Pope Francis’ centralization of power leaves rivals struggling to scheme

VATICAN CITY — On a drizzly Monday evening in St. Peter’s Square, some of the Catholic Church’s most powerful cardinals were dashing to get into their chauffeured rides, hoping to avoid uncomfortable encounters with journalists asking the obvious: What happens if the pope dies?

The clerics had converged on the famous square just an hour earlier to join a prayer session dedicated to the health of Pope Francis led by the pontiff’s right-hand man, Pietro Parolin, who recited the rosary with misty-eyed solemnity as large screens called on several hundred faithful to pray for his boss. Earlier this month, the pope was hospitalized with a respiratory infection that has since left him in critical condition, prompting serious discussions over his chances of survival.

That in turn has fed feverish media speculation over who might succeed him, and when the prayer session ended on Monday, journalists had a rare chance to push the Vatican’s top potentates for gossip and backroom revelations as they made off for their getaway cars — though most offered only carefully hedged benedictions in response.

“It seems there’s no reason to talk or even think about the pope’s resignation,” demurred Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco to a duo of Catholic journalists, before declining to answer a subsequent question by POLITICO by way of a passive-aggressive blessing.

Nevertheless, with morbid foresight, Vatican media, especially in Italy, have already begun to report on Francis’ illness as if the great man is already dead, feverishly churning out lists of papabili — literally, “popeable” candidates who might replace him. Some have even insinuated that preparations are already underway for the conclave that will see his successor elected, and others have wondered aloud — despite the protestations of clerics like Bagnasco — whether the pontiff would follow his predecessor Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in 600 years.

But all of this might be in vain. Thanks to the peculiarities of Francis’ rule, observers say this could be one of the most unpredictable papal succession struggles in living memory — if not ever.

Solitary beings

The typical image of a conclave, in which cardinals are crammed into the Sistine Chapel and shut off from the outside world until they settle on a new pope to the outpouring of white smoke, is of factionalism, scheming and aggressive clandestine lobbying before and during the event proper.

While that system is still very much in place — save for 1970s-era reforms banning cardinals over 80 from voting — much of the cohesion of the College of Cardinals has been fractured by Francis, who over his papacy has reduced cardinals’ opportunities for getting to know one another, and thus conspire, said Miles Pattenden, a Church historian and lecturer at Oxford University’s history faculty.

For most of the Church’s life, said Pattenden, cardinals were primarily Italian or European and would scheme freely and even unabashedly in close quarters. But Francis, he explained, has appointed a full 73 of the 138 voting cardinals outside of Europe, in places as far-flung as Mongolia and the Republic of the Congo. While ostensibly a move to reflect the Church’s shifting demographics, there was also a strategic element, he added. 

 “Francis came up with this pious rhetoric that the Church needs to appoint Catholics from all across the Catholic communion and have broader representation,” Pattenden said. “But it was also a clever way of ensuring cardinals didn’t know each other so well, that they don’t call each other, that they don’t interact in their routine business as much as they did.”

At the start of his papacy Francis also outraged many clerics by abolishing regular meetings of the College of Cardinals, known as consistories, and by marginalizing once-powerful cardinals from the United States.

These days, cardinals are “very isolated, solitary beings, who roam around like whales in the deep … many also believe in God, so are paranoid about talking out,” said one well-connected Vatican official, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, like others in this story.

A cardinal in Rome noted that he rarely encountered any of the new colleagues from the far-flung new places, and indeed knew little about them. 

“If the pope dies they won’t know anything about one another — basically just his name, his education, just bare bones,” said another person familiar with the way cardinals operate.

Indeed, somewhat comically, the people added, many are now relying on a single unlikely source to glean information about their eminent colleagues: a website called the College of Cardinals Report run by Vatican journalists Diane Montagna and Ed Pentin. Internet-based research might not sound revolutionary to the average person, but what it offers to cardinals is totally new: a comprehensive online tool summarizing the theological positions and backgrounds of all of their counterparts.

On the website they’ll find the positions of all 252 cardinals around the world, including the 22 seen as prime papabili: under the age of 80 (and thus eligible) and influential enough to stand a chance. Those tipped include the staunch German traditionalist Gerhard Müller, the flamboyant American conservative agitator Raymond Burke, the Filipino progressive Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle and the wily Parolin, Francis’ top diplomat and longest-surviving ally.

For now, at least, the content seems to be mostly fair: The cardinal quoted above, caught making a beeline for a cab amid the exodus of clerics at St. Peter’s Square on Monday, joked to POLITICO that he was relieved to see the website said nice things about him — mostly.

Francis 2.0?

While scheming at large may not be what it once was, there is another group of cardinals that operate in much closer quarters and who are more likely to already be coordinating into rival factions set on pushing through their preferred candidate.

These are the so-called curial cardinals who reside in Rome and were appointed by Francis to lead Vatican ministries, known as dicasteries. Many of these cardinals were selected for their perceived loyalty, but their apparent united front around the pope conceals wild ideological divergence, according to one person familiar with Francis and his inner sanctum. Many of these cardinals actively dislike one another, the person added, and the minute the pope dies they are likely to plunge into bitter infighting — among liberals, German reformers, fly-by-night progressives and closet conservatives.

There’s no telling what will happen. Clerics may mobilize behind a younger candidate with better future prospects, progressives might back a perceived moderate as a “puppet,” and conservatives might wield their blocking minority — all it takes is a third of cardinals — to reject any Francis continuity candidate. After years of turbulence under Francis, others might simply want a “normal” pope.

“Francis has centralized authority so much in himself it’s going to be very interesting to see what [the] power dynamic is once he’s gone,” said one close observer of Vatican politics.

Perhaps the only thing that’s certain is that Francis himself is unlikely to wield much, if any, posthumous control over the conclave. Historically, power dynamics nurtured under popes collapse upon their passing and are reconstituted along entirely new, unimaginable fault lines, said Pattenden.

“Pope Francis named a lot of cardinals, but this is not something that will secure a Francis-like candidate,” agreed Andrea Gagliarducci, a longtime Vatican analyst. “The groups will split somehow in not-foreseeable ways, because we are talking about a group of old people secluded in a place with no connection with the external world. Everything can happen in that moment. They will look for someone they can trust, someone mild enough not to get rid of all of them. But most of the considerations will be pragmatic, not ideological.”

In the 16th century, Giovanni Francesco Lottini, the bishop of Conversano and a keen papal observer, came to much the same conclusions in an obscure treatise on the conclave. Cardinals, he argued, “eventually elect a pope contrary to their own will,” going together “where each individually would not want to go alone.”

In other words, sometimes the old power brokers just panic. Instead of the will of the Lord, many just follow the herd.