Cardinals who elect a new pope must ask themselves fundamental questions, beyond the question of whether to give the Catholic Church its first Asian or African pontiff, or a conservative or a progressive.
Although they come from 70 different countries, the 133 cardinals seem fundamentally united to find a pope capable of making the church of 2,000 years credible and relevant today, in particular with young people.
The task is difficult, given the sexual abuse and financial scandals which tarnished the reputation of the Church, as well as the secularizing trends which, in many regions of the world, divert people from organized religions.
If we add to this the disastrous financial situation of the Holy See and an often dysfunctional bureaucracy, the task of being Pope in the 21st century seems almost impossible.
“We need a superman!” said Cardinal William Seng Chye Goh, a 67 -year -old Singapore archbishop.
The cardinals will begin to find him on Wednesday afternoon, when these “princes of the church” are solemnly entering the Sistine chapel to the sound of the meditative song of the “Litanies of the Saints”. They will take an oath of discretion under the intimidating vision of paradise and hell of the “last judgment” of Michelangelo, will listen to a meditation of a high-ranking cardinal, then will vote for the first time.
If no candidate obtains the majority of two -thirds necessary, or 89 votes, the cardinals will retire for the day and will return on Thursday. They will carry out two rounds in the morning, then two in the afternoon, until a winner is appointed.
Asked about the priorities of cardinals voters, Goh told journalists this week that the priority was that the new Pope was able to disseminate the Catholic faith and to “make the church relevant to our time. How to reach young people, how to show a face full of love, joy and hope? ”
A Pope for the future
But beyond that, we must take into account concrete geopolitical concerns. The Catholic Church is developing in Africa and Asia, both in number of faithful baptized and vocations in female priesthood and religious orders. It shrinks in the traditionally Catholic bastions of Europe, with empty churches and faithful officially leaving the Church in countries like Germany, many invoking the scandals of sexual abuse.
“Asia is ripe for evangelization and harvesting of vocations,” said Reverend Robert Reyes, former Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle seminar, a Philippin prelate considered as a candidate for the title of first Asian pope.
But must the Pope necessarily reflect the new face of the Catholic Church and inspire the faithful, especially in the world regions where growth is already started? Is it really important?
Pope Francis was the first Latin American pope, and this region still has the majority of Catholics in the world.
Indian cardinal Oswald Gracias, retired archbishop of Mumbai, said that the Church should become more Asian, culturally and spiritually.
-The “center of gravity of the world moves to Asia,” he said. “The Asian Church has a lot to bring to the world. »»
At 80, Gracias will not participate in the conclave, but India has four cardinals voters and Asia has 23, which makes it the second most important electoral block after Europe, which has 53 (or probably 52, since one of them should not participate for health reasons).
One of the main geopolitical issues facing cardinals is China and the critical situation of the 12 million Chinese Catholics who live there.
Under François, the Vatican signed in 2018 a controversial agreement with Beijing governing the appointment of bishops, which many conservatives denounced as a betrayal of the illegal Chinese Catholics, which remained loyal to Rome for decades of communist persecution. The Vatican defended this agreement as the best possible agreement, but it remains to be seen whether François’s successor will maintain this policy.
Church in Africa
According to the Vatican statistics, Catholics represent 3.3 % of the population in Asia, but their number is growing, especially among the seminarians, as in Africa, where Catholics represent around 20 % of the population. Catholics represent 64 % of the population of the Americas, 40 % of the European population and 26 % of the Oceanian population, according to the Vatican statistics of 2023, last year available.
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo, said that he was in Rome to elect a Pope for the 1.4 billion Catholics in the world.
“I am not here for the Congo, I am not here for Africa, I am here for the Universal Church. This is our concern, the Universal Church, “he told journalists. “When we finish, I will return to Kinshasa and I will put my archbishop’s hat from Kinshasa and the cross.
Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, the talkative archbishop of Algiers, in Algeria, of French origin, deplored last week the lack of time available to the cardinals to get to know, many of them never having met before and from 70 countries, participating in the most geographically diversified conclave in history.
This week, however, he said that all applications were possible.
“This is what I call an artichoke heart,” he said. “Every day, I say to myself:” Ah! Oh my God! That’s it! “
The role of the Holy Spirit
The cardinals also believe they are guided by the Holy Spirit.
A famous quotation attributed to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the time in 1997, in a declaration to a Bavarian television channel, said that the future Pope Benedict XVI claimed that the Holy Spirit acted as a good educator during a conclave, allowing the cardinals to freely choose a pope without dictating the specific candidate.
“The only guarantee it offers is probably that the thing cannot be completely ruined,” said Ratzinger. “There are too many contrary examples of popes that the Holy Spirit would obviously not have chosen. »»
