The Pontificate

"[Reports of an ultraconservative front-runner is] nonsense. [Pope Francis appointed 80 percent of the cardinals] and they are not going to elect someone who is then going to stand up and say that the Francis papacy was a disaster and we're going back to the old church."

"That is not going to happen."

Reverend Thomas Reese, U.S. priest

 

"Overall, conservative Catholics would just like some clarity and theological substance from Rome."

"I have heard from 'folks in the pew' that they would also appreciate clear theological teaching on a host of matters [not all related to the hot button issues], rather than what appears to have been an obsession with politics."

Reverend Robert Sirico, Priest-commentator, Michigan 

"[It is inappropriate to separate cardinals into] these wrong categories, between conservative and liberal."

"Because Jesus didn't found two wings [of the church] ... there's one church, and the church is united in the faith in Jesus Christ."

"And there is no conservative baptism or the progressive baptism."

Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller 

On May 7, 2025, cardinals will gather to start the process of electing a new leader of the Catholic Church to succeed Pope Francis.  Buda Mendes—Getty Images

 

Pope Francis's successor is a matter of great public interest, and not only within the Catholic Church. Speculation has run wild over whether the eventual successor who will emerge when the conclave of Archbishops wraps up some time after May 7 by announcing the name of the next Pope, will continue Francis's relaxation of traditional church values, or one committed to returning the church to the state that Popes John Paul II and Benedict left it in.

 

Among many, hope looms large that the next pontiff will represent a return to tradition, someone will be chosen from among traditionalists who remained oppositional to Pope Francis's introduction of values seen to be inimical to Roman Catholicism's deeply held and cherished positions held by Francis to be too inflexible, shutting out the faithful, compromised by their generally-agreed-upon unsuitability to be welcomed into the Church resulting from their unorthodox life choices.

 

A possible contender for the pontificate whose name has been bruited about is Raymond Burke, an advocate for the traditional Latin Mass. According to the Rev. Gerald Murray, a conservative commentator, cardinals selecting the new pope are "going to return to a more John Paul II-, Benedict-style and substance of governance in the church."

 

Cardinals are pictured united in prayer at the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican on April 26, 2025. Jakub Porzycki - Getty Images

 

Among some archconservatives a campaign has been launched to propel one among their own group to the forefront of discussions over a successor to Pope Francis. Burke is among those names which has placed at the top of some lists. Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, and Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana have both managed to find favour among those who believe the next pope should come from among those places in the world where Catholicism is steadily growing, even while it declines in the West.

 

Conservatives find themselves at odds with those within the church who approve of the direction that Pope Francis took the church. "A large number of American conservative Catholics would basically dream of having Cardinal Burke as the next pope, but they're disconnected to reality", longtime figure in American conservative Catholic media, Alejandro Bermudez, stated, consulting for the news site Catholic Vote.

 

Visitors stand silhouetted with the colonnade and the St Peter's Basilica in the background at St Peter's Square in The Vatican, May 2, 2025.  Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images

While at the same time a senior Vatican official speaking anonymously dismissed both Burke and Sarah and any candidates with values similar to theirs. "There is no space for them in the [minds of] the vast majority of the cardinals. They've got zero chance", he said firmly. As for senior cleric Turkson, who masters six languages, a favourite of traditionalists, his chances were diminished when  Francis removed him in 2021 from a senior position. 

According to the Reverend Reese, to some conservatives the choice revolves around pulling support from some matters that demote or dismiss traditional practices or doctrine: removing limitations that Francis placed on the Latin Mass; drawing back from matters that establish special policies around blessing LGBTQ+ couples; hands off changing rules and traditions -- and Pope Francis's appointing too many cardinals, overruling church tradition, among them.

"Behind the scenes [the] low-level helpers of the conservatives are busy [promoting the idea around the conclave that Francis's papacy was] a disaster."

"[The point is to] intimidate the reformers. We are in the first stage of the manoeuvres." 

"As we say in Italy, 'It's just tricks for the stupid'."

Marco Politi, longtime Vatican commentator 

Cardinals leave the Vatican after a College of Cardinals' meeting, May 2, 2025 in Rome, Italy.

Antonio Masiello/Getty Images

None So Holy As He

"There is a Christian concept that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country."

"And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world."

"[The] far left [got the order backward]."

U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance (new convert to Catholicism)

 

"The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception."

"But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth."

Pope Francis

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Vice President JD Vance used the old Catholic theology to defend the Trump administration's immigration policy. Pope Francis made clear that's not the church's interpretation. AP

 

"This morning, at the end of the audiences, Pope Francis will be admitted to the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic for some necessary diagnostic tests and to continue in a hospital setting treatment for bronchitis that is still ongoing."

Vatican statement

In hospital for an indeterminate period of time to treat his latest ailments, the Pope will not be available for the Saturday Jubilee, a Sunday Mass and other engagements. A Vatican cardinal has been tasked with  presiding in Pope Francis' place over the Mass and other events were cancelled "due to the impossibility of the Pope to participate".

 

Pope Francis has found much to be displeased over, with the new U.S. administration in the White House. Specifically one item has raised his holy ire; the issue of floods of migrants from Africa, Central America and the Middle East churning their arduously determined way on foot and by sea to the wealthy countries of the world which also happen to be Western democrats. It is this man's opinion at the Holy See that any and all who declare themselves refugees are obliged by Europe and North America to be met with open arms.

 

Europe has had its fill of economic migrants and their illegal and unwanted entries, as has the United States, neither oblivious to the reality that the tide of humanity attempting to breach their shores is virtually unstoppable, but each is doing their utmost finally to put a stop to these unwanted entries. Furthermore, the populations of all these reluctantly receiving countries are themselves fed up with the presence of people who fail to respect the social culture and laws of countries they invade.

 

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a woman inmate of the Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024, a ritual meant to emphasize his vocation of service and humility.

Vatican Media via AP

The Pope is not a well man; his age for one thing has caught up with him, at 88, and his constitution can hardly be described as robust. He has been bedeviled with ill health for many years. Governments come and go regularly, and so, in fact, do popes. A week-long bout of bronchitis has seen to Pope Francis's hospitalization where he is  undergoing diagnostic tests. He had lately been experiencing breathing problems, rendering him functionally incapable of maintaining his rigorous audiences and public events schedules.

 

As a young man he had part of one of his lungs removed. He experiences regular bouts of acute bronchitis during the winter season. He now makes regular use of a wheelchair, a walker or cane even while moving around ordinarily in his apartment. He recently fell on two occasions, doing harm to his arm and his chin. He was last admitted to Rome's Gemelli  hospital in June of 2023 for surgery to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall.

 

Three days were spent prior to that in Gemelli receiving intravenous antibiotics for a respiratory infection. He had been rushed to the hospital after spiking a  high fever and feeling a sharp pain in his chest in March 2023, diagnosed with "an acute and strong pneumonia, in the lower part of the lungs". Popes have a private suite on the 10th floor of the Gemelli Hospital. 

 

Pope Francis was also hospitalized in March 2023 to be treated for acute bronchitis. Photograph: Ciro De Luca/Reuters

 

In his 2023 hospitalization where pneumonia was diagnosed, he was placed on intravenous antibiotics and released on April 1, quipping he was "still alive. Thank God I can tell the story, because the organism, the body, responded well to the treatment", he later said. But 'the organism' cannot be expected to rally so well each time a new health crisis arrives. In the meanwhile, he performs his duties as he is inclined to do, sharply criticizing world leaders for their solutions to problems, running afoul of this pope's reading of Church doctrine.

 

 

Artificial-Intelligence-Generated Fake Photographs

"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable."

Open letter: Artificial Intelligence experts/Industry Executives

"The letter isn't perfect, but the spirit is right; we need to slow down until we better understand the ramifications."

"The big players are becoming increasingly secretive about what they are doing which makes it hard for society to defend against whatever harms may materialize."

Professor Gary Marcus, New York University 

"The meme likely went viral because of the uncertainty about whether it was real or fake."

"It goes without saying that we can never again assume an image is authentic because it looks realistic."

Arvind Narayanan, professor of computer sciences, Princeton University

When the photograph of Pope Francis first appeared, wearing a branded winter puffer coat, people likely wondered where he had been that the Arctic chill required him to dress like that. We're not particularly given to doubting the evidence before our eyes. Anything that appears in public, in print or as photographic evidence is seldom questioned for its authenticity; we're that credulous. Seeing, after all, is believing, isn't it?

So, there was this photograph of Pope Francis appearing just prior to the fifth Sunday of Lent. Pope Francis in a long, white designer puffer coat retailing at $3,000, his pectoral cross and white skullcap completing the picture of the Holy Father. Holy smoke, it's a fake! The coat is huge, gleaming white with an outsized hood: "What the wealthiest 26-year-olds are wearing currently around SoHo."

According to the fact-checking website Snopes, the generative AI program Midjourney created the image which later appeared on the sub-reddit r/Midjourney. But wait: it's not the only fake image doing the rounds of the Internet. There are a few others highlighting another infamous world figure. One recently in the news in a scandalous, as in criminal wrong-doing manner for which he has been charged.

Speculation was going the rounds whether Donald Trump would show up handcuffed, in court.

 

What's blurry here? Look at the faces in the crowd   Elliot Higgins

 

Media experts are doing a second-take with the obviousness of how artificial intelligence might and will be used with ease in the creation of propaganda; weaponized in other words, as a destabilizing tool. Which led Elon Musk and a coterie of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives to call for a six-month break in ongoing development of AI. In an open letter, they cite the risk potential to humanity.

The potential civilizational risks posed by human-competitive AI systems in the form of economic and political disruptions were listed in the group letter of alarmed caution, alerting developers to work with policy makers on governance and regulatory authorities. Over a thousand individuals signed the letter, inclusive of Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio, and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field.

Donald Trump himself shared an image on his Truth Social sitem depicting a likeness of himself kneeling in prayer under dramatic lighting. Once it began making appearance rounds on social media it was revealed as a "deep fake". 

 

Former US President Trump posted this AI-generated image of himself, but a closer look shows he is missing fingers  Truth Social

 

The photograph of the white-coated Pope was actually created by a 31-year-old construction worker in Chicago. He was floating a little high on magic mushrooms when he thought up the idea. "I just thought it was funny to see the Pope in a funny jacket", he revealed in a later interview. 

“I’m trying to figure out ways to make something funny because that’s what I usually try to do."

“I try to do funny stuff or trippy art — psychedelic stuff. It just dawned on me: I should do the Pope. "

"Then it was just coming like water: ‘The Pope in Balenciaga puffy coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome, Paris,’ stuff like that.”

Pablo Xavier, BuzzFeed News

One of Pablo Xavier's other AI-generated images of the Pope   Pablo Xavier

Singing From The Same Hymnal With Slight Deviations

AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino     Pope Francis arrives to attend a ceremony at the Maronite Cathedral of Our Lady of Graces in Nicosia, Cyprus

"I listened and then told him: I don't understand anything about this."

"Brother, we are not state clerics, we cannot use the language of politics but that of Jesus. We are pastors of the same holy people of God."

"Because of this, we must seek avenues of peace, to put an end to the firing of weapons."

"The patriarch cannot transform himself into Putin's altar boy."

"[The] barking of NATO at Russia's door [may have forced Putin to invade]. An anger that I don’t know if you can say was provoked, but maybe facilitated."

Pope Francis

"Patriarch Kirill recalled that at the end of the Soviet era, Russia received an assurance that NATO would not move an inch eastwards. However, this promise was broken, even the former Soviet Baltic republics joined NATO."

"Russia could not and cannot allow this to happen."

Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church says Pope Francis 'chose the wrong tone' over 'Putin's altar boy' comment

So recently reconciled, just as recently distancing themselves from each other's positions. The inescapable political dimensions aligned with religious convictions has placed two elite ranking clerics, each of whom assumes the position of shepherd over vast flocks of followers at odds with one another. The caution of diplomacy appears to have fled the scene when Pope Francis spoke frankly of the division between the world of religion and that of politics.

 

Except that for the fact that his further statements bridged that division. And has left simmering resentment of his sentiments and clumsy analogy linking Patriarch Kirill with Russian President Vladimir Putin to the extent that the Patriarch is fully in support of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine. Not the least bit reflective of a high-placed and esteemed leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church's assumed leading concern; that of peace and brotherhood.

 

Nothing can quite lead to a justification of Mr. Putin's order to the Russian military to launch an invasion of its neighbour. In the process destroying entire towns and villages, civic infrastructure, bombing hospitals, rail stations, schools, apartment buildings and even supposedly safe corridors arranged for people to escape the confines of a besieged city. And then there is the rape, the looting, the incidental murders.

 

Pope Francis himself failed to condemn the very leader by name when he despaired over the conflict. Somehow finding it politically diplomatic to abhor the war in its strident brutality but overlooking the mention of exactly who was responsible for launching it. And now buying the Russian president's grievance at NATO's expansion to excuse the rage a despotic ruler succumbed to, taking his revenge over a perceived betrayal of unity with Russia, to innocent civilian populations suffering the onslaught.

There is, thus, a degree of agreement between the two clerics; Pope Francis's on a more modest scale than Patriarch Kirill's, but each sympathetic to Russia's president's paranoia and purpose in choosing to destroy Ukraine to teach his Slavic cousins a lesson. Pope Francis, in his media interview in Italy described his conversation with his Orthodox counterpart who listed off justifications for the war, in a pre-printed agenda he read from.

The Russian Orthodox Church had its own version of the Zoom conference between the two elder Church statesmen: "It's regrettable that a month and a half after the conversation with Patriarch Kirill, Pope Francis chose the  wrong tone to convey the content of this conversation." It was, after all, a confidence betrayal of a colleague, housed in language more fitting to a flippant exchange between two low-ranking sport figures than the top echelon of Christianity.

How can they bring peace and harmony, in other words, to their parishioners when they themselves bicker between their chosen positions? In setting the record straight, the Orthodox Church added "the Pope said, in agreement with the Patriarch, that 'the Church must not use the language of politics, but the language of Jesus'." A senior cleric which has over 100 million followers, as opposed to an infinitely more senior cleric whose following numbers 1.34 billion.

Sacrificing Self for God

"Archbishop Myers obviously is not paying any attention to the Pope. This is extreme, way beyond what you'd expect to happen. I can't believe the parishioners of Newark are going to allow this to happen."
Charles Zech, Villanova University business school

1.3 million-strong Catholic diocese pays out $500,000 for Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark's luxury retirement palace while Church cries poverty.  Photo by CNS

"Nothing short of an assault on the goodwill and trust of the people of God. The arrogance and self-importance required to undertake such a project on one's own behalf and funded, at least partially, with the proceeds from the sale of other archdiocesan-owned property is breathtaking."
National Catholic Reporter, editorial

Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan

Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan (Photo courtesy of Diocese of Camden via camdendiocese.org)

Read More: Camden Diocese Buying New Home for Bishop | http://nj1015.com/camden-diocese-buying-new-home-for-bishop/?trackback=tsmclip

The National Catholic Reporter published the information that in the Camden, New Jersey diocese, Bishop Dennis Sullivan purchased a 7,000 square-foot mansion complete with eight bedrooms, six bathrooms, with an in0-ground pool, three fireplaces, a library and a five-car garage. In Newark, reported the paper, 28% of the population live below the poverty level.

2006 photo of Woodbury, N.J., home bought for bishop of the Diocese of Camden.(Photo: Al Schell, (Cherry Hill, N.J.) Courier-Post)

This kind of self-entitlement appears to be a specialty among some high-placed members of the Roman Catholic Church, defying and effectively denying their new Pope's message of frugality and thought for the poor of the Earth. Pope Francis has called upon members of his church to be extremely aware and sympathetic to the needs of the poor; he abjures the wretchedness of the capitalist system that results in wealth and poverty.

"Money and economic power can be a means to distance people from one another, confining them to an egocentric and egotistical plane", he wrote in a recently published preface to a book on the mission of the poor, entitled "Poor for the Poor". The message flies above the disinterested and obviously oblivious notice of some, like the New Jersey Bishop and the Newark Archbishop.

New Jersey Archbishop John Myers is being criticized for his disinterest in the plight of the poor in his diocese, and his fixation on his retirement in two years' time. In the spirit of it's never too early to plan for retirement, he is feathering an opulent nest for himself in contemplation of leisure time to enjoy it to full advantage.

He has paid out a princely $500,000 for a 4,500-square-foot, five bedroom, three bathroom, three-car-garage mansion, with a large outdoor pool. Fit for a prince of the church, without doubt. The local Star-Ledger newspaper has reported as well that the archbishop is in the full throes of having a three-storey, 3,000-square-foot addition built onto this already sumptuous home. The addition will include an indoor exercise pool, a hot tub, three fireplaces, a library and an elevator.

The house, actually, is currently used by Archbishop Myers as a weekend residence. He is preparing it for his full-time residence. His spokesperson, Jim Goodness, (how aptly named!) informed the newspaper that the addition would be paid for through selling the off of other church-owned properties. Kindly donors had also contributed to the $700,000 upgrades-cost.

Despite the advice by the good Pope, these men of the church know full well that money can help people achieve goals, and they are simply using the Church money at their command to achieve their personal goals; that it is at the expense of the community which they serve, is simply an incidental inconvenience -- not for the archbishop and the bishop involved perhaps, but the faithful who subscribe to the injunction to give and support their church.

And mostly to the disadvantage of the poor among them.

A Life of Inspiration

One doesn't think of a sermon coming from a Pope as symbolizing fire and brimstone. Yet how else to consider Pope Francis's sermon against corruption delivered on Monday in which he quoted a Biblical passage of the New Testament where Jesus is said to have claimed some sinners deserved to be weighted down and thrown into the sea. Jesus said that? Oh my, oh my. Pope Francis most certainly did. My, oh my.

Like the Christ figure, Pope Francis is a humble man of peerless devotion to the core tenets of his faith. He has embarked, like the son of God whom he worships on the emulation of the act of cleansing the moneylenders from the Temple. Ejecting vice, avarice and Mammon, to make full unobstructed room for the sacredness of the Omniscient Spirit and the injunction to be just and holy in one's treatment of others.

It's enough to make a non-believer weep in gratitude.

"Jesus says: It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea", quoted the Pope from the Gospel of St. Luke. People, he railed, who led "a double life", giving money to the Roman Catholic Church that they had stolen from the state or from others were undoubtedly sinners, deserving the wrathful punishment of just desserts.

People involved in corrupt acts were "white-washed tombs", he thundered; "they appear beautiful from the outside, but inside they are full of dead bones and putrefaction." Corruption produces a life that equates with "varnished putrefaction". Can't get much clearer in his purple-prose condemnation of hypocrisy and vice than that, can he?

The man who has chosen personally to bypass all vestiges of grandeur and sumptuous display in his role as Pope has chastised members of his own gatherings for their pride and their inability to be honest brokers. Those who, while professing goodness as priests but whose acts belie their profession have obviously caused him anguish and pain, and it is his intention, it seems, to remove them from authority.

His passion is to give succour to the needy, the impoverished, to welcome into the comfort of the church all those without hope. He represents an amazing contrast to his predecessors. He has emerged as a living, breathing embodiment of all that the writings of the church, quoting Jesus Christ, profess is important; no amount of cautious praise can fully capture the elemental goodness and decency of the man.

Speaking forthrightly of the deficits in human nature and the failures of the institution he represents, he is admirable in his passion. Can he possibly clean up the church he now heads? His lecture to the Church said it all:

"Poverty in the world is a scandal. In a world where there is so much wealth, so many resources to feed everyone, it is unfathomable that there are so many hungry children, that there are so many children without an education, so many poor persons. Poverty today is a cry. We all have to think if we can become a little poorer, all of us have to do this. How can I become a little poorer in order to be more like Jesus, who was the poor Teacher? First of all I want to tell you something, tell all you young persons: don't let yourselves be robbed of hope. Please, don't let it be stolen from you. The worldly spirit, wealth, the spirit of vanity, arrogance, and pride ... all these things steal hope. Where do I find hope? In the poor Jesus, Jesus who made himself poor for us. And you spoke of poverty. Poverty calls us to sow hope. ..."

L'Osservatore Romano / AP

Hercules cleaned the Aegean stables, as one of the immense tasks that challenged that super-human character of Greek fable. Pope Francis faces the Herculean task of clearing out the stables of the Vatican and the long reach of the holy Roman Catholic Church and its fallible priests.

More power to him.