VATICAN CITY
The New Yorker
POSTED BY JOAN ACOCELLA
Why did the Roman Catholic cardinals choose, as their Pope, a man who liked to ride the bus and cook his own dinner? Didn’t they guess that such a person might not be a good advertisement of the Church’s magnificence? And when Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, probably the most self-abnegating man ever to direct a religious order—and one whose name, tellingly, had never before been selected by a Pope—didn’t they worry a little bit? They should have. El Mundo says that “several Vaticanists” have commented that “the Pontiff is capable of speaking without restraint on any matter, as delicate as it may be.” Recently, he gave a good example. He spoke about homosexuality in the Vatican.
On June 6th, in a meeting at the Vatican with a group named CLAR (the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious Men and Women—that is, nuns and priests), he acknowledged that there were serious problems in the Roman Curia. The organization, he said, included many holy people. “But there also is a stream of corruption, there is that as well, it is true…. The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there…. We need to see what we can do.” Transparency has been a constant theme of Francis’s administration so far. “Open the doors … Open the doors!” he said at the beginning of his address to CLAR. “Don’t be afraid to denounce!” Since when have we heard that from a Pope?
Francis’s remarks were not taped, though at least one person in the small audience was observed to have a notebook. After the meeting, what was said to be a summary of his remarks was leaked to the press, without his consent. This is poor evidence for the accuracy of the document, as representatives of CLAR later pointed out. They said they deeply regretted the leak, since “the singular expressions contained in the text cannot be attributed to the Holy Father with certainty.”
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