The next pope - a few guesses:

So we're going to have a new Pope. To understand the state of play, it's worth considering a few things about Cardinal Bergoglio, the man who became Pope Francis:

He was a product of his upbringing in Argentina - he came of age under Juan Peron, the longtime dictator of Argentina, who was socialist in many ways but also a traditional caudillo in others. That experience framed Francis's world view - as I've said repeatedly in the past, you can take a Pope out of Argentina, but it's difficult to get the Argentina out of the Pope.

Francis was a Jesuit - if you compare the church to a deck of cards, the Jesuits are the Jokers. They wield a lot of power, but typically they have been independent operators. Where they are welcome, they can do marvelous things. Our country has a number of outstanding Catholic universities that are at least nominally under the control of the order. One place where the Jesuits were not welcome was in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which his why we have a diocesan university (St. Thomas), instead of a Marquette, or Creighton, or Loyola.

Francis was a reaction against currents within the Church. His two immediate predecessors, St. John Paul II and Benedict, were conservative in matters of doctrine and were somewhat ambivalent of modernism, especially as manifested in Vatican II. Francis was the opposite and he was able to  slow the conservative tide, but he didn't necessarily stop it.

Francis changed the composition of the College of Cardinals in two ways that don't necessarily travel together. He made it younger, and he made it far less European. What is interesting about that? Areas outside of Europe and North America are where the energy in the Church resides. But the energy of the youthful sectors of the Church tend to skew more conservative, especially on matters of doctrine. The future of the Church resides with the younger prelates, who mostly came up under JPII and Benedict, but most of those individuals are not yet considered papabile.

I believe the chances of another non-European pope are strong, for a number of reasons:

The primary energy in the Church is now elsewhere, especially in places that were once missionary territory. You could argue that Europe is missionary territory now, given the decline in Catholicism there. This decline is found within the Church but also within the mainline Protestant congregations, where in some ways the issue is even more dire. Our protestant brethren, especially of the more evangelical stripe, totally understand this - if you leave the parking lot of a Protestant church, you are likely see a sign when you leave the parking lot that says "You are now entering the mission field." The evangelicals believe this and are taking action. Catholics face the same issues and the younger prelates are the ones taking action.

I think Energy is important right now - the last two Popes have been elderly and JPII, while young when first elected, was quite elderly when he passed away. Many of the individuals considered papabile are in their 70s, so a younger Pope would very much be a sign that the Church leaders have made a decision about the future and want a leader who will have a papacy similar to JPII.

As for the specific candidates, I'd say the following:

There has not been an African pope since Pope Gelasius, who served from 492-496. Could we have an African pope this time? I think it's a strong possibility. There are fairly strong candidates

Peter Turkson -- currently at the Vatican, he is originally from Ghana. He is fairly liberal but not obviously so. He is also 76 - he was mentioned as a candidate in 2013 and might have been a stronger candidate then.

Fridolin Ambongo -- he is the Archbishop of Kinhasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is considered a powerful leader and thinker, but it is unclear where he stands on a number of issues. He is also among the younger candidates at age 65. Certainly a possibility

Robert Sarah -- emeritus Vatican official. He's from  Guinea and is probably the most conservative possibility. He is dynamic, but he's also likely too old. He will turn 80 this year. 

Other non-European candidates include:

Luis Antonio Tagle  -- currently in the Curia. Started out as a Jesuit but became a diocesan priest. He is a Filipino and clearly both a liberal and an acolyte of Francis, but he does stray a bit from the leftist orthodoxy and as a result fell out of favor a bit. He is younger at age 67. He has to be considered a strong possibility.

Charles Maung Bo --  currently the Archbishop of Yangon in Myanmar (Burma). He has a tough assignment and has managed it well. In terms of doctrine, he's significantly more conservative than Tagle, but he's also significantly older at age 76. He shares much in common with JPII, including being a playwright. He'd be excellent, I think.

Malcolm Ranjith  -- currently the Archbishop of Colombo (Sri Lanka). He is a conservative but pro Vatican II. He's a skilled communicator and speaks 10 languages, which shows both his intelligence and his engagement with the world. I see him as a potential compromise candidate; he is age 77, but if the Conclave is not prepared to chose a direction and is looking for a transition figure, Ranjith would be a good choice.

There are two possible US candidates

Raymond Burke -- in Rome, but not part of the current hierarchy following a split with Francis. He's originally from Richland Center, WI. Was Bishop of Lacrosse, WI, then St. Louis. He built a big shrine in LaCrosse for Our Lady of Guadalupe. He's conservative, brilliant, and humble. I think at age 76 he's unlikely to get the nod, but his career is fascinating. 

Timothy Dolan -- Archbishop of New York. Dolan is an old school Irish priest and he's genuinely popular among the flock and doctrinally conservative, but there are questions about his "gravitas." At age 75, I would consider him a longshot.

European candidates

Matteo Zuppi  -- currently the Archbishop of Bologna. He's pretty far left, and if he were selected would essentially a continuation of Francis. He's actually tied closely to leftist political parties in Italy. Age 69; if he is chosen it signals that the liberal wing has won the argument.

Jean-Marc Aveline -- currently the Archbishop of Marseille. He is a friend of Francis; he was born in Algeria, which would technically make him an African pope, but he's spent most of his life in Europe. He is also pretty far left. Age 66.

Pietro Parolin -- currently the Vatican Secretary of State. His background is quite similar to Pope Paul, serving much of his life as a diplomat. He is also controversial because of his role in brokering a deal with the Chinese communist party, which ceded important control to the government in order for the Church to continue to operate there. He was doing Francis's bidding, but now that Francis is gone he may have trouble with those who disagreed with the initiative. Age 70. 

Willem Eijk  -- currently the Archbishop of Utretcht (Netherlands). Eijk is very well regarded generally and is a fairly consistent conservative. I like him a lot, but he also presides over a very secular archdiocese and he's spent much of his time fighting secularism to limited effect. He's 71.

Peter Erdo  -- currently the Archbishop of Budapest. He is generally considered a  conservative to moderate; he's been successful. Having come of age in communist Hungary, he has some similarities to JPII. I could see him becoming a compromise choice. Age 72.

Pierbattista Pizzaballa   -- currently the Archbishop of Jerusalem. While his amusing surname has brought him attention, he's actually an intriguing candidate. He has served with great distinction in a tough neighborhood and has done well to protect the Church and his flock in the Holy Land. He's considered a moderate but has some conservative leanings. He's also one of the youngest papabile at age 60. Do not be surprised if he emerges.

My guess: who knows? I expect a reaction against some of Francis's excesses, but the question is whether or not a conservative will have the votes in the Conclave. Ranking the possibilities:

If a liberal wins:   Zuppi, Tagle, Aveline, Parolin. I think the number of liberals could split vote, perhaps lessening the chance that any one of them actually wins.

If a conservative wins:  Sarah, Eijk, Bo

If a compromise candidate: Turkson, Ranjith, Erdo

If a wild card is selected:       Ambongo, Pizzaballa

I fully expect to be wrong. If you want more information on the cardinals, The College of Cardinals Report is about as comprehensive as you'd want.

RIP, Pope Francis

 Francis has left us. A few thoughts:

• Popes are teachers, leaders, administrators. They wield enormous power. They are human beings and sinners, despite the majesty of the seat they hold. I never believed Francis was duplicitous, but I believed he was wrong about many things. As such, his passing affords an opportunity for a better future for the Church.
• Speculation always abounds when it's time to select a new pope. This site  provides a pretty good overview of potential successors, suggesting 22 names as papabile. The most familiar of these, by far, is Cardinal Raymond Burke, who grew up in Richland Center, Wisconsin and served as a bishop in LaCrosse and later St. Louis, among other places. He also became enmeshed in a significant feud with Francis and was essentially fired, although he maintained his rank as a cardinal. It would be a significant surprise if he were to be selected, but it would also be a welcome decision in my view.
• I have no idea who, or what, is coming next. I do know that while Francis did his level best to re-establish the Vatican II liberal/secular worldview to the Church, the energy within the Church lies elsewhere and signs are everywhere. Traditional Latin Mass is coming back all over and young people are the ones who are clamoring for it. The places where Vatican II was embraced are now falling to secularism and more energetic competing faiths, especially Islam. The Vatican may be situated on the European continent, but the future of the Church is elsewhere and we're already seeing that the traditional home of Christianity is now mission territory. The new Pope will need to recognize these trends and respond accordingly.

I haven't been writing much lately and I may not write a whole lot, but this moment does have my attention and we'll see if there is a renewal of this feature as a result.

Meanwhile, at the Vatican

It looks like a long-overdue meeting is about to take place:

Around 8.30pm Rome time this Tuesday, the Holy See Press Office released the following statement to the accredited outlets: 

This Thursday, 13 September 2018, the Holy Father will receive in the apostolic palace His Eminence Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States of America, together with His Eminence Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

With them will be H.E. Mons. José Horacio Gómez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, vice president of the same episcopal conference; and Monsignor Brian Bransfield, Secretary General [sic].

The audience will take place at noon.

Cardinals DiNardo and O'Malley are going to the Vatican because it's clear Pope Francis either (a) doesn't understand what's going on in the Church in the United States in re the ongoing abuse scandal; or (b) doesn't care; or (c) is part of the continuing coverup.

Also of note -- it sounds like Cardinal Wuerl, the guy who replaced the disgraced Cardinal McCarrick in Washington, D.C., is out, too:

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the embattled archbishop of Washington, said Tuesday that he expects to meet soon with Pope Francis to discuss the possibility of resigning.

In a letter to priests in the diocese, Wuerl mentioned a recent meeting with the Pope in Vatican City. He said the Pope asked him to consider the best course of action "as we face new revelations of the extent of the horror of the clergy abuse of children and the failures in episcopal oversight." 

Wuerl said he will meet with Francis about the resignation he presented nearly three years ago at age 75, the mandatory age for Catholic bishops to submit their retirement to the Pope. He said a decision about his future "is an essential aspect so that this archdiocesan church we all love can move forward."

It's quite likely Wuerl knew about the crimes of his predecessor and was, at best, asleep at the switch when he was at the archdiocese of Pittsburgh.

Every diocese in the United States, if it hasn't done so already, should release its files on clergy abuse. The only way to move forward is to stop hiding. The Church will not survive unless it comes to grips with the evil in its midst.

If what Archbishop Viganò claims is true... part two

In the face of continuing non-denial denials from the Vatican, Paul Rahe advances the story:

In the last few weeks, we have received further evidence of the power of the prelate-pederasts. A grand jury convened in Pennsylvania has revealed that Donald Wuerl, while bishop of Pittsburgh, covered up a priest-run child-porn ring and a host of other abuse cases involving something on the order of 100 priests, using the age-old trick of pay-offs and non-disclosure agreements. This did not stop him from being named archbishop of Washington DC and of being made a cardinal — which is to say, a Prince of the Church.

He was not even high on the list of possible nominees submitted by the Papal Nuncio. Someone powerful in the Vatican wanted him promoted, and Pope Francis responded to the news of his guilt not by ordering an investigation into Wuerl’s promotion, but with a dodge — by attributing collective guilt to us all.

We all are sinners, but collective guilt is something else entirely. But there's more -- back to Rahe:

In the meantime, Monsignor Jean-Francois Lantheaume, former first counsellor at the apostolic nunciature in Washington D.C. has emerged to confirm that Viganò‘s predecessor had been instructed to confine McCarrick by Pope Benedict, that he had witnessed the confrontation with McCarrick, and that everything else that Viganò had said was true. To this, we must add that Viganò named names in the Vatican, specifying which high officials had obstructed the investigation into McCarrick’s conduct.

As all of this suggests, we are now at a turning point. The Lavender Mafia controls the papacy and the Vatican overall, and Pope Francis is packing the College of Cardinals, who will elect the next pope, with sympathizers. Pope Francis and his minions have now been exposed, named, and shamed; and there will be a civil war within the Roman Catholic Church.

Either Francis leaves and his supporters and clients are purged, or the church is conceded to those who for decades have sheltered and promoted the pederasts and those who regard their abuse of minors as an indifferent matter. It is time that those bishops, archbishops, and cardinals who are innocent of such conduct stand up and force a house-cleaning. In the meantime, the laity should speak up loud and clear.

I need to know more, but I'm definitely clearing my throat. There's a lot more at the link. It's worth your time.

If what Archbishop Viganò claims is true. . .

. . . the implications are enormous. Writing for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher sums it up:

If it’s true, though, then we have to see conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s statement over the weekend as a nuclear bomb going off in the enemy’s capital.

Vigano said openly the kinds of things that Catholic conservatives have said privately for years. He has told tales out of school. Some defenders of Pope Francis are questioning Vigano’s motivations for doing so, but no questions about his reasons are remotely as important as this one: “Is Vigano telling the truth?”

A source reported to me recently that a prominent journalist in Francis’s circles had been saying that the McCarrick scandal had the potential to make the Church “implode.” I didn’t understand how that could happen, but now that Vigano has published, it makes sense. McCarrick is a condensed symbol of the entire web of sexual, ecclesial, and financial corruption spread throughout significant portions of the Catholic hierarchy.

The corruption began many years ago. We've been watching a modified limited hangout for the last twenty years. It never seems to end because too many people are still trying to avoid telling the truth. The linked piece is quite long and includes long passages from other sources, but it's worth your time.

The Faithful

We've been away a few days and there are countless things to discuss. Where to begin? We'll start here.

The primary order of business was bringing Fearless Maria to college. She is a student at Saint Louis University. She hasn't decided on a major yet, which seems wise inasmuch as she's only beginning her education tomorrow morning. SLU is a lot of things -- it's a mid-sized university with about 8,000 undergraduates. It's a Jesuit institution in a city with a large Catholic presence, but in a state that is part of the Bible Belt. It's a school that spends much of its time teaching its students practical things, with a heavy emphasis on STEM professions, especially in the medical field. It's an ambitious institution with a large endowment, north of a billion dollars, placing it in the top echelon of universities in the United States, although its renown does not match that of similar Catholic colleges such as Georgetown, Notre Dame, or Boston College. It lives in the considerable shadow of its neighbor five miles to the west, Washington University. It's a school that has benefited greatly from the pitched battles for students who seek to go to a top-echelon school, but fall just short for reasons that seem completely arbitrary. SLU lacks the glamor of Georgetown, but the substance of the education will be quite similar. It's also a long way from Minneapolis, every bit of nine hours by car. The city of St. Louis has its issues, but there are ample opportunities there. We are eager to see what happens in the next four years.

***

We returned to the Twin Cities on Friday and attended Mass at our home parish, St. Rose of Lima in Roseville. The presider at Mass was Archbishop Bernard Hebda, who was there to formally install our new pastor, Fr. Marc Paveglio. It was a lively Mass and it was a rare event to have the Archbishop in your house of worship. Hebda did not avoid the painful subject of clerical abuse, which continues to unfold. Many Catholics have turned away from the Church, but today's Gospel reading, from John 6, spoke directly to the question.

Many of Jesus' disciples who were listening said,

"This saying is hard; who can accept it?"

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,

he said to them, "Does this shock you?

What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending

to where he was before? 

It is the spirit that gives life,

while the flesh is of no avail.

The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.

But there are some of you who do not believe."

Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe

and the one who would betray him. 

And he said,

"For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me

unless it is granted him by my Father."

As a result of this,

many of his disciples returned to their former way of life

and no longer accompanied him.

Jesus then said to the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?" 

Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go? 

You have the words of eternal life. 

We have come to believe

and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."

Emphasis mine. Archbishop Hebda reminded us that we face the same question that Peter had to answer. The Church has made it easy, too easy, for people to leave, to go elsewhere. My sense is many Catholics are not becoming mainline Protestants, either, but rather turning away from organized religion entirely and, too often, turning away from God. I do not mean to diminish the horror of what too many priests and their superiors did to their victims, but the greater sin these men bear is that of turning away the faithful through their actions. Hebda's challenge, which Fr. Paveglio also shares, is to help us face the continuing reckoning, while also ensuring we do not lose faith, that we do not turn away from the promise of eternal life.

And the challenge continues, as today's headlines suggest:

In an extraordinary 11-page written testament, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States has accused several senior prelates of complicity in covering up Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s allegations of sexual abuse, and has claimed that Pope Francis knew about sanctions imposed on then-Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI but chose to repeal them.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C. from 2011 to 2016, said that in the late 2000s, Benedict had “imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis” and that Viganò personally told Pope Francis about those sanctions in 2013.

Archbishop Viganò said in his written statement, simultaneously released to the Register and other media, (see full text below) that Pope Francis “continued to cover” for McCarrick and not only did he “not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him” but also made McCarrick “his trusted counselor.”  Viganò said that the former archbishop of Washington advised the Pope to appoint a number of bishops in the United States, including Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark.

Archbishop Viganò, who said his “conscience dictates” that the truth be known as “the corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy,” ended his testimony by calling on Pope Francis and all of those implicated in the cover up of Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse to resign.   

By the way, Cardinal Tobin, who has his own issues, replaced Archbishop Hebda, who had been in Newark before Pope Francis sent him to St. Paul-Minneapolis. But let's set that aside for the moment. The real question is this: what do we make of this sensational allegation? Francis, above all else, is supposed to be a reformer, but if Archbishop Viganò is correct, Francis is an active participant in the continuing scandal. And it also raises another question -- what other forces were at play when Benedict XVI stepped aside? 

I have struggled with Francis since he became Pope. In important ways, he's been helping us focus on first principles, especially the importance of joining faith and good works. But in other ways, he's muddied the waters. Discernment is a continuing activity for Catholics; it has to be, really, because unexamined faith withers away. 

***

I had planned to get to John McCain and the continuing Trump circus, but that's enough for this evening. We'll get back to that and more in the coming days.