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The 10 years of Pope Francis: a stormy future and no trips to Argentina

2023-03-07T10:48:59.492Z


Jorge Bergoglio pilots the Church, entering a scenario with internal confrontations and without having traveled to his homeland.


Ten years have passed

since the papacy of Pope Francis

.

Jorge Bergoglio was elected on the evening of March 13, 2013 at the age of 76.

He had already

resigned due to age limits

as cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires and his election in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican took place in the climate of anxiety that his predecessor Benedict XVI, the German Joseph Ratzinger, had caused a month earlier by resigning his post.

Ten years after the last phase of his pontificate,

he is going through a difficult year

.

On the last day of 2022 Ratzinger died in the convent where he lived in the Vatican gardens at the age of 95, just three months ago.

It means that the pontificate of the Jesuit Bergoglio, who chose the name of Francis, has been conditioned for so many years by

the unique case in the history

of the last seven centuries of governing the destinies of the Church of 1,300 million baptized, with the Pope former still alive.

In addition, Benedict XVI

had chosen to continue being Pope

with the title of emeritus, which encouraged conspiracies and attacks from the most conservative and traditional sectors, who pointed out the existence of two Popes, although Joseph Ratzinger always insisted that "there is only one Pope."

The unprecedented era of the two popes.

Photo: AP

This conditioning was masterfully piloted by Pope Francis and will not be repeated because there will be no new Pope Emeritus in the Church.

The experience of the Ratzinger case is enough.

Jorge Bergoglio himself, who raised the issue of his resignation one day in several interviews, clarified that if he leaves,

his title will be Bishop Emeritus of Rome.

Surely if the problem arises, the current Pope will produce

new legislation

to contemplate the resignation of the pontiff.

The question is a renewing innovation of the Church, great merit of Joseph Ratzinger, a conservative who, with his gesture, committed

a historic change in the two-thousand-year-old life of the Church.

New years and three months after the close presence of his predecessor in an institution that affirms the character of absolute power of the ruling Pope, Jorge Bergoglio now pilots the Church entering a future that appears stormy due to internal confrontations.

synods


In addition to the Jubilee Holy Year that is celebrated next year, Francis

has righted the Catholic ship

in a phase clearly focused on two Synods of Synods, world assemblies of bishops that

will address the problems and challenges

facing the Church.

Synods were created by the Second Vatican Council, convened by the formidable

John XXIII

in the 1960s and which reconciled the Church with the modern world.

Jorge Bergoglio surrounded by faithful.

Photo: archive

The traditionalists throw everything at the decisions of the Council for its reforms, which were

wise modernizations

and left the structure of the doctrine impregnable.

Jorge Bergoglio fully identifies his pontificate with the teachings of that Council.

After the death of John XXIII, who entrusted to his successor Paul VI the mission of carrying out the conciliar decisions, the 27 world synods of bishops were held, which have now become the "synodal path" that will mark the final phase of the pontificate of Francisco.

Bergoglio

has accentuated his fight for the modernizations of the Church

and the reforms that he considers inevitable.

But although the traditionalists reproach him for it,

up to now he has not made

fundamental doctrinal changes.

The tradition of the Immobile Church remains firm on this plane.

Only in the Family Synods of 2014 and 2015 was a doctrinal reform approved.

Changed the prohibition of divorced and remarried Catholics who were denied confession to full access to the sacraments on full return to the church.

Francis speaks with his interpreter during a recent visit to South Sudan.

Photo: EFE

With a twisted footnote to the final document, it was authorized that the bishops can decide after a long road of recovery

to authorize those Catholics to confess and take communion.

The resistance to fundamental changes was highlighted when the Synod of Bishops of the Amazon was held in 2018.

It promised to be

a revolutionary assembly

in the life of the Church.

The Synod approved measures such as the creation of the

Viri Probati,

which existed in the first Christian churches.

They were Catholic heads of family, of advanced age, who could receive priestly ordination in places where there was a great lack of priests.

The Synod also approved measures that made it easier for women

to go up to the altar during the celebrations

and approved female access to the diaconate.

These substantive changes

did not appear in the final document

of that Synod of the Amazon.

The Argentine Pope

did not include any of these measures.

The Theology of the People


Bergoglio elaborated in the first phase of his life as a Jesuit in Buenos Aires ideas about

privileging the peripheries

over the central areas of Catholicism.

Contrary to the Theology of Liberation, he was one of the promoters in Argentina of

the Theology of the People.

His 40 trips outside of Italy as Pope demonstrated these convictions,

favoring small countries

and the peripheries of the world.

This vocation is reflected in its continuous supportive care for refugees and the "last" on the planet.

He believes that the Church is profoundly called by Christ's mandate to

give priority to love and help for the poor.

His creations of cardinals have also followed the same path.

Few appointments in the central countries, many in the peripheries By the way, this policy has helped him to obtain

a Bergoglian majority in the college of cardinals

.

Those under the age of 80 vote for the new Pope.

It already has almost an absolute majority.

"World War to Pieces"


Another central argument boils down to a single, terrible word:

war

.

For at least two years Francis has maintained that the world is already fighting a "piecemeal world war."

The Russian invasion of the Ukraine seems to have finally proved him right.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's continued threats that his country will resort to atomic weapons if it faces a challenge to his existence allow Francis to express that World War III is beginning.

A Ukrainian soldier aboard a D-64 tank on the front lines.

Photo: Reuters

World War III has one feature: no one can win it and the very existence of the planet and its 8 billion inhabitants might not survive saturation with nuclear devices.

Traveling to Russia and being able to undertake a mediation that leads to peace or, at least, to a prolonged armistice, is

an ambition

that Bergoglio frequently confesses.

Putin doesn't say no, but he doesn't say yes either.

The

other most problematic country

for Jorge Mario Bergoglio Sívori, the son of a Piedmontese Italian couple who emigrated to Argentina, which he familiarly calls “my land”, is precisely his.

He has never been able to take a trip and boy would he have liked it.

If he dies without realizing this wish, in which he apparently believes little today,

he will be the first Pope

in modern times who

has never seen his homeland again

since he was elevated to the position of successor to Saint Peter, the first bishop of Rome and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Vatican correspondent

ap​


look too

"That the waters of the Mediterranean are no longer filled with blood", Pope Francis' harsh message against human trafficking

Experiment in the Church: why in Italy godfathers and godmothers are suspended in baptisms

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-03-07

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