ITALY
The Guardian (UK)
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Tuesday 15 December 2015
Pope Francis has always said Christians should seek out “encounters”, meetings that expand one’s understanding of the other and increase the capacity for love.
But there is one encounter the pope has steadfastly avoided since his election in 2013. Angelo Scola of Milan, the powerful and conservative Italian cardinal many thought would be pope before the surprise choice of the Argentinian Jesuit known as Father Bergoglio, received word of the latest apparent snub last week.
A bulletin released by the Vatican press office announced that the archbishop of Milan had regrettably been informed by Francis’s number two, the secretary of state Pietro Parolin, that Francis’s planned trip to Milan in May was off because the pope had too many commitments in Rome. Last year, Francis fell ill shortly before two planned meetings with Scola.
The highly anticipated visit to the fashion and finance capital of Italy, which happens to be the most important archdiocese in Italy, if not Europe, would happen in 2017 instead, the Vatican said. …
“The pope does not like the idea of the church being in bed with politicians or politics. The Italian hierarchy is very … political and tied in to business and politics. Scola represents that kind of church,” said Robert Mickens, a longtime Vatican journalist and editor-in-chief of Global Pulse magazine.
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