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In a few weeks French Pope He is 84 years old and not since today the maneuvers for his succession are agitated behind the scenes. They are not abstract speculations. Authorized people such as the German cardinal Walter Kasper, his great elector in the 2013 conclave, or Father Arturo Sosa general of the Society of Jesus, say this. There is a part of the ecclesiastical world that does not like this Pope, there is an alignment between bishops and cardinals that wants to influence the next conclave and is pressing to avoid the election of a continuator of his line of remodeling of the church, of the Curia, in the very way of understanding the witness of faith in the 21st century.
The reasons that animate the conservative front they are varied and range from theological arguments to political-economic positions. But there is an element of anti-Bergoglio propaganda, which is particularly insidious and relentlessly repeated behind the scenes. After all, Francis would be an “unfinished” pontiff who confuses good Catholics and awakens a greater following among outsiders and outside the Church than among the faithful. Is this really the case?
A recent survey of Ilvo Diamanti reject this propaganda stereotype. If indeed the general consent in Italy to Pope Bergoglio is still high, about 70 percent, things change if the focus is on the “mass people”: the part of faithful who remains attached to the tradition of the Sunday rite and has not interrupted the stable connection with her own parish.
Diamanti asked the question “How much trust do you have in Pope Francis?” to those who go to mass every week or almost every Sunday. And the answer is that 91 percent of practicing Catholics The questioned expressed his “confidence” in Francisco. An even higher percentage of the exceptional consensus (88 percent) that Bergoglio recorded in 2013, the year of his election.
Confidence is a particular word, it reveals an attitude of confidence that goes beyond mere intellectual agreement. It means that you are confident in driving over the ups and downs and even the mistakes that can occur along the way. It means trusting in the direction taken and the sincerity of those who proceed. This is the capital that Francesco seems to have accumulated over the years.
2020 was not an easy year. But there are three crucial factors that in this period they have strengthened the symbolic figure of the Argentine pontiff. The first is related to the ability to spiritual guide, which he managed to cope with when the pandemic of coronavirus, when he denied the vision of the “plague” as God’s judgment, arguing on the contrary that it is time for the men and women of the 21st century (believers or not) to judge what kind of society and coexistence – supportive or not – have the intention to choose (on this subject I recently published a volume Francis, the plague, the rebirth, Editorial Laterza).
The second factor is recent. It’s about the removal of the cardinal Angelo Becciu from the College of Cardinals. Vatican investigators are still struggling to unravel the web of misinvestment and embezzlement, relationships with opaque mediators, family favoritism, secret mission assignments to unlikely figures like Cecilia Marogna, but Bergoglio went straight to the heart of public opinion when he determined that Becciu He did not deserve to sit quietly in the “Senate of the Church.”
It was a break from the long-standing attitude of allowing personalities responsible for highly questionable choices to continue to wear purple at grand ceremonies. This tearpublic opinion I caught it right away.
Even clearer and more shared was Francisco’s third gesture, very recent. The publication of the much more than exhaustive report on the cardinal (also ex, because he was expelled by the pontiff) Theodore McCarrick. Public opinion understood perfectly that Pope Bergoglio was not afraid to expose the responsibilities of John paul ii and his entourage in promoting the highest honors to a bishop who was not worthy and the responsibility of Benedict XVI (as happened with the founder of the Legionaries of Christ Marcial Maciel) by not having opened an ecclesiastical trial against McCarrick.
Lies in this transparency of conduct, in this clarity of line (despite the zigzags that Bergoglio is sometimes forced into by the ongoing civil war in Catholicism), the reason for the capital of trust that Pope Francis seems to have accumulated among Catholics practitioners as well as among many non-believers.
Last Sunday at the Angelus the Argentine pontiff reiterated once again what it means to be “on the side of the sheep.” It’s not about doctrineIt is not about abstract feelings. Very concretely, the Christian will be judged by “compassion that turns into closeness and solidarity. Do I approach the sick, the poor, those who suffer? This is today’s question ”.
Thus, the game of the next conclave becomes more complicated. Indeed, for opponents, it is not simply a question of identifying a candidate who is holding back the line of the Argentine pontiff. It will be about finding a person who will present himself to the world with an equally consistent aura of confidence. And this is not easy.
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