ITALY
Crux
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 13, 2014
Under ordinary circumstances, the election of a new regional vice president for the Italian bishops’ conference would elicit little more than yawns in Italy, and no reaction at all anywhere else.
Circumstances in the Catholic Church today, however, are anything but ordinary.
Thus it was that Tuesday’s 140-60 win by Bishop Mario Meini of Fiesole over Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto as vice president for Central Italy of CEI, the Italian episcopal conference, was quickly hailed as a bellwether for the direction of the Church in the early 21st century.
Specifically, the result has been seen as a vote of no confidence for the role the moderate-to-progressive Forte played at the recent Synod of Bishops for the family. Forte was the lead author of a controversial interim report with daringly positive evaluations of same-sex unions and other kinds of relationships outside the bounds of official Church teaching.
Backlash against the interim report set the stage for far more cautious language in the synod’s final document, and his defeat this week has been styled as an additional rebuke.
One traditionalist Catholic blog in Italy carried the news of the election along with an image of a cell phone screen displaying the prompt, “Message Received!” An English-language Catholic blog said the outcome expressed “blowback from the scandalous press and the politburo tactics applied at the October Synod.”
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