CNA Staff, Apr 1, 2024 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis said he was “used” in the 2005 conclave in an effort to block the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, though he supported the candidacy of the man who soon became Pope Benedict XVI.
“He was my candidate,” Francis said of his predecessor in excerpts from the forthcoming book “The Successor,” published by the Spanish newspaper ABC on Easter Sunday.
In the book, Pope Francis told Spanish journalist Javier Martínez-Brocal that his name, then-Cardinal Jose Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, was put forward as part of a “complete maneuver” by an unnamed group of cardinals to manipulate the conclave’s outcome.
“The idea was to block the election of [Ratzinger],” he explained. “They were using me, but behind them they were already thinking about proposing another cardinal. They still couldn’t agree on who, but they were already on the verge of throwing out a name.”
Francis said that at one point of the conclave, which began on April 18, 2005, he was receiving 40 of the 115 total votes. If cardinals continued to support him, Ratzinger would not have reached the necessary two-thirds threshold to be elected, likely prompting a search for an alternative candidate.
Francis said that he realized the “operation” was afoot on the second day of voting and told the Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillón to not “joke with my candidacy” and cease supporting him, “because I’m not going to accept” being elected.
Austen Ivereigh, the pope’s English-speaking biographer, has previously written that Bergoglio, “almost in tears,” had begged not to be elected.
Ratzinger, who had been the longtime prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II, was elected that same day.
Pope Francis did not say who this group of conclave manipulators consisted of nor who they planned to introduce as a third candidate, but the Argentinian prelate said that the group of cardinals “did not want a ‘foreign’ pope.”
Several accounts from the time have claimed that a group of liberal European cardinals, known as the Saint Gallen Group, attempted to manipulate the outcome of the 2005 conclave. Three members of the group, German Cardinals Walter Kasper and Karl Lehmann and Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, also participated in the 2013 conclave that elected Francis. According to Ivereigh, they advocated for Bergoglio after first securing his assent, a claim the cardinals have denied.
According to Universi Dominici Gregis, an apostolic constitution governing papal conclaves, cardinal electors must refrain from “any form of pact, agreement, promise, or other commitment of any kind which could oblige them to give or deny their vote to a person or persons” under threat of automatic excommunication.
Conclave proceedings are, by definition, secretive, as the term is derived from a Latin word that means a “locked room.” But in “The Successor,” Francis said that while cardinals are sworn to secrecy regarding conclave proceedings, “the popes have license to tell it.”
Pope Francis also revealed that while others were putting his name forward in the hopes of forcing a stalemate, he believed Ratzinger “was the only one at that time [who] could be pope.”
“After the revolution of John Paul II, who had been a dynamic pontiff, very active, with initiative who traveled … there was a need for a pope who maintained a healthy balance, a transitional pope,” the Holy Father said of his predecessor, who served from 2005 to 2013.
Francis also said that he left Rome happy that Ratzinger had been elected and not himself.
“If they had chosen someone like me, who makes a lot of trouble, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything,” he said. “At that time, it would not have been possible.”
Nonetheless, Pope Francis added that the papacy “wasn’t easy” for Benedict XVI, who “encountered a lot of resistance within the Vatican.”
Pope Francis was also asked what the Holy Spirit was saying to the Church through the election of Benedict XVI.
“’I am in charge here,’” Francis said of the Spirit’s response. “’There is no room for maneuver.’”
“The Successor” is part of a flurry of Francis-focused books being released in the 87-year-old Jesuit’s 11th year as pontiff, which also includes “Life: My Story Through History,” the pope’s first autobiography.
The new book, which focuses on the relationship between Pope Francis and Benedict XVI, is set to be published in Spanish on Wednesday, April 3, with no details yet available on an English edition.
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His Holiness surprisingly admits to knowledge of the 2005 effort by a group of cardinals, some alleged members of the St Gallen Group to have illicitly advocated for him, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in defiance of Universi Dominici Gregis and possible excommunication. He remonstrated he didn’t want this, prayed and that God, “Who’s in charge” intervened for Joseph Ratzinger. God adding “There is no room for maneuver”.
There’s a slight glitch. A similar scenario occurred during the 2013 conclave led again by Cardinal Kasper et Al cardinals advocating for once again for Bergoglio. This was revealed by Austen Ivereigh in his first edition of the Great Reformer, then immediately redacted out in the 2nd edition when he realized his spilling the beans. Although the 2013 revelation in this article was not revealed by His Holiness, rather by CNA’s Jonathan Liedl. Might we presume His Holiness was aware of the 2013 rigging scenario and wishes to suggest to us that his election was favorably sanctioned by the God who is in charge?
The election of a successor to the Petrine ministry is the job of the Holy Spirit. Mere mortals are expected to pray, fast, discern, and allow the Holy Spirit to perform the unthinkable.
Surely at this pojnt in time Pope Francis does not mean to suggest that packing the conclave would be inoffensive to the electoral rules.
Earlier reminiscences by others indicate that Bergoglio was on more intimate terms with the members of the so-called Sankt Gallen Mafia.
Also, in reading through these reports one can place what happened in the timeline alongside what was occurring in one’s own Archdiocese.
The second link describes the vision for regionalism and decentralization.
Pre-2013
‘ As Ivereigh described in his 2014 book on Pope Francis, Murphy-O’Connor was also tasked with lobbying for Bergoglio among his North American counterparts as well as acting as a link for those from Commonwealth countries. ‘
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-st-gallen-group-cardinal-dies/
Pre-2005
‘ Müller-Meiningen also reports on the first contacts between Bergoglio and the Sankt Gallen Group. In February of 2001, Kasper, Lehmann, and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, were all raised by Pope John Paul II to be cardinals, together with Bergoglio. At a meeting of cardinals in that May of 2001, where the topic of the relationship between the Universal Church and the local churches was being discussed, the participants got to know each other better. According to Müller-Meiningen, it was then that “Bergoglio made contact with Martini.”
At the following 2001 synod of bishops [“The Bishop: Servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the Hope of the World”] in October of that same year, “the Sankt Gallen Group was very impressed with the skill and the views of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who wrote the final report of the synod.” And, as the authors of the Danneels biography recount, “the appreciation was mutual.”
Moreover, Müller-Meiningen continues, the Sankt Gallen Group, at their yearly gatherings each January, recurrently discussed such themes as “sexual morality, the ordination of women, how to deal with remarried divorcees, also about the role of the local churches.”
Curial Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, who, since 2003, had replaced the ailing Cardinal Martini in the group, reported himself about the bad health of John Paul II. When the names of potential candidates of a future pope were discussed, Bishop Ivo Fürer, the organizer of the group, remembers, according to Müller-Meiningen: “Also the name Bergoglio came up.” Fürer later received a post card from those members of the Sankt Gallen Group who had participated in the Conclave of 2005, and it contained the following words: “We are here in the spirit of Sankt Gallen.” Müller-Meiningen convincingly shows that the Sankt Gallen Group did not at all favor Cardinal Ratzinger.
An anonymous diary of one of the participating cardinals recounts how Bergoglio, after Martini withdrew his candidacy because of his own health problems, was gaining more and more votes, but, then, in the end, in order to avoid a split among the cardinals, Bergoglio withdrew his own candidature. After the election of Joseph Ratzinger, the Sankt Gallen Group formally met one last time, in 2006, when Ivo Fürer retired and left his post in Sankt Gallen. ‘
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-themes-of-the-synod-the-themes-of-the-sankt-gallen-mafia-club/
General
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11248263/English-cardinal-Cormac-Murphy-OConnor-lobbied-for-Pope.html
I must credit the LIFESITE commenter Two Small Coins, for bringing the 2 LIFESITE links and the TELEGRAPH one, above, to the fore in the comboxes there yesterday. They were not tracked by myself nor unearthed in an extensive research.