The opinion of this newspaper about what Francisco’s papacy has meant is so extremely known that it is not worth expressing expressly. First, out of respect for the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Second, out of respect for the loss of the Pope as the highest authority of the Church that represents the faith of the vast majority of Spaniards.
It would be unforgivable irreverence that we speak today about his political ideas or about an encyclical that Pablo Iglesias could well repudiate for being too radical of the left, because the truth is that what we criticize in life does not deserve to be remembered on the day of his death. We have discreted practically everything, except the only important thing: His love to God about all things regardless of whether this axiom means a very different thing for us than for him.
Regardless of the fact that the Catholic Social Base has repudiated many of its ideas and its way of understanding the Church, the truth is that it has allowed religion to close to a social sector that rejects it with fervor. Hopefully Yolanda Díaz has called “Holy Father” to the Pope would have meant more than an exercise of merciless rapping by the summarite leader, because put to bring left to respect to the call of God would have been much more convenient that anyone who goes to Mass was stopped fascist instead of having been submissive with the powerful. But it is true that something is something.
The problem is that the Catholic Church right now does not have a challenge of exogenous legitimation, but a crisis of endogenous faith. There are less and less men ordered priests, there are more and more evangelicals in Latin America, there are less and less Europeans approaching faith. The number of Catholics does not descend thanks to the immense impulse that the African continent continues to offer, which with its numerical superiority keeps afloat to the whole of a church that becomes more and more influence.
Pope Francis has been an immense pontiff to bring the Church closer to all those who did not respect it for pure stereotype, but he has not been a leader who has generated consensus among those who do live his life around God. If frivolity is allowed, extremely frivolous, it has been the Borja Semper and the Margarita Robles of the Church: wonderful for those in front and a huge problem for those inside.
In the next conclave there are 136 cardinals likely to choose and be chosen, among which 110 have been directly appointed by the Pope. Many of them come from very small archbishops and have been promoted, precisely, to guarantee a direct continuity line in the way of understanding the Church.
We will not be those who criticize the opening of the Church with sectors traditionally excluded from it, as is the case of homosexuals; But the direct interference of the Pope in national policy affairs of many countries (I think of the concertinas of Ceuta and Melilla, for example) has been a jug of cold water towards all those faithful who seek in the Holy Father a spiritual guide, not a rally of Podemos on issues in which nothing has to do with faith.
The next Pope will not speak Spanish, so he will be much further from us: we will not see Yolanda Díaz Peregrinar or there will be a succession of regional ministers or presidents going every two weeks to give him the oranges or lemons on duty. It is a loss of influence but also an opportunity: that of Catholics to reconnect with a figure that should serve as a link with God and not as a political speaker of their own ideas that, in many occasions, collide diametrically with those of those who pray for their soul.
The Church has an opportunity in the next conclave. As a curious fact, for entertaining the wait, the most ultraconservative candidate of all those who have options to achieve church leadership is a black cardinal. Will progressives play inclusiveness or this time your skin color will be less important than your ideas? We will see.
In any case, let’s pray for the Pope’s soul. May God have in his glory.
