Who Will Be the New Pope? (Theo Zenou in Foreign Policy magazine)

[highplainsdem]

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/04/21/conclave-francis-new-pope-death-vatican/?utm_content=gifting&tpcc=gifting_article&gifting_article=Y29uY2xhdmUtZnJhbmNpcy1uZXctcG9wZS1kZWF0aC12YXRpY2Fu&pid=PNI6oXabXq1ydw6

Gift link from James Palmer, whose father, Martin Palmer of the NGO FaithInvest, is quoted in the article.

The article explains why it's very unlikely that a conservative who would reverse Francis's policies will be chosen.

Then, of the likely choices:

Among them, Shenon identifies Cardinal Pietro Parolin—the Holy See’s secretary of state since 2013—as an “obvious candidate.” The 70-year-old Italian prelate would respect the late pope’s agenda. He has said Francis’s reforms were “the action of the Spirit, [so] there can be no U-turn.” If the cardinal electors are looking for a safe pair of hands, someone who knows the Curia and can safeguard Francis’s achievements, then Parolin is their man.

In a similar vein, Martel points to Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the 69-year-old archbishop of Bologna. Zuppi has Francis’s trust. Crucially, as the head of the Italian Episcopal Conference, he’s also popular with many prelates.

But if they want a bolder choice, then cardinal electors could go for the Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson. The 76-year-old is the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Social Sciences. He has long been ranked as a papabile, even though his star has dimmed after he fell out with Francis. But don’t count him out, said Palmer, who has worked with Turkson and thinks that “he really speaks for the engaged African Church.”

Palmer also thinks that Cardinal Luis Tagle, the former archbishop of Manila, has a serious chance. Hailed as the “Asian Francis,” Tagle is a progressive. He backed Francis in his drive to protect the environment and his plans for a more inclusive church. “My vision for a synodal church is a church that rediscovers this wonderful gift of the Spirit given to the whole church in Vatican II,” Tagle said in 2023, referring to the Second Vatican Council, which modernized the church in the 1960s and has been attacked by conservatives ever since.

I left the Church in my late teens, after being raised in an extended family that included clergy (a priest and nun), so I know almost nothing about these possible successors to Pope Francis.

But I'm posting this because it's a relief that the rightwingers who opposed Francis have almost no chance of succeeding him.

[EYESORE 9001]

1. Looks like, for the first time in my lifetime,

that I could be older than the pope. A dubious distinction, to be sure.