Special envoy to Rome
Never before has Pope Francis faced such adversity.
In this year 2022, the tenth of his pontificate, everything seems to be conspiring against him.
Rome, always quick to burn what she adores, is in turmoil.
Some discern a mature phase of the pontificate.
Others an "
end of reign
", according to a common expression in the Eternal City.
Many are already thinking about what's next.
But François, 85, very combative, is far from having said his last word.
A great world Christian jubilee is in sight for 2025. Above all, it is preparing its capital reform: that of “
synodalism
” for 2024.
He hopes to convert the Church, pyramidal, centralized and clericalized, into a more democratic, decentralized community where power will be shared more with lay people.
Will he make it?
This ambition arouses support and admiration among some and deep skepticism among those who are familiar with the mysteries of a two-thousand-year-old institution built on centralization.
This pontificate, reformer, flamboyant and… Divisive, would it reach its peak or would it decline?
Read alsoPope Francis, with knee pain, forced into a wheelchair
All pontificates know this same upward and then downward curve.
What counts for the Church is the scope of a pontificate.
From this point of view, those of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, with their qualities and their faults, are still very much alive.
High tension in the Vatican
Did they not mark, and for a long time, generations of faithful and clerics?
It is and will be the same for François.
In the ecclesiastical milieu, therefore, no one ventures to judge the course of things prematurely.
“The phases of crisis are not necessarily the worst,
observes a young cardinal, a man of God, stationed at the Vatican;
they open up to realities of the Church that we cannot see at present.
The Lord does not abandon his Church.
»
Hope is there, especially among Christians, but the word “
crisis
” is nevertheless conceded.
It has been open since the election of François for some.
It is more recent for others, including among the pope's supporters.
All agree on the climate of high tension which reigns in the Holy See and whose intensity does not weaken, in contrast to the image of good nature conveyed in the world and which has changed the image of the Church.
There are obviously, with François, powerful antagonisms, linked to his strong personality reputed to be “
divisive
”.
His "
cutting
" character, his "
authoritarian
" style are the daily lot of a Vatican where we hear these qualifiers.
There are also "
angers
papals and many say they are "
terrified
".
There is also, more objectively, a series of difficult files which sometimes cast a harsh light on the pontificate.
A long-time Italian observer, who has seen and heard much in Vatican City, sums them up in one word:
“confusion”
.
A “Latin American”
confusion
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