Cardinals attack Pope’s liberal legacy in pre-conclave talks

Cardinals have criticised the record of the late Pope Francis at closed-door meetings before the conclave next week to elect a new pontiff.

Cardinal Beniamino Stella, who was considered close to Francis, has joined the attack. Picture: AFP

Cardinals have criticised the record of the late Pope Francis at closed-door meetings before the conclave next week to elect a new pontiff.

Days after 400,000 people mourned the death of Francis at his funeral on Saturday, some cardinals have attacked his policies in speeches at the so-called general congregations held to discuss the future of the church.

“We have listened to many complaints against Francis’s papacy in these days,” one unnamed cardinal told America Magazine, a Jesuit publication.

Although some cardinals have praised Francis, the criticisms suggest that he upset others during his 12-year papacy. Among the critical cardinals was Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, 93, who lambasted Francis’s long-running synod on how to run the church, which has been accused of transferring decision-making from bishops to churchgoers.

Few had expected Cardinal Zen – a conservative opposed to Francis’s liberal papacy – to defend his record, but cardinals were shocked when Beniamino Stella, an Italian cardinal considered close to Francis, joined the attack.

He criticised the Pope’s decision in 2022 to open up top Vatican jobs, previously reserved for priests and cardinals, to any baptised lay Catholic, including women.

In January Francis named an Italian nun, Simona Brambilla, as the first woman to run the department responsible for all of the Catholic Church’s religious orders.

Cardinal Stella, 83, “openly attacked Pope Francis” for “bypassing the long-standing tradition of the church”, a cardinal told America Magazine. Cardinal Stella’s criticism came as a surprise because it is believed he has been lobbying cardinals to elect Pietro Parolin, the former secretary of state under Francis, as the pope.

Conservatives have also been critical a leading progressive candidate, Luis Antonio Tagle of The Philippines, for appearing in a video in 2019 singing the John Lennon song Imagine, which envisages a world with “no religion” – even if Cardinal Tagle left that line out in his on-stage performance.

The general congregations being held before the conclave on May 7 are attended by cardinals under the age of 80 who are eligible to vote, in addition to those over 80 who can make speeches but not enter the conclave.

Two of the 135 electors are too ill to make it, leaving 133 set to enter the Sistine Chapel. Vinko Puljic, 79, a Bosnian Croat cardinal, will vote from his room at the Vatican residence where the cardinals are staying because he is too infirm to move.

Doubts have been raised about the true age of Philippe Ouedraogo, a cardinal from Burkina Faso. Last year the Vatican listed his birthday as January 24, 1945, meaning he is now 80 and too old to vote, but this year it changed his birthday to December 31, 1945, meaning he is 79 and can take part. Cardinal Ouedraogo has said he was born at home and his exact birth date was not recorded.

Opposition is also growing to the presence at the meetings of the Peruvian cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, 81, a member of the Opus Dei religious order who faces sexual abuse allegations, which he denies.

THE TIMES