He Is Pope. Elected by All the Rules

By Sandro Magister
Chiesa
January 5, 2015

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350961?eng=y

An authoritative canonist rebuts the arguments of those who view Bergoglio’s election as invalid and therefore do not recognize him as pope. But uncertainties remain about the maneuvers that preceded the white smoke

ROME, January 5, 2015 – Even after the unveiling of the names of those whom Pope Francis will elevate to the scarlet in the second round of cardinalate appointments of his pontificate, the conclave that elected him pope remains tinged with shadows.

Naturally, there is no conclave that does not draw together the threads of “maneuvers” aimed at the election of one or another candidate to the papacy. They are “maneuvers” that may mature in a few days, or even in a few hours. Or they may go on for years. Even their innocence can be of varying levels. So much so that the apostolic constitution “Universi Dominici Gregis,” which regulates the election of the popes, expressly invalidates “any form of pact, agreement, promise or other commitment of any kind” that in exchange for the vote would lay claim to bind the future elect.

In an article last July 1, www.chiesa demonstrated in what sense and to what extent the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio could approach - without being equated with one - a pact of this kind, seeing the insistence with which the current pope says that he “follows what the cardinals asked for during the general congregations before the conclave”:

> Vatican Diary / "I follow what the cardinals asked"

But this in fact has to do with the natural dynamic of every papal election. And it is what the English vaticanista Austen Ivereigh has brought to light in a passage from his recent book on Pope Francis, “The Great Reformer," identifying cardinals Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Walter Kasper, Karl Lehmann, and Godfried Danneels as four active promoters of the election of Bergoglio.

Ivereigh’s book has given rise to controversies that Fr. Federico Lombardi, the official Vatican spokesman, has hastened to extinguish with the stated agreement of the four cardinals.

In any case, there were no doubts here over the validity of the election of Pope Francis. Which instead has been denied by another Catholic writer, Antonio Socci, in a book that has sold very well: “He Is Not Francis."

Socci substantiates his thesis in about twenty pages out of the almost three hundred of his book. And he does so on the basis of the paragraphs of “Universi Dominici Gregis” that regulate election procedure. This procedure is claimed to have been seriously violated, in his judgment, after the scrutineers found an extra blank ballot among those of the fourth round of voting on March 13, 2014. The conclusion that Socci draws from this is that “Bergoglio’s election is null, it never existed.”

Three months after the release of his book, Socci written that “there has not been a single cardinal who has declared in public or has let me know in private that the events of the conclave did not take place in the way described by my book.”

That’s not all. He added that “there has not been even one authoritative canonist who has demonstrated that the procedures followed were correct, and therefore that the election of Pope Francis is canonically irreproachable.”

Neither has there been, among the canonists, anyone who has said he shares Socci’s arguments and has publicly stated that the election of Pope Francis was invalid.

In any case, the following commentary, written by a canonist of sure authority, demonstrates on the basis of strictly juridical arguments the “complete lack of foundation” for Socci’s ideas and therefore the full legitimacy of the election of Pope Francis.

The author is a full professor of canon law and of the history of canon law at the university “Alma Mater Studiorum” of Bologna, as well as being a member of the executive board of the "Consociatio Internationalis Studio Iuris Canonici Promovendo,” and is preparing to publish a book on the strictly canonical profile of events like the resignation of Benedict XVI, the new figure of the “pope emeritus,” and none other than the election of Francis.

The complete text of the commentary can be found on this other page of www.chiesa:

> Sull'elezione di papa Francesco

The following are its main passages.