UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Pope Francis is halfway through his four year term. He can be expected to retire at the end of of 2016 — after he helps (with his Cuba, Oscar Romero, Junipero Serra, Our Lady of Guadalupe, anti-contraception, anti-gay marriage, etc., media missiles) get out the Latino vote for the JebBush/Ted Cruz ticket in the US presidential elections. By then, as an 80 year old with one lung, he will likely be replaced by Cardinal Parolin, whom Francis is evidently grooming as his successor, to be expected for one of of powerful Cardinal Sodano’s top proteges.
A two-day Cardinals’ meeting in Rome, before Pope Francis installs 20 new Cardinals on Feb. 14, will now fine tune the Catholic Church’s top down central bureaucracy to assure a smooth transition to an even tighter papal control under a younger pope. Church leaders under Francis have evidently decided to work together in mutual self interest to stonewall outside government efforts to subject the Vatican and Cardinals to their laws protecting children. How long can such a short sighted strategy succeed? Not long, as I discuss below.
Francis so far appears to have met the main goals of the frightened Cardinals who elected him two years ago. He has kept all of them out of jail and most of their bishops out of bankruptcy courts, despite several serious scandals. He has also stemmed the theft of Vatican wealth and gotten financial regulators to back off somewhat. None of these outcomes appeared inevitable when the failed Pope Benedict suddenly quit under pressure two years ago. The ex-Pope, a misguided manager, left his successor a massive legal and financial mess in the Church’s “house of cards”, as Francis quaintly put it. Francis has navigated this so far by skillfully employing media management and by pursuing dangerous geo-politics, ranging from endearing himself to major leaders of China and Russia, Saudi Arabia and US Republicans, to dictators in Cuba and even to the disgraceful “leader for life” Mugabe in Africa, see “Zimbabwean leader among faithful marking Pope Paul VI′s beatification“, here,
Francis has, disappointingly but not surprisingly, “charged” the wishful thinking and docile “Catholic 99.99%” a very high price to save the 0.01 % Church leadership. Among other charges, (1) children remain at serious risk of sexual predator priests due to continued Vatican stonewalling on child abuse, as Peter Saunders, the leader of UK abuse survivors recently added to Francis’ new sex abuse commission, has just boldly reminded Francis, see”Pope Francis told to hand priests over to police as new Vatican child abuse commission starts work“, here,
(2) many women are still denied access to effective contraception options and all women remain perpetual subordinates as “Adam’s ribs”, and (3) major Vatican financial liabilities still remain, as is even more evident now with the release of Jesuit educated and former Wall Street lawyer, Gerald Posner’s explosive and comprehensive book, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican” , (see at [Amazon] link).
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