VATICAN CITY
Chiesa
The most active are the cardinals, the bishops, the theologians who want to innovate in Church doctrine and practice on marriage and homosexuality. But in the first round of elections for the next synod, the defenders of tradition are much more numerous
by Sandro Magister
ROME, February 5, 2015 – As pre-announced by the secretary general of the synod of bishops, Lorenzo Baldisseri (in the photo), the first selection of participants at the assembly next October has been made public, after their election by their respective episcopal conferences.
What the delegation of the United States would be like was already known. The four appointees are all against the admission of the divorced and remarried to communion – a crucial point of the clash underway – while one of Pope Francis’s favorites, the progressive Blase Cupich, fresh from his promotion to the important archdiocese of Chicago, has not been elected.
France’s delegation appears more balanced, with the progressive Jean-Luc Brunin, president of the commission for the family of the French episcopal conference, counterbalanced by Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, archbishop of Paris.
Among the delegates of Spain, the one who received the most votes is the archbishop of Valladolid and president of the episcopal conference, new cardinal Ricardo Blázquez Pérez, for years a staunch supporter of the Neocatechumenal Way, which is the Catholic movement most engaged in defending the traditional model of the family. While the pope’s favorite, new archbishop of Madrid Carlos Osoro Sierra, made it onto the roster only by a hair, passing by just one vote the conservative Juan Antonio Reig Plá, bishop of Alcalá de Henares.
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