The Pope Francisco fueled rumors of a near end to his pontificate. The Italian and Catholic media have speculated that Jorge bergoglio, 85 years old, he could be planning to follow in Benedicto’s footsteps, given his growing mobility problems that have forced him to use a wheelchair for the past month. And those rumors picked up steam last week, when Francisco announced a consistory to create 21 new cardinals scheduled for August 27. Sixteen of those cardinals are under 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave to choose Francis’ successor.
Once they are added to the ranks of the princes of the church, Francis will have filled the College of Cardinals with 83 of the 132 cardinals of voting age. While there is no guarantee how the cardinals will vote, the chances that they will elect a successor who shares Francis’s pastoral priorities are increasing.
Y Francis also set that he would organize two days of talks to brief the cardinals on reform in the Vatican bureaucracy. Document that entered into force last Sunday, and allows women to head Vatican offices; imposes term limits; and positions the Holy See as an institution serving the churches, rather than the opposite.
Cycle
Francis was elected Pope in 2013 with the mandate to reform the Roman Curia. Now that the project has been (at least partially) implemented, Francis would consider his task as Pope accomplished.
And when announcing that he would visit the city of L’Aquila, in central Italy, for a party started by Pope Celestine V, one of the few pontiffs to resign before the Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, fuels speculation about the timing.
“With today’s news that @Pontifex will go to L’Aquila in the middle of August’s consistory, everything became even more intriguing,” tweeted the commentator for the Vatican, Robert Mickens.
The basilica of L’Aquila houses the tomb of Celestine V, a hermit pope who resigned after five months in 1294, overwhelmed by work. In 2009, Benedict visited L’Aquila, which had been devastated by a recent earthquake, and prayed at Celestine’s tomb, laying his pallium stole over it.
No one at the time appreciated the gesture. But four years later, Benedict XVI85, would follow in Celestino’s footsteps and resign, ruling that he no longer had the physical and mental strength to continue the rigors of the papacy.
Pope Francis praised Benedict XVI’s decision to withdraw. He called it “opening the door” for future popes to do the same, and he had originally predicted a brief papacy for himself of two to five years.
Closing
Nine years later, Francisco has shown no signs of wanting to resign: he has important projects on the horizon and a travel schedule this year that includes Congo, South Sudan, Canada and Kazakhstan. Added in 2023 to an important meeting of world bishops to discuss the decentralization of the Catholic Church and new reforms.
One of his closest advisers and friends, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga (among the favorites to succeed him), pointed out that talk of the end of Francisco’s pontificate was unfounded.
Christopher Bellito, A church historian at Kean University in New Jersey noted that the Vatican expects Francis to resign, but not before Benedict dies. “Francis doesn’t want two former popes going around,” says Bellitto. And he suggested that the planned visit to L’Aquila can be read as the gesture of Benedict XVI in 2009, the beginning of the end of a cycle that may still be five years away.
