UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Massimo Faggioli
Professor of History of Christianity, University of St. Thomas
The letter sent to Pope Francis by a group of cardinals on Monday, October 12 should be seen for what it is. It is not a question of the substance or method of the work of the Synod, but an attack on the legitimacy of the direction Pope Francis is taking the Church, and therefore an attack on the Pope himself.
Published (in circumstances yet to be clarified) by Sandro Magister, L’Espresso magazine’s Vatican reporter, the letter was signed by about a dozen high-level Church officials from around the world. At the moment, the list of the actual names of the signatories is fluctuating: The list published Monday night (EST) by America, a Catholic weekly magazine published by Jesuits in the United States, reports the following names: Caffarra (Archbishop of Bologna), Collins (Archbishop of Toronto), DiNardo (Archbishop of Houston), Dolan (Archbishop of New York), Eijk (Archbishop of Utrecht), Müller (Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), Napier (Archbishop of Durban, South Africa), Njue (Archbishop of Nairobi, Kenya), Pell (Prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy), Rivera Carrera (Archbishop of Mexico City), Sarah (Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship), Sgreccia (President Emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life) and Urosa Savino (Archbishop of Caracas, Venezuela).
However, it is possible that there are different versions of the same letter, other signatories, or even (possibly) other officials whose names were signed without their knowledge (four cardinals, Erdö, Scola, Piacenza and Vignt-Trois, denied signing yesterday.)
This is the boldest and most visible move in the ecclesiastical establishment’s conflict with Pope Francis. Since March 2013, there has been a sense of mounting resistance to the pontificate, with the Synod of Bishops being the focal point. The fact that the letter was sent to the Pope on October 5, the first day of the Synod, is proof that it was an initiative coordinated well before the commencement of the assembly in Rome (and it is this initiative that Francis referred to in his speech about the “hermeneutic of conspiracy” on October 6 in the Synod Hall). It is also clear that while Francis was visiting America, certain American bishops –when they were not busy embracing the Pope– were preparing an attack on Francis that they would never have dreamed of launching against Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI.
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