Even before Pope Francis was entombed in a Rome basilica on Saturday, conservative cardinals who felt his pontificate was a divisive disaster that endangered the church’s traditions had begun politicking to sway the conclave electing the next pope.
They have a seductively simple slogan: unity.
It is hard to imagine a less offensive rallying cry, but in the ears of Francis’ most committed supporters, it rings as a code word for rolling back Francis’ more inclusive vision of the Roman Catholic Church.
The concerns are a clear sign of the maneuvering by ideological camps that is already taking place among the cardinals as their shared mourning gives way to the looming task of voting for Francis’ successor in the conclave, which is expected to begin the first week of May.
The discussions leading up to the election are likely to touch on whether a successor to Francis should push forward, or roll back, his openness to potentially ordaining women as deacons or making some married men clergy or offering communion to divorced and remarried Catholics, among other deeply contested issues.
Already, the cardinals have been gathering in daily meetings behind the Vatican walls. Kicking off the sandals he was wearing with black socks after one such meeting last week in his book-lined study, one conservative cardinal, Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Germany, said he had spent the morning making the unity case.
The cardinals needed to “look for the unification of the church,” said Cardinal Müller, whom Francis ousted from the church’s top doctrinal position in 2017. It was “necessary to speak about the division of the church today,” he said.
Some progressives within the church worry that the dozens of new cardinals Francis chose around the world will be less versed in Vaticanese and may be taken in by the sweetness of the unity siren.
“It sounds really good,” said Cardinal Michael Czerny of Canada, who was one of Francis’ closest advisers, but “it means reversal.” For those who opposed Francis, many of them appointed by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, unity means a “new introversion” with the promise of “unity solving all our problems,” he said.
“If you ask me, ‘How would you name the wrong track for the conclave?’ I would say the idea that unity is the priority,” said Cardinal Czerny, who under Francis led the office for Promoting Integral Human Development. “Unity cannot be a priority issue.”
The two cardinals sit on opposing ends of the ideological divide. Those like Cardinal Czerny put priority on another word: Diversity.
“They are the two key words, diversity and unity, and there is a lot in play on the balance between them,” said the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, under secretary for the Vatican’s office for Culture and Education, who was close to Francis.
He, like Francis, believes that the church’s future lies in diversity. Francis chose dozens of new cardinals who were shaped outside of Rome, and he empowered local churches. The trick, Father Spadaro said, was avoiding a “freezing of the church” to keep unity, while heading off a scattering and “splitting” in pursuit of diversity or progress that the church was not ready for.
“Francis kept this very delicate balance and moved the church forward,” he said. The next pope, he said, also “needed to keep the two together.”
And that is why, Cardinal Müller said, “we have to talk now.”
It isn’t a new theme for conservatives. The church would be seriously weakened, the deeply conservative Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea said at a 2024 symposium in Kenya, “if we do not strive for unity.”
During Francis’ pontificate, Cardinal Sarah emerged as a central critic, and Francis stripped him of his official influence over church liturgy. “If we introduce ruptures and revolutions, we destroy the unity that governs the holy church across the ages,” the cardinal said in 2019.
But unity was central to Francis’ vision of the church, too. He just saw it differently. In 2021, Francis suppressed celebration of the Latin Mass, adored by Cardinal Sarah and other traditionalists, because he argued it was being used by ideologically motivated Catholics to undermine church unity.
That decision only emboldened conservative criticism of Francis as an authoritarian. “That is his style, to divide,” Cardinal Müller said on Thursday in his apartment. “All dictators are dividing.”
As Francis entered the later phase of his pontificate, his progressive supporters expected him to start making concrete changes. Instead, concerns about church unity seemed to prompt him to punt.
When bishops from remote areas in South America came to the Vatican in 2019 for a major meeting desired by Francis, they recommended that, to address a shortage of clergy, the pope should allow older married Catholic men in good standing to become priests.
Francis gave every indication that this practical solution was what he wanted, but around that time Cardinal Sarah coauthored a book with the retired Benedict reaffirming priestly celibacy.
The pope said he needed more time to think about it, because the issue “had become ideologically polarizing and capable of splitting apart the church,” said Father Spadaro. He said Francis had not been influenced by Benedict, but conservatives claimed a victory for unity.
On other issues with the potential to split the church, including whether to allow women to be ordained as deacons, a ministerial role, Francis allowed a long-taboo debate but ultimately made no decision, saying the issue needed more study. The unity crowd again breathed a sigh of relief.
And when Francis did make a major change, allowing, and even promoting, priestly blessings for same-sex couples, he was applauded by liberals in Europe and North America. But a huge expression of dissent from church leaders in Africa, the place that many see as the faith’s future, forced him to backtrack. For the sake of unity, Francis exempted the Africans for an unspecified time to get with the program, essentially allowing them to opt out.
Father Spadaro argued that the African carve-out was “a gesture more revolutionary” than the actual gay blessings measure, “because it legitimized a pastoral plurality.” It was Francis’ way, he said, of recognizing cultural diversity, and differences, within a united church.
Cardinal Müller, on the other hand, considered the controversy, and Francis’ efforts to get bishops and laypeople to come together to make decisions, to be distractions from the church’s true mission of defending its doctrine and revealing its truth to the world without taking into account popularity contests or politics.
“This agenda with blessings of homosexuals and so on, and women priesthood,” he said, “they are not the great questions for humanity.”
For other cardinals who will vote in the conclave, unity also matters, but it means something different.
For Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik, the South Korean who led the Vatican’s department in charge of clergy, unity “means, for me, open the heart,” he said. He said Francis “taught me I must open my heart to love others.”
And after one of the general assembly meetings this week, Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, who served under Francis as the prefect of the office for the Eastern Churches, said it was too soon to discuss real issues yet. “We have to decide what to put on the table then discuss it,” he said.
For Cardinal Gugerotti, an Italian who is sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Francis, or as a kingmaker in the conclave, “the lack of unity is always a disaster.”
But, he said, that “does not mean that everybody has to say the same thing.” He added: “There can be a difference. Not opposition, because that is destructive.”
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