Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
«PWhy aren’t there female cardinals here among us?» asks the protagonist. His name is Guido Baldini, he is a professor of modern history in a French university, and due to a series of misunderstandings, errors and provocations he is elected pope in the conclave of 2013.
He knows nothing about it. He is summoned to the Vatican, with an excuse, on the evening of 12 March. Upon his arrival he is taken to the Sistine Chapel where he is informed of what has happened. it is born a surreal story – told by Gianluca Briguglia in his novel The true story of the election of Pope Francis (Marcianum Press) -, and also funny and full of twists, but less unrealistic than it might seem.
Indeed, a layman can be elected pope, even if he is not a cardinal, even if he is not a priest. One would say: even if he is not a believer. The canons on this do not express themselves.
The important thing is that he is baptized; it’s a boy. A female pope is impossible, even if medieval tradition spoke of a popess Joan. But the same is not true for the cardinals.
“The true story of the election of Pope Francis” by Gianluca Briguglia (Marcianum Press)
“In the next conclave there will be laymen and women” says the protagonist again in one of the most dramatic scenes of the novel. And this, at least in theory, would be possible. Indeed, it has been proposed in the past.
Indeed, the cardinalate is not a sacrament. Rather it is a kind of jurisdiction, a function. Nothing really prevents a woman or a non-priest from becoming a cardinal (it is said that Pope Paul VI wanted to make the great philosopher Jacques Maritain a cardinal).
And in any case nothing prevents a pope from changing the rules on access to certain offices – or on the composition of the conclave – if needed. It would be something extraordinary if one or more women assumed the cardinal’s purple, that is, a role of real power in the Church, an institution “that wants to be a mother, but is in the hands of men without women,” says the protagonist.
And who knows, perhaps in a novel full of prophecies, this of female cardinals (if not really of the lay pope) could one day come true.
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