Conclave 2025: The Real Francis

The dates of the Conclave will be set today.  One feature of Conclaves is frequently true.  Conclaves often pick a pope quite different from his immediate predecessor.  In the case of Francis let us pray that occurs:

It was only in private conversations that one could truly gauge the true sentiments of rank-and-file Catholics. One devout woman, orthodox but very much in the mainstream of the Church, confided to me that when she heard of the death of Francis on Easter Monday, ‘I couldn’t help but weep with immense relief – thanking the Lord that it was finally over’.

The ‘it’ in this context is not the awful suffering Francis had endured over 38 days in hospital, but his pontificate. This pope was one of the most divisive leaders the Catholic Church has seen for centuries, and he constantly exasperated good Catholics.

Catholics believe the Petrine ministry is endowed with a specific charism, or spiritual gifts, so a pope may serve as a focus of unity by teaching with clarity and encouraging Christians to persevere in faith. ‘Strengthen your brothers,’ Jesus told St Peter in the Gospel of St Luke (22: 32). Francis, however, was a serial heresiarch, who deliberately resorted to ambiguity to sow confusion among the faithful and subvert the teachings and traditions of the Church.

He undermined the teaching of Jesus on the indissolubility of marriage, for example, and introduced blessings for same-sex couples. He allowed a pagan earth goddess called a Pachamama to be honoured in a Roman church (it was subsequently stolen and thrown in the River Tiber by a man convinced that idolatry was still a sin forbidden by the first of the Ten Commandments). He elevated climate change ideology to religious dogma and handed over control of the Catholic Church in China to the Communists. Francis effectively did away with Hell by promoting the belief that it was empty and that only a ‘cult’ believed otherwise. Consequently, one did not have to be sorry for one’s sins to receive absolution under this pope or to be in a state of grace to receive Holy Communion.

Heterodox opinions were uniformly tolerated among the clergy, with Francis refusing to sanction even Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp when he argued that the euthanasia of the elderly was as morally justifiable as killing an enemy on the battlefield in a just war. But woe to anyone who expressed orthodox opinions too loudly. Francis brutally suppressed the traditional Latin Mass because it was attractive to such Catholics and he removed a succession of bishops from office because they dissented from his agenda. He would also sack any priest who dared to publicly criticise him.

When I was interviewed by GB News on Monday, it was put to me that Francis was a ‘humble’ man and, although I wished to be charitable, I had to demur.

Francis was an extreme authoritarian who ruled by motu proprio (of his own initiative) because such ukase-style edicts allowed him to bypass the checks and balances of normal government. In this respect, he was like a Russian czar, an absolute monarch or a mob boss, down to the throwing of tantrums and swearing like a dockyard labourer when he was slow to get his way. He wielded his power capriciously, cherry picking Catholic teaching or overriding canon law to give weight to his own prejudices. Sometimes, he would ignore the rules completely. For instance, he made covid injections mandatory for Vatican employees, even though Church teaching upheld their right to reject such medical impositions.

He used his authority to protect sinister friends from justice, such as Father Marko Rupnik, a fellow Jesuit who was accused of the serial rape of more than a dozen nuns, sometimes in quasi-satanic rituals. Rupnik was excommunicated latae sententiae (automatically) after he granted absolution in the confessional to a woman with whom he was having sex. This was an offence of such enormity under the Code of Canon Law that only the Pope could lift the sentence. Rupnik was rehabilitated and to this day is a priest in good standing who is living in a convent (where else?). It is good to have friends in high places.

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