Pope Francis ends a difficult year, marked by the fight with conservatives and health problems

The tenth year of the pontificate of Pope Francis, who turned 87 on the 17th of this month, ends with great uproar in the Church following the document Trust Suplicans presented to the Pope by the cardinal, also Argentine, Víctor Fernández, new head of the Dicastery of the Faith, one of the most important.

The pontiff approved it and the hardest disputes were resolved of the era of Pope Bergoglio because it authorizes blessings for homosexual couples, clarifying that it does not change the position of the Church which prohibits marriages between people of the same sex.

The old year ends in a totally different way from the beginning. Exactly one year ago, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the German Joseph Ratzinger, died, having announced his resignation ten years ago. The great conservative theologian would probably not even agree with the strong change approved by the Argentine pontiff regarding trans blessings.

The death of the Pope Emeritus was a hard blow for traditionalists and conservativeswhich had in Benedict XVI a bulwark to avoid what is happening now.

Polarization in the Church

The question of the legitimacy of the blessing of gay couples polarizes the Church. The reaction of the German Church to Francis’ openness was enthusiastic, summarized by the president of the German bishops, Cardinal Georg Batzing. “I welcome this document with great satisfaction and appreciate the pastoral perspective it adopts.”

The Pope’s strategy of holding a two-part Synod of Synods, in October 2023 and in the same month of 2024, which opens the final phase of his pontificate, aims to make changes which at the same time contain the positions found between progressives and traditionalists.

The novelty of the document that allows the blessing for homosexuals is a move that aims to satisfy but also to contain the ultra-progressive German positions, which also call for female priesthood, the end of celibacy for Latin rite priests and other audacities.

Most other European churches supported the papal document. The Polish and Hungarian episcopates spoke out against it.

In the United States, the bishops’ conference immediately spoke in favor, causing surprise. He noted that the Vatican document articulates “a distinction between liturgical (sacramental) blessings and pastoral blessings. “The Church’s teaching on marriage has not changed,” she absolved.

They also supported the powerful Mexican and Philippine churches.

Africa, against the blessing of homosexuals

On the other hand, Africa was a block against blessings for same-sex couples. Rejection on the continent, where most countries harshly punish the exercise of homosexuality, has led some sectors to call for a continental meeting to repudiate the document. In Kenya, the bishops’ conference clarified that it is clear “that it is a question of a family and a marriage”. The bishops of Zambia stated that it is not a question of implementing the document “but of discussing it”.

The Episcopal Conference of Malawi recalled that blessings for homosexuals “of any nature” are not permitted in the country.

The bishops of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, have assured Catholic faithful that the teaching of the Church “remains the same.”

“There is no possibility in the Church to bless unions and activities between people of the same sex, which would go against the law of God and his own teachings”, as well as contradicting the laws of the country and “the cultural sensitivity of our people.

In Eastern Europe, the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference said that the Vatican Declaration constitutes “a danger due to its ambiguous wording which provokes divergent interpretations.”

The serious diplomatic crisis with which the year ends, resulting from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, has forced the Pope to an exhausting effort. In all of his speeches he reiterated the appeal for peace and the condemnation of the wars also carried out by arms dealers, which Francis never tires of denouncing.

Mediation for peace

They seek mediation They did not have a concrete beginning, but the role of the Argentine Pope is so exceptional and solitary that it is expected to be successful in the future.

Jorge Bergoglio used in his mediations a character on whom the spotlight of the press and world public opinion is increasingly shining. This is Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna and president of the powerful Italian Episcopal Conference. The reason: he is considered the most likely successor to the Pope.

Zuppi has traveled to Ukraine, Russia and China in his peace mediation duties. He is Roman, an important fact, and as a priest of the Community of Sant’Egidio, today the most influential lay group in the Church, he has collaborated and even directed mediations between political forces in African countries which ended successfully.

This Saturday, in a television program, he said: “If someone is Catholic and doesn’t have good relations with the Pope, any Pope, the problem is that perhaps he has forgotten that he is Catholic.”

He added that “there is a good dialectical relationship between the Italian Church and Pope Francis. Zuppi recalled that Francis asked the Italian Church to “be lighter, to do a lot with little, to contribute to doing a lot”.

The Pope’s health

2023 has been a complicated year for the Pope’s health. The problems with his right knee, which prevent him from celebrating Mass standing, are at a positive level which allows him to walk little and above all to stand. On the other hand, the fragility of his respiratory system has forced him to suspend his activities twice this year. Bronchial infections forced him to cancel a very important trip to the world climate meeting in November.

In June, he also had to suffer a second operation in the abdominal area to treat problems that arose from a previous operation in which surgeons had removed sixty centimeters of his large intestine. His recovery was absolute.

In December he reappeared, yes, his antagonism with the American cardinal Raymond Burke, a famous canonist, who at 75 has earned the title of the Pope’s greatest adversary.

On November 20, the Pope announced, at a meeting of the heads of the Vatican dicasteries (“ministries”), that he had decided to strip Cardinal Raymond Burke of the so-called cardinal’s plate, or the salary of approximately 5,000 euros that cardinals earn. also the free use of the luxurious 400 square meter apartment that was assigned to the conservative cardinal in the building on the edge of St. Peter’s Square where the Holy See Press Office is located, also inhabited by other cardinals.

This Friday, surprisingly, The Pope received Burke and reignited gossip and controversy whose background noise is the growing confrontation between conservatives and progressives.

Nothing was leaked. Burke said he did not want to comment and the Vatican simply announced the meeting and published a photograph of Bergoglio and Burke shaking hands. An unconfirmed version claims that Francis did not change his punishment, but that the two spoke “candidly”.

It is not known whether the document Trust Suplicans and the theme of blessings to homosexual couples, with high radioactive power, was one of the themes of the meeting.