VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis entered his 80th year on Thursday amid hopes among his critics that it will be his last — at least as pope.
While Francis remains enormously popular among most rank-and-file Catholics, a small but vocal group of conservatives who have never much cared for his radical agenda have grown increasingly strident in criticizing the pope now that there is little doubt left about his priorities.
They have taken aim at the just-concluded synod on family issues, where the divisive issue of Communion for the civilly remarried took center stage. They have raised alarm at Francis’ call for a more decentralized church and his loosening of the Vatican’s marriage annulment process. They have winced at his environmental alarmism, wondered what’s in store for Catholic orthodoxy in this Holy Year of Mercy and blasted as sacrilege the recent screening of nature shots on St. Peter’s Basilica.
The Remnant, a small, traditionalist U.S. newspaper, last week penned an open letter begging Francis to change course or resign, arguing that his papacy was “causing grave harm to the church.” Organizers say a few thousand people have signed onto the petition.
“You have given many indications of an alarming hostility to the church’s traditional teaching, discipline and customs, and the faithful who try to defend them, while being preoccupied with social and political questions beyond the competence of the Roman Pontiff,” the newspaper said. “This appalling situation has no parallel in church history.”
To put it more simply: “Many people in the Vatican want Francis dead,” said Francesca Chaouqui, the woman at the heart of a leaks scandal currently convulsing Francis’ Vatican.
In an interview last weekend with Italy’s La Stampa newspaper, Chaouqui said Francis’ in-house reforms and nominations have emboldened his enemies, many of whom were in the Vatican when Francis was archbishop of Buenos Aires and had a less-than-pleasant relationship with Rome.
Some of these cardinals and bishops are openly resisting his reforms while others inside and out of the Vatican are simply waiting out his pontificate under the argument that popes come and go but the Curia remains.
“Pope Francis is no longer trusted by many conservative Catholics and the number who don’t trust him has grown enormously since the synod,” conservative columnist Damian Thompson wrote in Britain’s Spectator last month. He said he doesn’t see the dust settling until the next conclave, “which lots of conservative Catholics want to happen as soon as possible.”
The Argentine Jesuit, who has rarely backed down from a fight, seems unfazed and quite possibly emboldened by the criticism. And there is no indication that it poses any real threat to his broad popularity since the concern has been confined in the public sphere at least to mostly Anglo-Saxon and Italian pundits writing in predictably conservative publications, claiming to speak for a growing number of otherwise anonymous Catholic laity and clergy.
Monday will be a good litmus test to show just how far Francis is willing to push the envelope when he gathers the Curia for his traditional Christmas greetings.
