This Monday Pope Francis is celebrating his anniversary. The Pontiff meets 10 years as head of the Church catholic. The former cardinal of Buenos Aires, 86 years old, reaches this date with some ailmentsbut he has resumed his travels and the Vatican breathes some optimism. Jorge Mario Bergoglio seems to have overcome the physical decline that he showed last year when he had to cancel some trips due to knee problems. Another reason for the Pope’s good spirits is that his reforms continue to take steps forward. Just a few days ago he renewed the C9, the council of cardinals that advises him, one of the great novelties of his pontificate, and the work of the World Synod of Bishops.
In particular, this last initiative, which was launched in 2022, may lead to one of the major changes in the Churcheven from a structural point of view, since it has been articulated with principles of horizontal democracy. The objective is to reach a great reform in 2024, after two years in which all the episcopal conferences of the world have been discussing simultaneously and directly ‘in situ’ –that is, even in the most remote corners of the planet – on the problems that they consider pressing within the Church. The idea is that the final meeting is a synthesis of everything that each diocese has previously discussed.
reviews off
But another indication that the Pontiff is enjoying a good moment is that he seems to have gotten over his disgust at the attacks from the conservative sector in January, after the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Even the former secretary of the late German pope, Georg Gänsweinwho after Benedict’s death launched fierce criticism of Francis for the Argentine’s decision to limit masses in Latin, has finally intoned a kind of ‘mea culpa’ and has apologized.
“Am Faithful and loyal: He is the Pope of the Catholic Church and the successor of Peter, as I have been faithful to all his predecessors,” said Gänswein, in an interview on an Italian television program. Gänswein also said that his aim was not to create wars within the clergy. “My only objective was to clarify points where there were many problems,” said the German prelate.
Actually, the conservative sector is something lately touched. In addition to Benedict XVI, he has also recently lost another of his great spokesmen, Cardinal George Pell, who passed away suddenly in January. Pell, who was also in jail for a pedophilia accusation of which he was later acquitted, came to describe as a “catastrophe & rdquor; the papacy of Francis. The worst thing was that these statements surfaced after the death of the Australian, whom a Vaticanist identified as the author of an acid note in which they lamented some openings by the current Pope. Among them, their positions about gays and the spaces that women should occupy in the Church.
On this issue, the Pope has also promoted steps forward throughout this decade. As reported this week by the Holy See press office, the number of women working inside the Vatican has gone from 846 in 2013 to 1,165 in 2023, 23% of the total. That being said, women still have a long way to go: they are not allowed to vote in many of the most important forums of the Church and their attributions are very far from those of the priests.
Ambiguity
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However, the Pope himself has maintained a pragmatic but not too modern position on many of these issues. At the end of January, Francisco affirmed that being homosexual “it is not a crime (…) but it is sin”. And he said the same about sexual acts outside of marriage, which he also considered “sins”. allow the possibility that the priests can marry as in other Christian denominations.
All these openings are rejected by American clergy, one of the richest within the Catholic Church, in a struggle in which Germany is at the opposite pole. There the request is that the groundbreaking reforms that Francisco promised and that, in this decade, have not yet been seen, as the most progressive analysts insistently recall. Many of them understand that, in the midst of these fights, it will be difficult for this pontificate to end with any far-reaching reform. only time will tell who is right