Francis - 'Trads want me dead'

Julia has to confess this remark from Pope Francis made her laugh out loud. Why? because in reality no one wishes he was dead; we would settle for a resignation and he could go on living happily ever after, even into the ever after and who knows he might end up with a halo. Bless him from his cotton socks to his remaining hair, and everything in between.

 

The Times (UK) 25/9/21 - Here we go again. (As someone once said, 'It's a wonder I'm not paranoid what with everyone trying to get me'). Is he paranoid?

Gossip may be the lifeblood of the Vatican, but this week the tittle tattle at the tiny city state went into overdrive as insiders all asked the same question: who wants Pope Francis dead?

The speculation was sparked by Francis himself when he responded to a question about his health by quipping: “Still alive, even though some people wanted me to die.”

He made the remarks during a trip to Slovakia where he unloaded with both barrels on the many enemies he has made in Rome. He told a gathering of Jesuits that while he was recovering this summer from colon surgery his foes were plotting who to elect as his replacement.

“I know there were even meetings between prelates who thought the pope’s condition was more serious than the official version,” he said. “They were preparing for the conclave. Patience! Thank God, I’m all right.”

That left Vatican-watchers playing real-life Cluedo, trying to figure out which cardinal or bishop was waiting for Francis in the drawing room with a dagger.

The 84-year-old Argentinian has no shortage of ill-wishers, most notably the American cardinal Raymond Burke, who has become a ring leader for the conservative Catholics who loathe Francis’s tolerance of divorcees and gay people.

In July, they were further incensed when Francis cracked down on the use of the traditional Latin Mass they favour, with one conservative blog stating: “Francis will die, the Latin Mass will live forever.”

Cardinal Raymond Burke, ringleader of the Church’s American conservatives, opposed coronavirus vaccines before ending up on a ventilator with the virus — prompting Francis to remark on the “ironies of life”

Burke has a large axe to grind: Francis removed him from his job at the Vatican court in 2014 after he claimed the Church was like a ship with no rudder.

When the Pope heartily backed coronavirus vaccines, Burke opposed them, hinting that they could be used to inject microchips, before he ended up infected and breathing through a ventilator in the US this summer.

Francis did not name any of his enemies during his chat with the Jesuits, but Burke was clearly on his mind on the plane back to Rome from Slovakia. He told journalists: “Even in the College of Cardinals there are some vaccine negationists. One of them, poor thing, has been hospitalised with the virus. These are the ironies of life.”

But as speculation grew about who Francis believes has it in for him, it was tempered by the belief that this is nothing new.

“As he left to visit the Central African Republic in 2015, I heard Francis was informed that a prelate in the Vatican had said before the trip to another prelate, ‘Ah, well, let’s hope he doesn’t come back’,” said Gerald O’Connell, the Rome correspondent for the US Jesuit magazine, America.


If conservatives are gunning for him, the pope also faces animosity from the legions of Vatican administrators who have been ordered under Francis’s transparency drive to show where Vatican cash is being spent.

More than Cluedo, the addition of the money men to the list of suspects makes the Vatican resemble Knives Out, the 2019 Hollywood whodunnit where almost every single character was a possible killer.


No one has more of a right to be peeved than Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who will stand trial at the Vatican next month accused of pilfering funds and overseeing a disastrous investment in a luxury Chelsea property.

One Vatican watcher said, however, that the plotting and murderous hatred was all in Francis’s mind.

“I don’t think Francis knows of people wanting him dead — there are no plots and this is all absurd,” said Luis Badilla, editor of the religious website Il Sismografo.

“What is very serious is that he makes such accusations. Either he should deny it or take the names to the Vatican court.” Badilla said he suspected Francis was whipping up support as his papacy heads towards its conclusion.

“He was testing the waters, saying ‘you are either with me or against me’ because he wants to be able to suggest who his successor should be,” he said.

Another expert is less convinced Francis has made it all up, and singles out Cardinal George Pell, the conservative who clashed with Francis on doctrine and was acquitted on sex abuse charges in his native Australia before returning to Rome.

“Pell came back to Rome clear out his locker but hasn’t gone anywhere and will be part of the crowd looking out for the next pope,” said Robert Mickens, editor-in-chief of La Croix International. (SteveD Note:Let's remember that Mr Mickens had to be removed from his job because of his disrespectful remarks about Pope Benedict XVI and because he was publicly rejoicing in contemplating his death. So I think we may well treat his favourable comments on such an (il)liberal pope as Francis with some scepticism. And we may with good reason question his motives for disliking Francis's critics.)

Mickens also noted that Michael Warsaw, chairman of the Catholic US TV network EWTN, had been appointed by the Pope as a consultant to the Vatican’s communications department.

Backed by the deep pockets of conservative US benefactors, EWTN constantly criticises Francis, prompting the Pope to tell the Jesuits in Bratislava that the network was doing the “work of the Devil”.

“Did the Pope think it was better to have Warsaw on the inside at the Vatican? That didn’t work,” Mickens said.

In the US, prelates such as Salvatore Joseph Cordileone, the archbishop of San Francisco and a fan of the Latin Mass, are leading the resistance to Francis while in Kazakhstan, Bishop Athanasius Schneider has claimed the Church is riddled with “traitors of the faith”.

When Francis suggested that divorcees who remarry outside the Church should be allowed to take Communion, Schneider criticised “the practice of admitting unrepentant adulterers to Holy Communion, even if this practice is promoted by a single pope”.

Mickens said: “Francis knows there are plenty of vultures circling, and he is not even dead yet.”

 

Hard for me to imagine Cardinal Burke grinding an axe over anyone. The Times has it wrong.