Pope Francis has left intact the rule that assigns to the cardinals the task of electing the future pope. But he has done no little damage to the cardinals’ ability to act as a “college.”
The future pope will almost certainly be one of them. And to choose him, the electors need to know each other well, to have regular times of meeting and discussion, to operate, indeed, in collegial form.
But this is precisely what Francis broke off in the initial phase of his pontificate, evidently annoyed by the outcome of the first and last true “consistory’ he convened, when in February 2014 he called the cardinals to consult on the themes of the upcoming synod on the family.
At that consistory, held for two days behind closed doors, the pope entrusted the keynote address to Cardinal Walter Kasper, an accomplished theologian, back in the early nineties a combative supporter of scrapping the ban on communion for the divorced and remarried, but defeated, at the time, by John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger.
At the consistory Kasper relaunched his theses in full, and would say afterward that he had done so in agreement with the pope.
Moreover, Kasper received from Francis the privilege of breaking secrecy on the things he said at the consistory, unlike all the other cardinals. When the following March 1 his address made a surprise appearance in the Italian newspaper “Il Foglio,” this same address was in fact already being printed by the Queriniana publishing house. The stir over the publication was tremendous.
But what had happened at the consistory? From day one Kasper’s address was contested by a very large number of cardinals, and by the most authoritative ones, to the visible irritation of Francis, who at the next day’s opening session tried to start the discussion over, saying that he had “reread before going to sleep” the address Kasper had given, and that more than ever he had found it “profound” and “serene,” to the point of making him exclaim with emotion that “this is called doing theology on one’s knees.”
The trouble was that the first cardinal to speak that morning, scheduled to speak since the evening before, once again contested Kasper’s address. And after him several more still.
In early spring, to balance the public impact of Kasper’s theses, the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, at the time headed by Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller and with Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer as secretary, planned the publication in “L’Osservatore Romano” of a presentation from the opposing perspective, by a cardinal of the highest rank. But the publication of this text fell under the veto of the pope.
In the following months, however, a good dozen prominent cardinals spoke out publicly in various ways in defense of the perennial doctrine and practice, against communion for the divorced and remarried. Among them were the Germans Müller and Walter Brandmüller, the Italians Carlo Caffarra, Angelo Scola, and Camillo Ruini, the Canadians Marc Ouellet and Thomas Collins, the American Raymond L. Burke, the Australian George Pell.
Some of these, plus others of great standing and not only from the conservative camp, were among the signatories, in October 2015, of the letter “of the thirteen cardinals” to the pope that contested the framework set for the second session of the synod on the family, making Francis even more furious.
And three of them, plus the authoritative archbishop of Cologne Joachim Meisner, after the conclusion of the synod delivered their “dubia” on what the pope had wanted and decided, making their protest sensationally public after the only answer received had been silence.
After that embattled one in 2014, Francis never called another consistory worthy of the name, apart from the purely ceremonial ones on the occasion of the appointments of new cardinals.
But at least, until 2016, the College of Cardinals showed signs of vitality, with high-level figures of various leanings and wide recognition even outside the narrow circle of specialists.
But then advancing age gradually sidelined many of these, who were already close to the age threshold of 80 beyond which lies exclusion from the conclave. And since then the new appointees by Francis have been, for the most part, unknown not only to the general public but also to their own confreres in the cardinalate.
The going justification is that Francis wants promotions to cardinal to go to representatives of the “peripheries” of the Church, heads of small dioceses with few faithful rather than of important and historically illustrious sees.
But by keeping them from meeting and exchanging ideas as a college, the pope has also made it tough for them to get to know each other.
That of reciprocal acquaintance is a need also felt many times in the past. Cardinal Brandmüller, president of the pontifical committee for historical sciences from 1998 to 2009, has documented that from the 18th century onwards detailed biographical profiles of each cardinal have often been compiled, to be circulated among the electors in the runup to the conclaves.
And this need is still altogether timely. Of the 140 cardinal electors today entitled to participate in a conclave, more than 120 were appointed by Pope Francis with the criteria mentioned above. And there’s certainly not enough, to understand the real profile of each one, in the succinct biographies lined up on the website of the Holy See.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio too, in the conclave of 2013, happened to be elected by those who had an image of him very different from the reality, as revealed afterward in the course of the pontificate. Suffice it to reread what was thought of Bergoglio in 2002, when he was first spoken of as a candidate for pope.
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Well then, to bridge this gap of acquaintance, a few days ago came the birth of a new website in English (but the header is in Latin: “Cardinalium Collegii Recensio”) with in-depth and well-documented profiles of each cardinal:
> The College of Cardinals Report
It is designed and run by the seasoned vaticanisti Diane Montagna, an American, and Edward Pentin, an Englishman who in 2020 authored the book The Next Pope, with biographies of nineteen candidates for the papacy. The initiative is promoted by Sophia Institute Press and the multilingual magazine “Cardinalis,” created with the similar intent of providing the members of the College of Cardinals with quality information on the life of the Church.
The new website not only provides biographical data for each cardinal, but also outlines in detail how he has thus far carried out his duties as bishop: those of sanctifying, ruling, teaching. And it also provides information on each cardinal’s stances on the most controversial issues today: from the blessing of homosexual couples to women deacons, from communion for the divorced and remarried to the agreement between the Holy See and China.
For many dozens of cardinals, starting with those called “papabili,” the profiles are already complete, while for the others the essential elements are online, with everything constantly updated. The “Report” is rounded out with information on the history of the cardinalate and on the functioning of a conclave.
Montagna and Pentin promise to be impartial and to present each cardinal “with charity and truth.” And those who have known them for years and admire their professionalism cannot doubt it.
(Translated by Matthew Sherry: traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.
