Defenders Dismiss Plot Against Pope Francis
It's been four years since Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as Bishop of Rome. In that short period, Pope Francis has become the most controversial pontiff in the 21st century for inviting resistance among the Holy See officials on the new policies he's introducing.
Now, his papacy is the subject of intrigue in the worldwide media that is reporting of a "full-blown civil war" within the Vatican, National Catholic Reporter observed. The crisis is "spilling out into the streets," The Tablet reported, citing the anti-pope posters plastered around Rome last month.
Church officials who frequent the Vatican dismissed such reports as outlandish. "It is not a civil war. It is an insurgency by people who find change difficult," an American bishop said. Another senior Vatican official described claims of a serious and organized opposition against Pope Francis as "wishful thinking by some people."
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Robert Royal, head of Faith and Reason Institute in Washington who regularly visits Rome, thinks the turbulence in the Vatican is being blown up. "A lot of this is pure or impure speculation," he said. "Some Catholic conservatives assume there is a coordinated network of liberals waiting to take over the church. I don't."
One example is the London Times piece that gave prominence to an Italian journalist's claim that several cardinals who voted for Pope Francis during the conclave are now persuading him to resign so they can install Secretary of State Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin to the throne.
"I certainly don't see plots. I don't see all this seething behind the cassocks of prelates all over Rome," said Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, one of Pope Francis' main advisers in the United States. "It really is a concern of a few people in a few locations that is amplified by the megaphone of the media that support them."
