Breaking bread, state of the race, and excommunication communication

The Friday Pillar Post

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Happy Friday, friends,

It’s high season here in Rome in the run-up to the conclave. These days, it feels like if you open a cupboard door almost anywhere on this side of the river, two people plotting will fall out.

It’s not always a terribly edifying spectacle, I grant you.

In a minute, we are going to have some real talk about the state of the candidates — who seems to be trending up and down, and why. Let’s not kid ourselves, the race to become pope is on, even if the most active cardinals aren’t necessarily seeking it for themselves. And I did not come all this way to not tell you what I am hearing and seeing.

And, just as a bit of fun, we’re going to round things off with a little canonical thought experiment about a rumor doing the rounds involving the French president Emmanuel Macron who may (question mark?) have got quite a few people to excommunicate themselves?

Maybe?

But before we get into all that, I want to start on a more upbeat note.

There are plenty of men of prayer in the College of Cardinals. And we all hope that each of the electors will be sincerely guided by the Holy Spirit in their discernment over who to vote for. But the Church is very much an institution both human and divine — and the days leading up to a conclave are one of those times where you can see the seams, when you’re up close.

But above and away from the politicking and plotting and horse trading and speechifying, this is still the Church. And the people here are still, at their cores, motivated by a love of Christ and a sincere belief in the Gospel.

This point was brought home to me the other night. I was having dinner at some friends’ house, they’d put together a little party in honor of a visiting convinced atheist who was nevertheless sincerely curious about the Church and how this whole conclave thing worked.

The table was composed of a fair representation of the ecclesiastical spectrum, liberal and conservative, devout and doubtful. It would be fair to say that while many of us were friends, some of us wouldn’t ordinarily claim the word for everyone there.

The thinking was that we could, between us, give a decent example of the kind of debates about the future of the Church which the cardinals are themselves having in their general congregations in this last week.

Instead, though, the whole table united to urge on the visiting atheist the truth of the Gospel and the transformative power of the love of God. It was really quite fun to see.

It was a spontaneous reminder that the rather “nice” things we tend to say about the Church in times like these — that yes, we have disagreements and even divisions, but in the end we are united in faith — are more than platitudes. The truth of them manifests itself entirely on its own, even when you’re sort of, kind of, maybe looking for the opposite, just a little.

Either Christ is truly God and truly man, truly died and rose from the dead, is truly present in the sacrament, and truly is the means of our temporal edification and eternal salvation, or he isn’t. There is, as the Didache explained, no third way.

That’s what this is all about, this week and next. I was grateful for the reminder. And for the excellent dinner, obviously.

Here’s the news.

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The News

We’ve been continuing our coverage of all things pre-conclave this week, and doing our best to bring you up to speed with the leading lights and most interesting voices.

This week we’ve sat down for interviews with Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, Major Archbishop-Catholicos of the Syro-Malankara Church to get an Eastern Catholic perspective on the conclave, as well as Spanish Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, archbishop emeritus of Madrid, and South Africa’s Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier.

Our “Meet the Conclave” series of profiles now includes: Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost (more about him in a minute), Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, and Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa in addition to our earlier looks at Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Matteo Zuppi.

More to come later today, of course, so stay tuned.

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Chinese state and Church authorities announced this week that a new bishop has been “elected” for the Diocese of Xinxiang, despite the Apostolic See being vacant and there being no pope, who alone can appoint a bishop.

And despite there already being a Bishop of Xinxiang.

From what we are told by clerics in China, the “election” was scheduled before the death of the pope, but the decision to carry on with it and announce the result (this is China, there was only one candidate and it was unanimous) is clearly a pointed reminder to the cardinals about who’s in charge of the Church on the mainland.

Why did they do it now, though? Doesn’t this rather take the wind out of the sails of erstwhile conclave frontrunner Cardinal Pietro Parolin, architect and defender-in-chief of the Vatican-China deal.

Well, as I looked at in a conclave Smoke Signal yesterday, it certainly does seem to harm Parolin, and to the immediate benefit of Cardinal Tagle. And that seems to have been the object of the exercise.

Why would they do that?

Read the whole thing to find out.

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There’s been a lot of talk — and more than a little confusion — this week following the announcement by the College of Cardinals that the conclave will begin next Wednesday, May 7.

Quite a few people seemed to think this represented a delayed start, and was the result of some serious back and forth about kicking things off early, or even dragging the general congregation out for a few extra days.

In fact, as I wrote earlier this week, the conclave is beginning on exactly that day the law says it “must.” That to one side, the real question is: when will the conclave end?

That, to me, will be the single biggest factor in the cardinals deciding who eventually emerges on the balcony. And the way the conclave votes are structured, there is serious pressure put on the voters to deliver a fast result.

I’m not sold that is for the best, as I explained here, and it will be very interesting to see if the cardinal electors can hold their nerve for a few days and allow the process some room to breathe.

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JD, as everyone who read Tuesday’s newsletter knows, is in Rome this week having a very different, much more important kind of trip, taking part in a pilgrimage for the Jubilee of People with Disabilities.

We expect him back at work later today but, honestly, I hope he doesn’t miss a moment with his family and the rest of the group.

That said, I have not been wandering the streets of Rome on my own these last 10 days. And our own Edgar Beltrán sent out his own dispatch this week on the mood of the city and what is going on.

Don’t miss it.

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The state of the race

United in faith though we may be, and sincere in their desire for the good of the Church all of the cardinal electors hopefully are, let’s be clear: the business of electing a pope is a political process.

It is, let us hope, one imbued with prayer and discernment and humility. For sure. But it’s an electoral college getting together to vote for candidates.

There is no getting away from that reality. And, whether we love it or like it or not, there’s a fair amount of politicking going on right now — candidates are losing and gaining ground, people are being sounded out about their intentions, and new possible names are surfacing.

A week is a long time in politics, Harold Wilson once observed, and it’s a bloody eternity before a conclave, so a lot can change between now and Wednesday when the first ballot is held.

That having been said, I’m going to give you the absolute straight dope of what I am hearing right now and how I think things would shake up if they were headed into the Sistine Chapel right now.

And the ground is shifting in fascinating ways, fast.