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Miami Herald
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Cardinals attend Mass ahead of secretive conclave in Sistine Chapel
World Cardinals attend Mass ahead of secretive conclave in Sistine Chapel ROME - More than 130 cardinals from around the world gathered in the Vatican on Wednesday morning for the last major Mass before the election of the new pope begins. The Mass, known by its Latin title "Pro eligendo romano pontefice" ("For the election of the Roman pontiff), in St Peter's Basilica was led by the dean of the College of Cardinals, the Italian Giovanni Battista Re. Re, 91, said they had gathered to ask for the Holy Spirit's assistance in the election. He reminded the cardinals eligible to vote - all dressed in red - of the "exceptional importance" of their choice. "This is a human act for which every personal consideration must be set aside, keeping in mind and heart only the God of Jesus Christ and the good of the Church and of humanity," he said. Re will not participate in the conclave itself, which begins in the afternoon, as only cardinals under the age of 80 are allowed to vote. The decision on the successor to pope Francis, who passed away on Easter Monday, lies in the hands of 133 eligible cardinals, who will gather in the Sistine Chapel, strictly isolated from the outside world. The electoral body is larger and more international than ever before, and must reach a two-thirds majority to elect the 267th pontiff in two millennia of Church history. He will lead the estimated 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide. Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, 70, who holds the second highest rank in the Catholic Church, is to lead the conclave. The media and bookmakers consider him to be the favourite, though the list of potential successors to Francis have been growing longer by the day. The cardinals are expected to hold the first ballot in the afternoon. Probably around 7 pm (1700 GMT), smoke will rise from the chimney on the Sistine Chapel's roof. It is expected to be black - indicating no candidate has been successful - as a quick decision is not anticipated. When a new pope has been chosen, white smoke will rise from the chimney. Many observers expect there to be a new pope this week as all conclaves since the 1960s have produced a decision within two or three days. However, Francis appointed many new cardinals from across the world, meaning many of the electors do not yet know each other well. The former prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, told dpa that he had his suitcase packed for "five or six days." "You have to be prepared," said the 77-year-old. "But everyone hopes, of course, that it won't take that long. Everyone wants to go home." The cardinals are staying in the Vatican guesthouse, Saint Martha's House, and an older annex. Once they have walked in solemn procession to the Sistine Chapel, they must swear an oath to God under Michelangelo's ceiling paintings that they will observe the utmost secrecy and the ban on any outside contact. With the Latin words "extra omnes!" (everybody out), the door closes and the election process begins. ------------- Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers. This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 9:18 AM.
L'Orient-Le Jour
04-05-2025
- L'Orient-Le Jour
Mansour Labaky's media comeback attempt
He was expected to retreat in silence. Instead, Mansour Labaky — a defrocked Maronite priest — has reemerged in recent weeks, breaking a long silence with a filmed interview in which he admitted to making 'many mistakes' but insisted he 'never committed any crime.'Labaky, defrocked by Pope Francis and the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in September 2022, had largely vanished from public view. But in recent weeks, several interviews, glowing profiles, and expressions of support in Lebanese media have prompted concern among victims and church officials, raising fears of a rehabilitation first of these appearances aired March 23 in a multipart Facebook interview conducted by journalist Ildico Elia of Radio Liban Libre, a station affiliated with the Lebanese Forces. In five episodes, each more than 40...
Irish Independent
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
David Quinn: The Pope was not a ‘liberal', nor was he a ‘conservative' – he was, in fact, a Catholic
Francis was seen as being opposed to strict doctrine. How much of that is true? Often, there is the image of a Pope on the one hand, and the reality on the other. Take Benedict XVI, for example. Even before becoming head of the Catholic Church in 2005, he had a long-established reputation as 'God's Rottweiler', or the 'Panzer-Kardinal'. This is because he was German and, for years under John Paul II, was the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is basically the church's doctrinal watchdog.
San Francisco Chronicle
24-04-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Why I'll remember Pope Francis as my — imperfect — gay ally
Three popes have died in my lifetime, but Pope Francis is the first I will mourn. As a gay man who was raised Catholic (and has the therapy bills to prove it), it was Francis' response to one particularly pointed question in 2013 that floored me. On a flight back from his first official papal trip, he was asked about gay Catholic clergy members by journalists. 'We shouldn't marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society,' Francis told reporters. 'If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?' Those words immediately came to mind when I heard the news of Pope Francis' death on Monday, April 21, at age 88 from a stroke. This might seem like a contradiction, but I was stunned to hear something so loving and Christ-like about gay people coming from the pope. Like many queers, my experience with Catholic leadership had not been positive. For all my love of the music, the art, the mysteries of the saints — plus my Italian American connection to Catholic traditions — when it came to spiritual succor, the message was that gay people like me were 'less than.' It was a message I heard many times: at Mass when the prayers of the faithful asked 'that marriage be protected as between a man and a woman'; when I read about Catholic high schools banning same-sex couples from prom; and through stories of LGBTQ Catholics being denied communion. For all the liberal, inclusive Catholics I'd known in real life — from Jesuits and nuns to laypeople — that same compassion and modernity was not reflected at the top. So when Francis asked, 'Who am I to judge?', it was a seismic shift. Francis' predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, was a torchbearer of the Catholic homophobia I knew. In 2005, he said gay men should not be priests. In 2012, Benedict notoriously claimed that allowing marriage equality would threaten 'the future of humanity.' That same year, he also blessed Rebecca Kadaga, Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament and proponent of the country's 'Kill the Gays' Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Before he was even pope in 1992, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict authored an official Vatican declaration that called homosexuality an 'objective disorder' and a 'tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil.' The declaration said that Catholics must oppose LGBTQ equality and stated that homosexuality is a 'behavior to which no one has any conceivable right.' Prior to Benedict, Pope John Paul II condemned same-sex marriage and in his final book, 2005's 'Memory and Identity,' expressed his opposition to marriage equality. 'It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil … which attempts to pit human rights against the family,' he wrote, in part. Very loving, Holy Father. I wasn't just baptized Catholic, Bravo family tradition meant nine years of parochial school. From kindergarten to the third grade, I had wonderful teachers who instilled in me a love of rituals like saying the rosary, a belief in service and a lifelong fascination with the outsiders and pariahs who went on to become saints and martyrs. But after that, it wasn't Christ's love of the forsaken that defined my experience — it was watching how religion was used as a blunt instrument to persecute. I didn't understand how the church of my beloved Blessed Mother and Saint Bernadette could believe that women didn't deserve to be priests or that women shouldn't make their own decisions about their bodies and reproductive health. Perhaps most definitively, I experienced how that top message of homophobia trickled down to the classroom. This was evident in various ways, whether it was my fellow altar servers calling me a fag (not a word Jesus used) for the way I tied my robe, or the teacher who told my health education class that AIDS was the consequence of the choices gay people made. Admittedly, Pope Francis wasn't the perfect LGBTQ ally. In spite of his relative progressiveness, he said homosexuality was still a sin under Catholic doctrine, and notoriously referred to gay people by slurs on at least two occasions, for which he later apologized. Francis invited transgender people, including transgender sex workers, to the Vatican in 2020 and in 2023, said that trans people can be baptized and become godparents. But he also opposed gender-affirming care for trans people. Likewise, he allowed priests to bless same-sex couples but declared those blessings could not resemble wedding vows. In his 12 years as pontiff, Francis showed he was willing to evolve on issues, regardless of the doctrine of papal infallibility. One of the most important ways I knew this pope was different was through his friendship with Juan Carlos Cruz, a gay man who he met as a survivor of clerical sexual abuse. In 2018, Francis told Cruz: 'God made you like this.' I'm going to borrow an expression from the inclusive Presbyterians I hang out with now on Sundays by stating that I think Francis tried to be a 'Matthew 25' pope. That's the bible verse that states, 'Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'
The Citizen
21-04-2025
- Politics
- The Citizen
Faith foes: Pope Francis's fight with the Catholic right
Francis in 2021 signed a decree limiting the use of the Latin Mass. Pope Francis, who died on Monday aged 88, aroused both fervour and fury within the Church with reforms aimed at opening the doors of a centuries-old institution to the modern-day faithful. Here are the main disputes, which set ultra-conservatives within the Catholic Church against the pope. Latin Mass Francis in 2021 signed a decree limiting the use of the Latin Mass, reversing a more flexible edict from 2007 by his predecessor Benedict XVI. The decision provoked incomprehension and anger among part of the clergy and Catholics attached to the so-called 'Tridentine' Mass – which is conducted entirely in Latin with the priest facing the altar, like the congregation. Some went so far as to accuse him of preventing them from practicing their faith. 'Traitor' cardinals Pope Francis attracted the wrath of several cardinals, the red-hatted prelates who are supposedly his closest collaborators, but also next in command in the hierarchy of the Church. In 2017, Francis spoke out against unnamed 'traitors' who were holding back his institutional reforms. The bad blood was aired in public in 2023, when an Italian journalist named then-recently deceased Australian Cardinal George Pell as the author of an anonymous note attacking Francis. ALSO READ: Pope Francis dies after Easter Sunday appearance In the note, Pell – previously a close advisor to Francis – described the papacy as a 'disaster in many respects' and slammed 'serious failures' of diplomacy, particularly regarding the Ukraine war. The same year, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, former prefect of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published a book in which he railed against Francis's governance. He denounced an influential 'coterie' around Francis, and criticised the pope's 'doctrinal confusion'. Settling of scores Francis had a particularly conflictual relationship with Georg Gaenswein, private secretary to his predecessor Benedict XVI. After Benedict's death in 2022, Gaenswein said Francis had 'broken' the retired pope's heart by limiting the use of the Latin Mass. Francis hit back, saying he regretted that Benedict's death had been 'instrumentalised' by 'people without ethics, who act for partisan ends'. READ MORE: Recovery, resignation, death: Pope Francis scenarios Ousting bishops In a rare move in 2023, Francis ousted US Bishop Joseph Strickland, one of his fiercest enemies, who had accused the pope of being lax on abortion and too open towards homosexuals and divorcees. In 2024, it was the turn of ultra-conservative Italian bishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who accused Francis of 'heresy' and 'tyrannical' behaviour. Vigano, a former ambassador of the Holy See to the United States, was excommunicated – expelled outright – for rejecting the authority of Francis, head of the world's nearly 1.4 billion Catholics. LGBTQ, migrants In 2023, the Vatican published a document which paved the way for blessings for same-sex couples, provoking an outcry in the conservative Catholic world, particularly in Africa and the United States. The wave of criticism forced the Vatican to make a 'clarification' to defend itself from any doctrinal error, while acknowledging it may be 'imprudent' to apply it in certain countries. 'In their opposition to blessings for same-sex couples, the African bishops are criticising what they call European moral decadence or European Catholicism. 'They include the pope in that,' Francois Mabille, director of the Geopolitical Observatory of Religion, told AFP in February 2025. The Argentine also irritated far-right Catholics with his calls for migrants to be given welcome in the Old Continent, with some warning Europe could lose its Christian identity. NOW READ: Pope Francis' hospitalisation fuels speculation about future leadership
