VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost
AFP
Conservative cardinals have accused Pope Francis of stacking the cards against them in an ongoing battle over issues including the Church’s approach to gays and to divorced and remarried believers, it emerged Monday.
In a letter sent to the pontiff on October 5, the opening day of a Church synod on the family, a group of 13 cardinals described procedures for three weeks of discussions as “designed to facilitate predetermined results on important disputed questions.”
The ostensibly private (but quickly leaked) letter was delivered to the pope by Australian Cardinal George Pell and signed by 12 of his peers, including the archbishops of Toronto and New York, Thomas Collins and Timothy Dolan, and two of the Vatican’s arch-conservatives, Hungarian cardinal Peter Erdo and Carlo Caffarra, the archbishop of Bologna.
A day later, without making any reference to the letter, Francis made an unscheduled intervention in the synod discussions to warn participants not to be taken in by “spiritually unhelpful” conspiracy theories.
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