is Italian, a potential aid, there is a feeling that Italian cardinals, and some other Europeans, would like a break from peripheries. A man from the Vatican, the Parolin Cardinal is also seen as much less hostile than Francis to the Curia, the Roman bureaucracy directed by the Church.
The young people of the crowd at Sunday’s special mass were less interested in the internal functioning of the Vatican than in having a Pope to inspire them.
“More inclusion,” said Lara Cappuccelli, 19, from the Piedmont region of Italy.
On Sunday, journalists asked the Vatican spokesman when the conclave could begin. He said he didn’t know.
That is also something that will be decided only by general congregations.
