Papal Candidates from Inclusive Progressive to Conservative

papal candidates

PAPAL CANDIDATES. Pope Francis himself chose most of the cardinals who have the right to vote on his successor. But Notre Dame theologist Ulrich Lehner says his governing style made their vote unpredictable. He made “unilateral decisions…without consultation with the College of Cardinals.

The cardinals will vote on each candidate by secret ballots in the Sistine Chapel. If a vote does not carry a 2/3 majority, the ballots will go up the chimney in black smoke. So the voting may go through several rounds. Then when white smoke appears, it means the Catholics have a new pope.

Generally, Catholic leaders stay mum about how the process is going. Therefore Newsweek ranks the candidates on betting odds, making it sound like a horse race. So far in first place they have Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, 67, an “inclusive” progressive. Second place has Italian Pietro Parolin, 70, a moderate whom they expect to provide stability. Third, Ghana’s Peter Turkson, 76, is concerned with climate change and economic justice.

Fourth, Hungary’s conservative Peter Erdo, 72, advocates traditional Catholic teachings. Fifth, Italy’s Angelo Scola, 82, favors a more hierarchical and centralized Catholic church.

Quotes from a top conservative candidate

But a recent Fox article calls Guinea’s Robert Sarah, 79, “a favorite among conservatives.” In 2019 he wrote “The Day is Now Far Spent.” There he criticizes mass illegal immigration and the turning of the West against Christianity.

Notable sayings by Sarah include:

“By losing its faith, Europe has also lost its reason to be. It is…becoming a new civilization, one that is cut off from its Christian roots.”
“Gender ideology is a Luciferian refusal to receive a sexual nature from God.”
“The Church cannot cooperate with this new form of slavery that has become mass migration.”
“God or nothing: there is no other choice. Those who choose God have everything. Those who choose nothing are lost.”
“If truth no longer exists, if everything is relative, then man becomes a slave to his passions.”

It may take a non-Western African pope like him to help get the West back on course.

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Photo: Cardinal Robert Sarah, cropped, by François-Régis Salefran, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons