As Cardinals Get down to Business, Tensions Rise

By Barney Zwartz
Canberra Times
March 10, 2013

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/as-cardinals-get-down-to-business-tensions-rise-20130309-2fser.html

Power of prayer: priests and pilgrims kneel in front of St Peter's Basilica.

Arriving: Cardinal George Pell at the Vatican

After a week of general meetings, the world's Catholic cardinals have settled on Tuesday, March 12, to start the meeting to select a new Pope.

At their second meeting of the day on Friday the assembled 115 cardinals who are under 80, plus dozens more ineligible to join the conclave because they are over 80, voted to go into seclusion from Tuesday.

Compared with the conclave of 2005, there have been public tensions and disagreements with non-Italian and non-Curia (Vatican bureaucracy) cardinals resisting pressure to move quickly and demands for answers to questions about Vatican scandals such as last year's ''Vatileaks'' crisis and the Vatican bank. The cardinals are also believed to want time to get to know each other and to have their staff research potential candidates before the conclave makes outside communication impossible.

The Italian and curial cardinals reportedly have been pressing for an early conclave. This would increase their influence as newer or more remote cardinals who do not know each other well would have less time to agree on the main challenges facing the church.

For first-world cardinals, these include the flight from faith by younger Catholics, loss of confidence in the church, the clergy sex abuse crisis and how to handle such controversial social issues as the place of women, homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, divorce and remarriage, and the decline in priests.

For cardinals from the developing world, social justice, poverty, environmental issues and relations with Islam and other faiths take centre stage. For both groups, the government of the church and reform of the Curia have risen sharply up the agenda.

American cardinals, who had been giving daily press conferences in Rome, were silenced when Italian cardinals complained that too much information was appearing in the media. This caused many raised eyebrows as most of the anonymous leaking came from Italian cardinals to Italian journalists.

Meanwhile, there were two main rumours in the Italian media.

First that Milan's Archbishop Angelo Scola, an early favourite whose prospects were mysteriously thought to have waned, was back as a front-runner with support from American cardinals. Scola represents ideological continuity with Benedict XVI, while not being tainted with poor Vatican government.

The second was that the Italian cardinals were prepared to back Brazilian cardinal Odilio Scherer of Sao Paulo, a Vatican veteran, provided he appointed an Italian or Curia veteran as secretary of state.

This rumour had been around for some days, but was now said to have brought together the bitter rivals of the past two holders of the job, Angelo Sodano and Tarcisio Bertone.

As in 2005, the cardinals have agreed to maintain a media silence in the time leading up to the conclave. They will hold a preparatory Mass in St Peter's Basilica on Tuesday morning, then enter the Sistine Chapel in the afternoon. They will be secluded from then until the announcement of a new Pope.