Cardinal Marc Ouellet on Vatileaks, Benedict’s act of faith and the new pope

By Father Raymond J. de Souza - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 11:38 AM - 0 Comments

Riccardo De Luca/AP

In Rome for the election of a new pope, Father Raymond J. de Souza, a Roman Catholic priest for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ont., and editor-in-chief of Convivium, a magazine about faith in Canadian public life, met with Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, much touted as a papal contender, at the Vatican.

Q: We have a new pope elected, Pope Francis. Could you tell us why this man was chosen?

A: This man was chosen because the College of Cardinals had a sense that the time was right for a leader coming from South America and this was a man of great authority in the area. I’ve known him for many years, we are good friends and, at the meeting of the Latin American Episcopacy in 2007, in Aparecida, Brazil, he was the main figure who encouraged this continental mission. He came to Quebec City [in 2008] out of friendship for me and to support me because usually he doesn’t accept outside invitations. He barely comes to Rome—only when it’s absolutely necessary. Because he is a pastor: he’s concerned with his people. I think we’ve made a great choice. And it will bear fruit in the life of the Church.

Q: Many of the cardinals have said they don’t know him very well. What do you know about him that makes you hopeful?

A: Simplicity. And he’s a good shepherd, very close to his flock. Last Sunday, he was like a parish priest: he did the mass and then he went out and greeted the people. This is extraordinary. For me, the main encouragement for the people in the field is his election. The priests, deacons, pastoral agents will identify with him. Continue…

Dressing a pope from head to toe

By Patricia Treble - Tuesday, March 19, 2013 at 11:25 AM - 0 Comments

Tony Gentile/Reuters

A PRIMER ON PAPAL FASHION:

Shoes

Red is the colour of martydom, and thus used for papal footwear. A few years ago, the Vatican newspaper quashed the rumour that Benedict’s were made by Prada, stating, “The pope, in summary, does not wear Prada, but Christ.” Since he was a cardinal, he had frequented the tiny shop of Antonio Arellano (below)—a Peruvian-born shoemaker with a shop close to Vatican City—for handmade footwear, size 42. Arellano also did any repairs: Benedict’s shoes often wear out in the toes from kneeling in prayer. As pope emeritus, Benedict can no longer wear red, so on his first day of retirement, he switched to brown loafers purchased during a trip to Mexico.

Continue…

La Motte waits for word from the Vatican

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 12:21 PM - 0 Comments

The 2007 film El Baño del Papa (The Pope’s Toilet) tells the tale of Melo, a village in Uruguay, as it waits for the visit of Pope John Paul II. Its citizens bandy about numbers of potential visitors to the village to the point where it becomes a sort of inflationary frenzy. Hundreds will show up! Thousands! Hundreds of thousands! Windfall! A chicken in every pot!

A poor lot, Meloans see the visit as a virtual lottery ticket, and energetically set about making food, flags and trinkets to sell to the impending throng. Beto, a smuggler and enterprising sort, thinks he has the perfect product: hundreds of toilets where believers can relieve themselves.

Of course, the imagined crowds never materialize. The village is disillusioned. Melo loses his shirt (and his daughter’s tuition money.) There is much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Continue…

Now Dennis Rodman is in Rome and he wants to meet the new Pope

By Emily Senger - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 9:04 AM - 0 Comments

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman walks out of a a street near St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on March 13, 2013. (Riccardo De Luca/AP)

It wasn’t enough to meet Kim Jong Un, one of the most reviled leaders in the world. Now former basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman says he’s on his way to Rome to meet the next Pope.

Gossip site TMZ reported Tuesday that Rodman said his “people” were in touch with sources in The Vatican who were going to arrange a meeting with the new pontiff. “I want to be anywhere in the world that I’m needed … I want to spread a message of peace and love throughout the world,” Rodman told TMZ.

The proposition seems a bit crazy, even for TMZ. Just to confirm, the site caught up with Rodman Wednesday morning at the Miami airport where he was boarding a plane bound for Rome. Continue…

Day 2 of the conclave: Black smoke

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 6:56 AM - 0 Comments

Black smoke on the second day of the conclave

Storified by Maclean’s Magazine· Wed, Mar 13 2013 03:47:30

Black smoke from the roof of the Sistine Chapel at 11:40 a.m. local time signalled that the conclave will continue as 115 cardinals meet to choose the next pope of the Roman Catholic church.

Maclean’s correspondent Brian Bethune is in Rome and has been filing updates.

To be named pope, one individual requires the support of two-thirds of the vote. Our guide to the rules of the conclave is here.

Last night on the late shift, Maclean’s blogger Aaron Hutchins noted those who were treating the ceremony like something of a sporting event.

Cardinal Bergoglio named new pope on second day of conclave

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 6:20 AM - 0 Comments

The archbishop of Buenos Aires has just been elected Pope on the second day of the conclave. White smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel signalled the selection just after 7 p.m. local time.

Maclean’s correspondent Brian Bethune is in Rome and has been filing reports since the start of the conclave:

Tuesday, March 12

7:32 a.m.: There are only so many ways Canadians get internationally famous.

There’s hockey, of course, and that guy up in space, and a teenage pop star. But the best-known Canadian name around the world right now may belong to a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

In St Peter’s Square the night before the conclave to choose a successor to Pope Benedict XVI was to begin, there were three sorts of people milling around, and the ordinary faithful were the fewest in number. The police presence was massive, large enough to be the group most at risk from nuns—easily the most aggressive drivers in Vatican City if not in Rome—flying around in tiny cars.

Most of the cops were engaged in reading their smartphones—in Toronto public safety campaigns are directed at texting-distracted drivers, here they must lose distracted pedestrians in large numbers—or keeping a bored eye on the metal detectors the cardinal electors will pass through on their way to the Sistine Chapel. But both groups were outnumbered by the media staking out prize positions, some from unexpected places, like a Korean wire service or New Delhi TV.

They’re all happy to talk to a Canadian journalist, mostly because they’re down the media pecking order—a telegenic Portuguese-speaking priest with a sizeable entourage took up serious acreage for his interview—but partly because any given Canadian just might know Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

“Your cardinal stands a chance,” exclaims Indian reporter Noupur Tiwari of NDTV, a veteran of papal conclaves—she was here in 2005 for the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Then there were only two Indian cardinals; now there are five, all of voting age. (“There’s just the one Korean,” throws in a clearly unhappy South Korean journalist, “and he’s too old.”)

Interest in India is high, continues Tiwari, because of the rising number of cardinals and Indian Catholics, now 18 million strong), a relatively new female Indian saint and Mother Teresa’s ongoing canonization process. But especially because of the widespread feeling that this might be the moment the papacy leaves European hands for the first in 1,300 years. If it does, they’ll have much bigger entourages next time around.

Photos: Stormy sky above the Vatican as cardinals enter conclave

Storified by Maclean’s Magazine· Wed, Mar 13 2013 09:05:25

In all the Third World pope buzz that has swirled since Pope Benedict announced his resignation a month ago, most has focused on African or Asian papabili.

Strangely little, given how South America is the most Catholic of continents, has been said about Latin America (Mexico and Central America add another 100 million to the total.) Until very recently. Suddenly, everyone is talking about Brazil’s Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer, Archbishop of Sao Paulo, the largest archdiocese in the world’s largest Catholic.

Viewing his record and his lack of charismatic presence–the same knock that may prove decisive in the case of Canada’ Cardinal Marc Oullett–points to only two favourable points: the age (63) is good, and he apparently gets along splendidly with the cardinals of the Curia, the papal bureaucrats whose incompetence and worse has made Church governance among the key issues–if not the single most important one–that the cardinals will weigh in their choice for pope. By this theory, the Italians–by which Vatican waters mean the bureaucrats–know they can’t get their wish, an Italian and pro-Curia pontiff, so they’ll settle for what’s important in that combo: the pro-Curia part. (In mirror opposite, the reformers are said to be coalescing around an Italian, Milan’s Cardenal Angelo Scola, to sweeten their bitter change package.)

Like every other pathway proposed–and assiduously leaked by interested parties–for any of a half-dozen papal contenders, it’s perfectly logical.

Unlike most, moreover, it does actually reflect what is a serious divisive issue within the College of Cardinals. Whether the business-as-usual (with a few tweaks, of course) cardinals or the housecleaners prevail, however, will probably not turn on specific candidates, but on whether those voters–67, more than half–appointed by Benedict think the pope emeritus was hamstrung all along by his bureaucracy or by his own missteps.

2:22 p.m.

The Italian media, not exactly known for their even-handed lack of national bias in soccer coverage, are no less intensely nationalistic when it comes to another favourite national sport, pope picking. It’s anointed Milan Cardinal Angelo Scola the favourite.

That’s hardly surprising: for one thing, anyone who wants an Italian AND a reformer has few options. For another, a lot of non-Italians like him too. At 71 he is neither too old nor too young–it’s still uncertain how Benedict’s resignation will play out in all its possible ramifications, but it has surely made the traditional age calculation at best an uncertain factor. The son of a truck driver, who turned to the priesthood relatively late (age 29), Scola has known Benedict for 40 years and is close to him theologically and personally.

His election might foretell what one Catholic commentator has called ”the continuation of the Benedictine papacy by other means.” Perhaps more intriguingly, Scola’s apparent willingness to spearhead the cardinal bloc wishing to thoroughly revamp the Curia probably means that reform was indeed the principal task Benedict felt unable to take on in his final years, but was equally unwilling to let fester until his death.

Still waiting for today’s smoke….

Black smoke means no pope

It’s official: The papal conclave has not selected a new pope on the first ballot, a fact made evident by the very black smoke spewed from the Sistine Chapel in Rome on March 12.

Storified by Maclean’s Magazine· Wed, Mar 13 2013 09:07:37

Wednesday, March 13

8:49 a.m.: The first murder of crows to fly by this morning was only five in number, a wholly good thing in itself: Canadian crows may sound like rusty gate hinges, but Roman crows sound like angry rusty gate hinges.

But more importantly, the crows came from the right, the lucky direction for crow augury around here since Romulus killed Remus. The luck has yet to do much for anyone in the Sistine Chapel, but it’s early days as Canada’s Fr. Thomas Rosica tells a Vatican press conference: only Pius XII in 1939 was elected as early as the third ballot.

The unlikeliness of a new pope this morning didn’t stop people in their tens of thousands coming to St. Peter’s Square any more than the driving rain did. There were Brazilian and Romanian flags-the atmosphere does have a certain similarity to a Euro Cup match-Polish monks and Scottish priests, and nuns both numerous, and to North American eyes, startlingly young. Like everyone else they are just waiting.

The Vatican Press Office evidently thought bored journalists were bound to start trouble and called their press conference, which had so little news to impart, that it was reduced to giving the press excessively detailed information about the chemicals in the smoke.

During the briefing Fr. Rosica inadvertently referred to Benedict as the pope. But that too is understandable, because the idea of an ex-pope watching on TV the cardinals file into the Sistine Chapel to elect his successor is still mind-boggling.

Black smoke on the second day of the conclave

Storified by Maclean’s Magazine· Wed, Mar 13 2013 09:12:07

Picking the next Pope: ‘March Madness for Catholics’

By Aaron Hutchins - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 5:43 AM - 0 Comments

Gambling on a papal payoff? It’s just like betting on sports.

Storified by Maclean’s Magazine· Wed, Mar 13 2013 02:38:56

The Italian media has anointed one of their own: Cardinal Angelo Scola

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 2:22 PM - 0 Comments

The Italian media, not exactly known for their even-handed lack of national bias in soccer coverage, are no less intensely nationalistic when it comes to another favourite national sport, pope picking. It’s anointed Milan Cardinal Angelo Scola the favourite. That’s hardly surprising: for one thing, anyone who wants an Italian AND a reformer has few options. For another, a lot of non-Italians like him too. At 71 he is neither too old nor too young–it’s still uncertain how Benedict’s resignation will play out in all its possible ramifications, but it has surely made the traditional age calculation at best an uncertain factor. The son of a truck driver, who turned to the priesthood relatively late (age 29), Scola has known Benedict for 40 years and is close to him theologically and personally. His election might foretell what one Catholic commentator has called ”the continuation of the Benedictine papacy by other means.” Perhaps more intriguingly, Scola’s apparent willingness to spearhead the cardinal bloc wishing to thoroughly revamp the Curia probably means that reform was indeed the principal task Benedict felt unable to take on in his final years, but was equally unwilling to let fester until his death.

Still waiting for today’s smoke….

Five curious ways popes have left their mark on Rome

By Jessica Allen - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 12:37 PM - 0 Comments

The Eternal City is chock full of the Western world’s most important treasures, thanks in large part to the Catholic church’s 266 popes, who collected and commissioned masterpieces, commanded beautifying building projects and acquired art–sometimes through not-so-holy means.

The Apollo Belvedere and The Laocoön at the Vatican Museums

The papal facelifts started nearly from the get-go: The Middle Ages left Roman ruins plundered and used as pastureland. But Pope Martin V began a restoration of the city as early as AD 140; When Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first jubilee in 1300, thousands of pilgrims visited Rome thereby lining the papal coffers with plenty of project funding; Nicholas V began building works at both St. Peter’s and the Vatican, where he transferred his residence from the Lateran Palace and tried to slow down the plundering of ancient buildings, which despite his efforts continued well into the 16th century. But it was a member of the influencial Della Rovere family who really got the ball rolling: In 1471 Pope Sixtus IV founded the oldest public collection of art in the world when he donated his sculpture collection to the city, the nucleus of which can still be seen at the Capitoline Museum. (He also rebuilt a chapel you may have heard of that still bears his name.) Another Della Rovere family member–Pope Julius II–continued the beautifation of that chapel when he pulled Michelangelo away (kicking and screaming) from working on Julius’s own tomb. In fact, Pope Julius II made Rome the centre of the High Renaissance, by luring the likes of not only Michelangelo but also Raphael and the architect Bramante, to work on papal projects in Rome.

Continue…

Everybody is talking about Brazil’s Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments

In all the Third World pope buzz that has swirled since Pope Benedict announced his resignation a month ago, most has focussed on African or Asian papabili. Strangely little, given how South America is the most Catholic of continents, has been said about Latin America (Mexico and Central America add another 100 million to the total.) Until very recently. Suddenly, everyone is talking about Brazil’s Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer, Archbishop of Sao Paulo, the largest archdiocese in the world’s largest Catholic. Viewing his record and his lack of charismatic presence–the same knock that may prove decisive in the case of Canada’ Cardinal Marc Oullett–points to only two favourable points: the age (63) is good, and he apparently gets along splendidly with the cardinals of the Curia, the papal bureaucrats whose incompetence and worse has made Church governance among the key issues–if not the single most important one–that the cardinals will weigh in their choice for pope. By this theory, the Italians–by which Vatican waters mean the bureaucrats–know they can’t get their wish, an Italian and pro-Curia pontiff, so they’ll settle for what’s important in that combo: the pro-Curia part. (In mirror opposite, the reformers are said to be coalescing around an Italian, Milan’s Cardenal Angelo Scola, to sweeten their bitter change package.) Like every other pathway proposed–and assiduously leaked by interested parties–for any of a half-dozen papal contenders, it’s perfectly logical. Unlike most, moreover, it does actually reflect what is a serious divisive issue within the College of Cardinals. Whether the business-as-usual (with a few tweaks, of course) cardinals or the housecleaners prevail, however, will probably not turn on specific candidates, but on whether those voters–67, more than half–appointed by Benedict think the pope emeritus was hamstrung all along by his bureaucracy or by his own missteps.

Is pope the worst job ever?

By Rosemary Westwood - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 12:32 PM - 0 Comments

Top of mind for the world’s media packed into Rome is: who will win? But the real question should be: who will lose?

There’s a very good reason the first place a new pope finds himself is a small space off the Sistine Chapel called the crying room, or the room of tears.
Many new popes, upon “winning,” weep.

It is not just the weight of a new office, where the pope is tasked with shepherding the spiritual life of a billion faithful spread around the world. Or the fact he must make his first public appearance wearing red slippers. He’s also a head of state, a bishop in his own right, and depending on which example you take, a prolific traveler (John Paul II) or a prolific scholar and writer (Benedict XVI).

A former Swiss Guard (the men who protect the Holy Father), said Benedict XVI never wanted the job. “The pope is the end of your life. You lose your friends. You lose your family,” said Andreas Widmer. You’re a prisoner, he continued, confined by the walls of the Vatican.

A pope’s mornings are early, his days packed with meetings, his years packed with feasts and masses and travels. Italian journalist and Vatican watcher Andrea Tornielli called any man looking to be the next Supreme Pontiff “totally crazy.”

John Paul I may be the greatest warning. He was elected in 1978, and only managed to keep pace for one month before he died.

The papal conclave isn’t the World Cup or the Olympics. There’s no trophy at the end. But there is, perhaps, a sentence.

On American openness and papal predictions

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Conventional wisdom holds that cardinal electors will always shy away from an American pababile for fear of too close a bond with the last superpower. But maybe that’s only an excuse, and what really irritates them is that unstoppable American openness with the media, a certain national problem with keeping secrets.

Then again, maybe cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York already knew he didn’t have a chance to be pope when he sent that cheerful letter to all the priests of his diocese, predicting a new pontiff by Thursday and an “inaugural mass on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, the patron of the Church Universal, a holiday, and Father’s Day here in Italy.” He also thinks ”the gentle Roman rain” which has half-drowned the rest of us on a couple of occasions ”is a sign of the grace of the Holy Spirit coming upon us.”

The Americans have actually been a blinding ray of sunshine here, willing to answer questions and openly acknowledge problems the Church has to face; at least they were, until shut down last week by a Vatican bureacracy that encourages prelates to think twice before reponding to, ”What is your name?” In that regard, perhaps the more things change…

Early this morning an elderly cardinal, freed not just from the burden of voting but the close observation of Swiss Guards, wandered the streets near Saint Peter’s Square in full scarlet regalia, accompanied by only one young monsignor, and happily posing for photos with the the African streetsellers who stopped him. He did, however, respond to all questions about his name with, ”Espagna.” The cardinal was strangely reminiscent of an equally elderly man at the square last night, who shrugged when asked who should be pope, but had a firm opinion–written on a banner–as to what the new papal name should be: Francesco I Papa.

Photos: Stormy sky above the Vatican as cardinals enter conclave

By Emily Senger - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 9:46 AM - 0 Comments

Continue…

Rules of the papal conclave, explained

By Patricia Treble - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 8:34 AM - 0 Comments

Cardinals attend a mass for the election of a new pope inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican on Tuesday, March 12, 2013. (Andrew Medichini/AP)

Though the rules for appointing a new pope have changed over the centuries, John Paul II updated them significantly on Feb. 22, 1996 with the release of “Universi Dominici Gregis” (UDG), which allowed a pope to be elected by a simple majority if no one had been elected after 12 days of voting. Benedict XVI reversed that rule in 2007 and returned to the traditional two-thirds vote. Then, six days before he retired, he amended the rules again, permitting a conclave to start early if the cardinal electors had gathered in Rome.

Conclave: Latin cum (with) and clavis (key): a room locked with a key. Continue…

Best-known Canadian around the world right now? Marc Ouellet

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 7:32 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Ian Bethune

There are only so many ways Canadians get internationally famous.

There’s hockey, of course, and that guy up in space, and a teenage pop star. But the best-known Canadian name around the world right now may belong to a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

In St Peter’s Square the night before the conclave to choose a successor to Pope Benedict XVI was to begin, there were three sorts of people milling around, and the ordinary faithful were the fewest in number. The police presence was massive, large enough to be the group most at risk from nuns—easily the most aggressive drivers in Vatican City if not in Rome—flying around in tiny cars.

Continue…

Papal politics in Rome grab the attention of non-believers

By Nick Taylor-Vaisey - Monday, March 11, 2013 at 9:08 AM - 0 Comments

Francis Vachon/CP

So much mystery surrounds the election of the next pope that it eventually captures the attention of even those among us who have absolutely no stake in papal politics. One quote, spoken by Cardinal Tom Collins, Toronto’s Archbishop, and reported by the Toronto Star near the bottom of its story this morning, sold it for me. ”We were all very conscious looking around that the pope is here somewhere,” he said. “You look at all the papabile in the room and you say, ‘Oh, maybe it’s him.’ Whoever it is, he was in the room and he heard everything. And that’s a good thing.” The mystery of it all is so enrapturing.

The cardinals who elect the pope are, of course, silent about their intentions, save for secret, pre-conclave meetings with each other. Speculation is predictably rampant in Rome, where everyone has an opinion about the identity of the next pontif. And yet, as Postmedia‘s Matthew Fisher writes at the end of his story this morning, predicting the outcome of the conclave is a fool’s game. “It is almost pointless to speculate about who might be ahead and who might be trailing.” Continue…

Conclave to select new pope will begin Tuesday afternoon

By Emily Senger - Friday, March 8, 2013 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

Cardinals will gather in a conclave to pick a new pope beginning Tuesday, March 12, the Vatican announced Friday.

“Mass will be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica in the morning,” the Vatican said in its official newsfeed Friday. “In the afternoon the cardinals will enter into the Conclave.”

The announcement comes as cardinals from around the world have been making their way to Rome after Pope Benedict XVI made the surprise announcement that he would step down, making him the first pope to abdicate his post in 600 years.

Church spokesman critical of ‘Dirty Dozen’ list of papal candidates

By The Canadian Press - Thursday, March 7, 2013 at 8:36 PM - 0 Comments

QUEBEC – A Roman Catholic Church spokesman is criticizing a list that calls Canada’s Marc Cardinal Ouellet and 11 other papal candidates the ”Dirty Dozen.”

Jasmin Lemieux-Lefebvre, communications director for the church in Quebec City and a former press attache to Ouellet, said Thursday that none of the cardinals deserves such negative recognition.

The U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests put Ouellet on the list because it said he refused to meet with sex-abuse victims. Ouellet recently told the CBC he met with victims during a visit to Ireland.

The ”Dirty Dozen” reference comes from a 1967 film of the same name that features 12 convicts assigned to a raid on a German-filled chateau during the Second World War.

Continue…

Cardinals play hardball

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 8:00 PM - 0 Comments

Arturo Mari/AFP/Getty Images

On Feb. 22, 12 days after Pope Benedict XVI announced his plan to resign, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, publicly stated that he thought Roman Catholic clergy should have the right to marry. The very next day, news leaked that O’Brien was under investigation for “inappropriate”—read sexual—advances to four young priests three decades ago; the day after that, O’Brien, 74, revealed he had already secretly resigned his archbishopric back in November (on the newly popular grounds of age and ill health) and that Benedict had just decided that Feb. 25 was a good day to put it into immediate effect. O’Brien, who remains a cardinal, added that he wouldn’t be attending the conclave to elect Benedict’s successor.

Coincidence? Not according to seasoned Vatican watchers. Having spent years trying to peer within an organizational structure opaque enough to make the old Soviet Kremlin look like a citadel of light, they are almost universally convinced that Vatican insiders could run rings around that chump Machiavelli. But it’s actually difficult to construct a coherent conspiracy theory around O’Brien—his militant defence of Catholic sexual teaching on abortion and same-sex marriage makes him hard to portray as a reformer brought down by scheming conservatives.

Yet O’Brien’s own well-publicized remarks on ending celibacy were clearly designed to push Catholicism in a direction he wanted it to go during one of the rare, between-popes times when the Church is capable of relatively sudden and sharp turns. The possibilities seem more open-ended than ever, leading into the most unpredictable papal election in centuries. And so, with no clear front-runner, far more time than usual for political manoeuvring, leaks springing, rumours flying and cardinals openly jostling for position, the ever-feverish season of papal electioneering is already under way.

O’Brien was far from the only Church insider weighing in, openly or anonymously, on what ought to be done. Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, for years widely considered the leading African papabile or papal contender, indicated his agreement with his many admirers when he told a British newspaper that he’d cheerfully accept the Church’s top job “if it’s the will of God.” (Oddsmakers no longer reckon Turkson’s chances very highly: not only has the College of Cardinals always frowned on blatant political campaigning, the cardinal’s subsequent remarks that Africa had been spared much clerical sex abuse because of the continent’s “taboo” against homosexuality offended a whole other raft of Catholics.) Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, a Vatican diplomat, confessed to a reporter he wouldn’t vote for anyone like himself, because the Church needs “a pastor of souls”; in other words, a pope more like John Paul II and less like Benedict XVI.

At times the princes of the Church have been less than gracious with one another. Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne, when describing his ideal pope to a German newspaper, added, as an insouciant non-sequitur, that in 2009 a group of cardinals had urged Benedict to fire his secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for incompetence—a shot directed at the ham-fisted secretary’s electoral prospects. In that regard, media reports that Canada’s Marc Ouellet can put his fellow prelates to sleep with his uninspiring orations seem positively benign. Even so, Ouellet has to face open derision at the continued decline of the Quebec Church, and more quiet references to his brother, Paul, a former teacher who not only pleaded guilty in 2009 to 20-year-old sexual offences against two teenage girls, but took out a newspaper ad to explain the crimes weren’t really his fault.

If all that seems like standard hardball politics, the leaks—like O’Brien’s outing—bring a nastier edge. Whatever the motives behind it, one of its effects will be O’Brien’s absence from the conclave and the fresh impetus that will give to American Catholics attempting to stop Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony—under fire for covering up the crimes of clerical child sex abusers during the 1980s—from attending. O’Brien’s recusal is a blow to Mahony’s main rationale for going to Rome. No cardinal has ever before willingly abandoned his “main duty,” according to historian Ambrogio Piazzoni, vice-prefect of the Vatican library: “The thing that characterizes a cardinal is to be an elector of the pope.” Now the precedent has been set.

The real pre-conclave bombshell, however, came in the form of a Feb. 21 story in the respected Italian newspaper La Repubblica containing details of the report three senior cardinals made to Benedict about the so-called “Vatileaks” scandal—a damaging leak, as it were, about a previous damaging leak. Vatileaks—its name a play on Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks—broke open in January 2012, as secret Vatican documents appeared in the Italian media seemingly revealing the return of the Renaissance papacy, complete with internal power struggles over efforts to establish greater financial transparency, especially to comply with new international laws dealing with money laundering. One memo claimed the recently fired president of the Vatican bank exhibited “psychopathological dysfunction.” But the headline-grabber was the revelation that a mafioso was accepted for burial in a basilica beside popes after his widow paid a $400,000 bribe to officials. The leaks were traced to Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, though many observers riveted by the intra-bureaucracy battle understandably doubt that the butler did it all on his own.

Just as the original horror show was fading from the news, came La Repubblica’s report. The newspaper said the cardinals reporting to the pope identified factions within the bureaucracy, including one “united by sexual orientation.” They added that some officials had been subject to “external influence” from laymen with whom they had links of a “worldly nature,” universally read as a reference to blackmail. For most media, the leak torqued an explosive financial corruption story into yet another sensational Church sex scandal, the probable aim of the leakers.

That idea, however, is hardly likely to fly with the cardinal electors, many of whom think Vatican governance is in a very real state of crisis. For all the Church’s long-term worldwide challenges, the leaks and innuendo may turn goverance into the decisive issue in selecting the next pope. That would reshuffle the papabili deck once again. After 45 years of popes whose main interests—worldwide evangelization and combatting European secularism—led them to neglect the bureaucracy, the cardinals may opt for someone to clean the stables. The question of nationality, muted in the talk that divided papabili between First and Third World candidates, would take on a new importance. Will the cardinals want an Italian pope, on the theory that in dealing with an Italian-dominated bureaucracy, he would know where the bodies are buried? Or will an Italian be the last man they would want? Assuming, of course, that a new set of leaks—by now, almost expected on a daily basis—doesn’t set the election on yet another course.

Photos: Pope Benedict XVI takes leave

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 9:19 AM - 0 Comments

of Photos

Pope Benedict XVI issues final thanks

By Emily Senger - Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 8:34 AM - 0 Comments

Pope Benedict XVI opens his arms during his final general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. (Gregorio Borgia/AP)

Pope Benedict XVI addressed thousands of people in Saint Peter’s Square for the final time Wednesday, on the day before he will step down.

The pope has delivered a catechism lesson every Wednesday, but this message took on a personal tone, rather than teaching a lesson about the Catholic Church.

“I was deeply grateful for the understanding, support and prayers of the many of you, not only in Rome, but around the world,” he said. “The decision I have made after much prayer is the fruit of a serene trust in God’s will and the deep love of Christ’s church. Continue…

Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte says Canadian pope a possibility

By The Canadian Press - Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 4:29 AM - 0 Comments

MONTREAL – Quebec’s other cardinal — Montreal’s populist former archbishop — thinks locals would certainly be happy if one of their own became the new pontiff.

Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte kept his voting intentions to himself as he prepared to depart for Rome on Tuesday, although he said he’d be proud if Marc Cardinal Ouellet emerged as the new head of the Roman Catholic Church.

“We would be proud to have a pope from Quebec and the candidacy of Cardinal Ouellet is a very important one because he’s very well known around the world,” Turcotte said of the former archbishop of Quebec City.

Turcotte is among the select group of cardinals who will participate in the conclave to choose a replacement for Pope Benedict XVI.

Continue…

British Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigns amid scandal, conclave changes announced

By Emily Senger - Monday, February 25, 2013 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

British cardinal Keith O’Brien has been forced to resign early, in the days before top members of the Catholic Church will gather in Rome to choose a new Pope to replace Pope Benedict XVI.

O’Brien’s decision to vacate his position as leader of Scottish Catholic Church comes after allegations of “inappropriate conduct,” towards other priests in the 1980s, conduct which he denies.

“The former priest claims Cardinal O’Brien made an inappropriate approach to him in 1980, after night prayers, when he was a seminarian at St Andrew’s College, Drygrange,” reports BBC News. Continue…

Pope Benedict XVI: ‘The Lord is calling me to climb onto the mountain’

By macleans.ca - Sunday, February 24, 2013 at 8:38 AM - 0 Comments

Thousands of worshippers gathered in St. Peter’s Square this morning for Pope Benedict XVI’s final public blessing.

“We thank God for the sun he has given us,” Benedict said as the clouds cleared during his appearance.

The Pope, who will vacate the papacy on Feb. 28, said he is not abandoning the church. “The Lord is calling me to climb onto the mountain, to dedicate myself even more to prayer and meditation,” he told the crowd. “If God asks this of me, it is precisely because I can continue to serve her with the same dedication and the same love I have shown so far.”

In a photo provided by the Vatican newspaper, Pope Benedict XVI delivers his blessing during his last Angelus noon prayer. Benedict XVI said he is retiring to spend his final years in prayer. (L'Osservatore Romano, ho, AP)

Tens of thousands showed up to hear Pope Benedict XVI's last Angelus noon prayer in St. Peter's Square. (Alessandra Tarantino/AP Photo)

Faithful from Trento, northern Italy, hold signs in Italian reading 'Grazie Padre' (Thank you Father) prior to Pope Benedict XVI's final public blessings. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)