Pope Francis’ projects: New trip to Kazakhstan and an evocative visit to L’Aquila

As soon as he returned from Canada two days ago, the Vatican announced that between 13 and 15 September Pope Francis will participate in a meeting of religious leaders in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia. A source states that “a trip by the Holy Father cannot yet be ruled out. in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, in August ”.

Francis will meet the Ukrainian ambassador to the Vatican in the coming days to discuss the issue. The Pope’s goal in the meetings he would hold with President Zelensky it is double: support the struggle of the Ukrainian people against aggression and explore the possibilities of a Vatican mediation which, in that case, would lead to then I travel to Russia to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

August is a month that will end with important appointments for Jorge Bergoglio.

On the 27th the Consistory foresees the creation of 21 new cardinals, which the Pope would interrupt for just one day to go to the city of L’Aquila, one hundred kilometers from Rome, to pay homage to the tomb of Celestine V. the pope who voluntarily resigned after having ruled the Church for only four months, in 1294, at the age of 80.

The decision of “Mix” the Consistory with a visit to the remains of the pontiff “of the great renunciation”, it’s not a casuality According to many church affairs analysts. It clearly seems to be a transversal message from Francis that it has to do with itself.

Indeed, the issue became intertwined after the events of the past two and a half months in which the same pope raised the possibility of resignation, conditioned by their own health problems. Pain in his right knee and information about the prospect of an operation have been placed at the center of speculation about his resignation from his position.

Francis himself raised the issue when he told the Italian bishops that the six hours of anesthesia who had given him on July 4, 2021 in the Gemelli operation for an infection in the diverticula of his intestine, had made him mistreated, with repercussions that lasted over time.

The Pope told the Italian bishops, according to him as a joke, that “before surgery: I resign “.

The version circulated quickly and two weeks later the fears were confirmed when the Pope began to circulate in a wheelchair. The alternative to the operation are knee injections and massage therapy, which allowed him to get back on his feet, but not stably.

that’s how missed two important trips, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan when the organization was operational.

Francis managed to make an apostolic trip to Canada at the end of July to apologize to the indigenous people who suffered terrible abuses committed by the immigrants who conquered the country, to destroy the identity of the original peoples by kidnapping their children and subjecting them to a ” education “to assimilation, which has caused countless abuses and several thousand dead children.

The trip to Canada, a success

Voyage it was a complete success and also the first of what we might call the main operational phase of the pontificate of the Argentine pope. Francisco used a wheelchair to get around.

Even before the trip, Jorge Bergoglio did well to comment on his situation. He is in good health, but the Pope cannot “make” the commitments of a super centralized institution that demands an overload of work from its boss.

In several interviews, Francisco talked about his resignation. He said he had never thought about resigning, which is hard to believe, and stressed that decision God would have taken it.

It went much further. I affirm it “if I stop I will be bishop emeritus ». In short, he dismissed a historical fact.

In February 2013, Pope Benedict XVI, the main collaborator of Saint John Paul II for over twenty years, announced his resignation because he did not feel strong enough to continue his mission. The great conservative theologian Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has decided to retire with an unprecedented gesture in seven centuries.

Ratzinger brought together the ministry of the Bishop of Rome and invented an unprecedented figure: that of Pope Emeritus, who gave him the right to continue to be called “Holiness”, to wear the white cassock and the pontifical seal. But Ratzinger made it clear that “the pope is one”.

That Francis said in an interview that if he resigns he will be Bishop Emeritus of Rome, makes Ratzinger the only Pope Emeritus in history, inhabitant of the Mater Ecclesiae monastery located in the Vatican gardens, which in the future will again become a convent of nuns or a kind of museum with the benevolent ghost by Benedict XVI.

The importance of these extraordinary days in which almost a decade of Pope Francis’ pontificate ends and the beginning of an inevitable decline that would culminate with his resignationnew circumstances are experienced in the two thousand years of the Church’s life.

There is no doubt that as a good Jesuit Francisco organized the discernment process for guide your succession. With the consistory at the end of August, 83 cardinals under the age of 80 were “created” (so they say) by the Argentine pope, most of whom respond to Bergoglian criteria and vote in the Conclave.

Discernment has long needed to be embodied in the figures. There are two: Pope Francis’ number one favorite is Cardinal of Bologna Matteo Zuppi, 67 years old. Romano, who grew up religiously in the Community of Sant’Egidio, the most powerful movement in the Church today. Zuppi is totally identified with the ideas of Francis.

The other candidate of Bergoglian extraction is the former archbishop of Manila, Luis Antonio “Tucho” Tagle, 65, who was the first to be elected as a successor. Young, very popular in his native land, which is the bastion of Catholicism in Asia.

He was president of Caritas Internationale and is enthusiastic about Bergoglio’s progressive line, which brought him to Rome and appointed him prefect of the Congregation for Evangelization, which deals with the missions and is today the main department of the Church.

These human columns seem very strong to face the continuous movements of the conservatives who, led by the archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolanthey move en masse to do battle in the Conclave and put another cardinal on the throne of St. Peter.

Conservatives and more traditionalists feared a fatal confrontation that would end in a harmful schism. But apparently the future Conclave was chosen as showdown scenario.

yes over time the inevitable death of Joseph Ratzinger takes placethat he fulfilled 95 years old April 16 will open a hectic phase because it puts on the agenda the hypothesis of resignation by Francesco ..

Reduced with the resignation of Monsignor Bergoglio, Bishop Emeritus of Rome, dressed as a black clergyman and probable inhabitant of an accommodation in the Petrine See of S. Giovanni in Laterano, the former Francis will inevitably play an influence in the Conclave who will choose his successor in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, 267th. Pope of the universal Church. Who will be?

They say that Bergoglio liked John XXIVa tribute to the Holy Pope John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council and modernized the Church, when he received 40 votes in the Conclave of 2005 which ultimately elected Joseph Ratzinger as Pope. Then he preferred to be called Francisco in 2013. If the next holy father is John XXIV, you already know where the inspiration comes from.

Vatican correspondent

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