Most cardinals are creditors when western observers believe – the press.com

Editors who report on church in western media usually come from the domestic departments. Their perception is trimmed towards power struggles and coalition formation, election winners and losers, and they need clear labels. You can hardly blame them that this tools also look at a pope election, even if there should be less partisan in the upcoming conclave than ever.

This time there may be a handful of cardinals, the intrigue spiders. But there is no longer, like in 1963, a curial party, or like a French party in 1903. Those probably have the clearest view that confess that they don’t have a pale shimmer who could be the next Pope. One like Francis – after all, 108 of the 133 cardinals selected by the papers are appointed by him? But what does that mean? Francis himself was chosen by cardinals that had been selected by his predecessors. And then it was somehow very different.

The attitude to life of the dying Homo Europae

Conservative or progressive? What is different from Arborelius, which Francis, as the first Swedes in church history, made a cardinal? A vehement advocate of the traditional Catholic sexual morality. And a fighter against climate change and for the dignity of the migrants that the liberal magazine « Focus » chose the « Sweden of the Year ». Or let’s look at East Timor: Almost exclusively Catholic, but often still enforced by magical-natural religious ideas. Or the Buddhist Myanmar or Islamic Pakistan with small Catholic minorities. Or the bitterly armed, war -eaten Congo. Everywhere the church grows under unimaginable challenges, and labels such as conservative or progressive do not fit on its cardinals, which at most provide information about whether something fits the current attitude to life of the dying Homo Europae.

With all this diversity, the new Pope will be chosen because of his personality. And Western observers often have another handicap: they do not consider that most cardinals actually believe in what they practice. And therefore really give her voice to the one for which there is a voice in your heart that you attribute to the Holy Spirit. A connoisseur who does not have this blind spot, Cardinal Schönborn, has therefore made the most precise prediction of the profile of the most promising candidate: holy and wise. Not more.

The author was deputy editor -in -chief of the « press » and is now head of communication at the Archdiocese of Vienna.

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