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Published: 11 February 2023
Since the death of Benedict XVI, criticism has escalated in an indication of the atmosphere of a "civil war" within the church at a time when it is going through a stage of reflection on its future.
edited by\Alexander Yanixana
Culture section-Cj journaist
February 11, 2023 - Rome-Vatican
In the Vatican, Pope Francis ' administration of the church is targeted between appointments, reforms, and a diplomatic approach, in an indication of the atmosphere of a "civil war" within the church at a time when it is going through a stage of reflection on its future.
A few days after the German pope's death on December 31 at the age of 95, his private secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, opened the campaign, asserting that the Argentine pope had "broken the heart" of his predecessor by limiting the use of Latin at Mass.
The criticism issued by the German monsignor was not isolated but falls within a line followed especially by conservatives in the Vatican about the so-called"Francis approach", accusing him of leniency in doctrine and adopting a degree of authoritarianism.
When controversial Australian Cardinal George Pell died in mid-January, an Italian journalist revealed that it was the latter who had written an unsigned memo that directly attacked Jorge Bergoglio.
Pell, a former close adviser to Francis who has contributed in particular to the rearrangement of the Vatican's finances, wrote that the pope was "catastrophic on more than one level", denouncing a"gross failure" of his diplomacy weakened by the war in Ukraine.
But the campaign intensified especially with the release in late January of a book by German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the former head of the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith, the influential body.
The book included an intense campaign against the Argentine Jesuit pope's approach to governance, denouncing the influence of a "clique" around him and criticizing his "doctrinal ambiguity".
The book caused discontent in the corridors of the Vatican. A senior State Department official said: "When you accept the cardinal's hat, you pledge to support the pope. Criticism is expressed in private and not publicly, "expressing" his disappointment".
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Italian Vatican expert Marco Politi saw the book as " a new step in the unstoppable escalation being carried out by the pope's opponents," adding to AFP "there is a civil war within the church that will continue until the last day of the papal mandate".
Asked on Sunday on the plane that was returning him from South Sudan on the subject, the pope expressed regret for the"politicization" of the death of Benedict XVI by "People devoid of moral principles, acting for Political Purposes and not members of the church".
What exacerbates these internal frictions is that they are taking place in the middle of the "synod for a synodal church".
Through these large-scale global consultations on the future of the church, the first stage of which is taking place in October in Rome, the pope intends to decentralize the governance of the church, but he runs into wide differences of views between reformists and conservatives.
Delegations from about forty countries gathered this week in Prague to discuss issues at the heart of these consultations, such as the status of women, the fight against pedophilia, the topic of divorced remarried, and the marriage of priests and homosexuals, among others.
With the convening of this World Synod, "which looks more like a miniature Synod, we will see what the weight of the various currents within the church is," Politi said.
The criticism of the pope, he said," has already succeeded in creating an intellectual current capable of influencing the next closed Synod " held to elect the pope and, through it, the next papal mandate.
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However, many observers point out that these criticisms do not threaten at the current stage to push for the possible departure of the pope, who seems to be in charge as long as his health allows him to continue his duties.
The 86-year-old pope, who has always left the door open to the possibility of stepping down, has been walking around in a wheelchair because of pain in one of his knees, but he is still very popular, and the crowds that welcomed him to Africa last week were the latest proof of this.
"My health is no longer the same as at the beginning of my papacy, my knees are bothering me, but I am slowly progressing, we will see...".
