VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider
The Curia is eager to turn spot light away from divisions
Paolo Mastrolilli
Rome
A drawn-out Conclave that ends up exposing divisions within the Curia. This is what circles close to the Curia are worried could happen with the papal election process. Meanwhile, cardinals have already started contacting each other to try to reach as quick and as unanimous a solution as possible.
Those closest to Joseph Ratzinger claim they were not very surprised by his resignation. He had spoken about it openly, people were aware he was considering it and some even say he had wanted to resign a year ago when he turned 85. But the time was not right given the internal scandals that had been plaguing the Curia, Nuncio Viganò’s transferral to Washington, the papal document leak, not to mention the continuous embarrassment caused by the sad events surrounding the clerical sex-abuse scandal. All these factors had made it impossible for the Pope to resign immediately because it would have looked as though he was trying to escape in the face of difficulty. But all he had done was postpone it. Those who were close to Benedict XVI knew it was only a matter of time before he decided to step down and they therefore had to prepare for that moment.
The announcement made on 11 February was the end of the road and despite the great shock it caused, it gave the Vatican the chance to think things over and to manage the succession process better. The end did not come suddenly. When they come to Rome for the Conclave, even the cardinals that were less informed about Ratzinger’s intentions will have had several weeks to reflect on the situation, contact their colleagues and get an idea of how his successor’s election could go. This, however, puts the pressure on for a quick solution to be found, particularly given the media landscape, where global communication never sleeps thanks to newspapers, television, internet and cell phones which are constantly collecting and transmitting all kinds of information. If after a day or so of voting we still see black smoke coming from the Sistine Chapel, the sense of a rift and a deep crisis within the Church will quickly spread across the world.
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