Cardinals Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, Jorge Mario Bergoglio
of Argentina and Francis Arinze of Nigeria have been talked about
as possible successors to the pope.
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RYAN LEE
Friday, April 15, 2005
When the next pope emerges onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Square, after
election by his fellow Roman Catholic cardinals in a conclave scheduled to start
April 18, gay and lesbian Catholic groups in America hope he will be someone willing
to listen to their plights as outcasts in their own religion.
Short of that, gay Catholics want a new Holy Father who will not continue John
Paul II’s pattern of chastising them with hostile papal proclamations,
said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the gay-affirming New Ways Ministry.
“John Paul II was really about teaching, to the extent that there was
a stifling of discussion, so I think it’s really time now for a pope who
will listen to the experiences of faith and church that people have,”
DeBernardo said.
“We need a pope who has the same courage as the last to speak out on
issues of justice, but also someone who will look at justice in the church,
not just justice in the world,” he said.
But papal election watchers doubt the upcoming conclave will produce a new
pontiff who strays radically from the church’s traditional teaching that
homosexuality is unnatural and sinful.
“We have tradition in the church, which is changeable; but then there
is doctrine — which includes topics like homosexuality — that
to try to change would require an act of God,” said Patricia Dugan, a
Philadelphia-based Catholic canon and civil lawyer.
A new pope may act more kindly toward gay Catholics, but the election of someone
willing to soften the Vatican’s strict opposition to homosexuality is
“probably not going to happen,” Dugan said.
Dugan also operates electapope.com, a Web site that teaches visitors about
the papacy and allows them to “vote” for a new pope online.
But DeBernardo, who said the Catholic Church’s “progress on homosexuality
will be evolutionary, not revolutionary,” still has faith that a leader
who fully embraces Catholics of all sexual orientations can be elected.
“Yes, it would take an act of God, but that’s not impossible,”
he said. “We are, after all, a church who believes God does miraculous
things.”
One change gay groups and other human rights organizations hope the new pope
makes is softening the Vatican opposition to the use of condoms, which help
prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS, particularly in Third World countries.
“I do think this is one area where we might see the Vatican back off
from having their ambassador to the United Nations pushing so firmly against
the use of condoms in Africa, because it’s an argument that’s very
difficult to justify on moral grounds,” said Sam Sinnett, president of
Dignity USA, a group for gay Catholics.
“Almost every single one of the cardinals who will be voting for a new
pope was hand-picked by John Paul II, so you’re not going to see a 180-degree
turn on anything,” Sinnett said. “But even shifting a few degrees
is important.”
Few people knew who Karol Wojtyla was when the last papal conclave began in
1978, and even fewer expected the Polish cardinal to be elected the first non-Italian
pope in more than 450 years.
John Paul II’s election in 1978 “opened the floodgates” for
who could become pope, making the already dubious task of speculating which
cardinal will lead the church virtually impossible, said Salvador Miranda, a
retired assistant director of the Florida International University Libraries
who has long studied the College of Cardinals.
“It’s certainly more complicated because this is the first conclave
after a non-Italian was elected, which means any one of the cardinals who enters
the conclave will have a possibility of being elected,” Miranda said.
There is widespread consensus that none of the 11 U.S. cardinals will be chosen.
Beyond that, “no one knows what is going on behind those closed doors,”
Sinnett said.
A handful of names have been bandied about by Catholic scholars and the media
as likely front-runners to the papacy, including the dean of the College of
Cardinals who presided over much of John Paul II’s funeral, Joseph Ratzinger
of Germany.
Ratzinger, 78, authored the Vatican’s “Considerations Regarding
Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons,”
a July 2003 battle plan guiding Catholic politicians to oppose gay marriage
and adoptions.
“There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to
be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage
and family,” Ratzinger wrote. “Marriage is holy, while homosexual
acts go against the natural moral law.”
His first-place ranking on the electapope.com list — with 22 percent
of the more than 22,000 votes cast at press time Wednesday — surprised
Dugan because Ratzinger is “so, so conservative.”
Varkey Vithayathil, a 77-year-old Indian cardinal described in the user feedback
section as “too kind to be pope,” led the electapope.com poll in
the early stages, but slipped to fifth place at press time with 10 percent of
the vote.
Preparing to attend John Paul II’s April 8 funeral, Vithayathil told
reporters the next pope “should be a person having acceptance of the entire
world,” according to The Hindu, India’s national newspaper.
After a Catholic priest refused to perform a religious burial for a parishioner
who died of AIDS in 2004, Vithayathil issued guidelines urging Indian clergy
to show love, mercy and respect to people living with HIV and AIDS, according
to the Associated Press.
“When we deal with AIDS patients, we should be responsible church members,
showing to them the true Christian love and social justice,” the guidelines
said.
Also among those considered to have a chance at the papacy are three Italian
cardinals — Giovanni Battista Re, 71; Angelo Sodano, 77; and Dionigi Tettamanzi,
71 — all of whom are considered conservative Vatican insiders and loyalists.
But there has also been speculation that the new pope will be from Africa or
Latin America in an effort to appeal to the church’s fastest-growing populations.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez
Maradiaga of Honduras, and Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes have all been mentioned
as possible pontiffs, and all would be expected to uphold the Vatican’s
position on homosexuality.
HIV and AIDS are caused by “a serious crises of values” and can
be combated with “education on responsible sexual behavior — including
abstinence and marital fidelity,” Hummes, considered one of the more socially
liberal papal candidates, said in a speech to the United Nations.
One of the leading candidates from Africa is Cardinal Francis Arinze, who made
headlines during a graduation speech at Georgetown University in May 2003 when
he said families across the world are “mocked by homosexuality [and] sabotaged
by irregular unions.”
Not only is it nearly impossible to predict who the next pope will be, observers
can never be sure exactly what kind of leader a cardinal will become when assuming
the papacy, said DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry.
“In the first days of John Paul II’s papacy, church progressives
were excited by him,” DeBernardo remembered. “But the bottom line
is that regardless of who becomes the next pope, the movement for gay and lesbian
equality in the church will continue to be strong and vibrant.”
Short of predicting the next pontiff, Vatican observers said there are several
factors that might indicate how traditional the new pope will be.
The cardinals will first have to decide whether the church will be best served
by a longer or shorter papacy, with an older candidate selected to serve a short
papacy likely to be more conservative, said Dugan from electapope.com.
Then the electors must choose between the two major types of cardinals —
those who are a part of the pope’s staff, known as the Roman Curia, and
pastoral cardinals who work more directly with parishioners across the world.
Members of the Roman Curia are considered establishment loyalists who support
a strong, centralized Vatican, while pastoral cardinals support local control
to meet the needs of various countries, Dugan said.
Geography may also be a factor in the new pope’s philosophy for the church,
with Asian cardinals being among the staunchest opponents to church centralization,
DeBernardo said.
An Asian pope may reverse the trend of “the Vatican always looking over
the shoulders of American bishops when developing gay and lesbian ministries,”
DeBernardo said.
On the flip side, there are worries that a pope from Africa or Latin America
may be even more hostile to homosexuality than John Paul II.
“If it is a pope that comes from the developing world where issues of
sexuality are not understood in the same light, we’re not going to see
any progress from the Vatican,” DeBernardo said.
But Miranda, the College of Cardinals scholar, said geography would likely
have little impact on who is selected.
Instead, he and Dugan said a new rule that allows for a cardinal to be elected
pope with a simple majority after the 30th ballot, as opposed to the two-thirds
majority that is usually required, may allow conservative cardinals to “hold
out” for their candidate without compromising until the victory threshold
is lowered.
“I think it’s more likely to be a European cardinal as the voting
goes on, and that’s likely to mean a more conservative pope,” Dugan
said.
Officials with gay Catholic organizations in America have accepted that a new
pope likely won’t embrace gay parishioners with open arms, but they hope
the new pontiff can at least foster a more respectful dialogue.
“The rhetoric coming out of the Vatican toward GLBT Catholics has been
increasingly virulent,” Sinnett said. “Just toning that down would
be a huge step forward.”
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