POPE FRANCIS HAS added fuel to rumours about the future of his pontificate by announcing that he is to visit the central Italian city of L’Aquila in August for a feast initiated by Pope Celestine V, one of the few pontiffs who resigned before Pope Benedict XVI stepped down in 2013.
The basilica in L’Aquila hosts the tomb of Celestine V, a hermit pope who resigned after five months in 1294, overwhelmed by the job.
Italian and Catholic media have been rife with unsourced speculation that the 85-year-old might be planning to follow in Benedict’s footsteps, given the increased mobility problems that have led him to use a wheelchair for the last month.
Those rumours gathered pace last week when Francis announced a consistory to create 21 new cardinals scheduled for 27 August. Sixteen of those cardinals are under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave to elect his successor.
Once they are added to the ranks of princes of the church, Francis will have filled the College of Cardinals with 83 of the 132 voting-age cardinals. While there is no guarantee how they might vote, the chances that they will tap a successor who shares Francis’s pastoral priorities become ever greater.
In announcing the August consistory, Francis also said he would host two days of talks the following week to brief the cardinals about his recent apostolic constitution reforming the Vatican bureaucracy.
That document, which goes into effect today, allows women to head Vatican offices, imposes term limits on priestly Vatican employees and positions the Holy See as an institution at the service of local churches, rather than vice versa.
Francis was elected Pope in 2013 on a mandate to reform the Roman Curia. Now that the nine-year project has been rolled out and at least partially implemented, his main task has in some ways been accomplished.
As a result, yesterday’s otherwise routine announcement of a pastoral visit to L’Aquila carries more speculative weight than it might otherwise have.
The timing was notable: the Vatican and the rest of Italy are usually on holiday in August to mid-September, with all but essential business closed. Calling a major consistory in late August to create new cardinals, gathering churchmen for two days of talks on implementing his reform and making a symbolically significant pastoral visit suggests Francis might have out-of-the-ordinary business in mind.
Vatican commentator Robert Mickens, linking to an essay he had published in La Croix International about the rumours swirling around the future of the pontificate, tweeted: “With today’s news that @Pontifex will go to L’Aquila in the very middle of the August consistory, it all got even more intriguing.”
With today’s news that @Pontifex will go to L’Aquila in the very middle of the August consistory, it all got even more intriguing…https://t.co/E0ivKdwH2J
— Robert Mickens (@robinrome)
The basilica in L’Aquila hosts the tomb of Celestine V, a hermit pope who resigned after five months in 1294, overwhelmed by the job. In 2009, Benedict visited L’Aquila, which had been devastated by a recent earthquake and prayed at Celestine’s tomb, leaving his pallium stole on it.
No-one at the time appreciated the significance of the gesture. But four years later the 85-year-old Benedict would follow in Celestine’s footsteps and resign, saying he no longer had the strength of body and mind to carry on the rigours of the papacy.
The Vatican announced on Saturday that Francis will visit L’Aquila to celebrate Mass on 28 August and open the “Holy Door” at the basilica hosting Celestine’s tomb. The timing coincides with the L’Aquila church’s celebration of the Feast of Forgiveness, which was created by Celestine in a papal bull.
No pope has travelled to L’Aquila since to close the annual feast, which celebrates the sacrament of forgiveness so dear to Francis, the current archbishop of L’Aquila, Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi, noted.
“We hope that all people, especially those harmed by conflicts and internal divisions, might (come) and find the path of solidarity and peace,” he said in a statement announcing the visit.
Francis has praised Benedict’s decision to retire as “opening the door” for future popes to do the same, and he had originally predicted a short papacy for himself of two to five years.
Nine years later, he has shown no signs he wants to step down, and he has major projects still on the horizon.
In addition to forthcoming trips this year to Congo, South Sudan, Canada and Kazakhstan, in 2023 he has scheduled a major meeting of the world’s bishops to debate the increasing decentralisation of the Catholic Church, as well as the continued implementation of his reforms.
But Francis has struggled with strained ligaments in his right knee that have made walking painful and difficult. He has told friends he does not want to undergo surgery, reportedly because of his reaction to anaesthesia last July when he had 33cm of his large intestine removed.
This week, one of his closest advisers and friends, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, said talk of a papal resignation or the end of Francis’s pontificate is unfounded.
“I think these are optical illusions, cerebral illusions,” he told Religion Digital, a Spanish-language Catholic site.
Christopher Bellitto, a church historian at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, noted that most Vatican watchers expect Francis will eventually resign, but not before Benedict dies. The 95-year-old retired pope is physically frail but still alert and receiving occasional visitors in his home in the Vatican gardens.
“He’s not going to have two former popes floating around,” Mr Bellitto said.
Referring to Francis’s planned visit to L’Aquila, he suggested not reading too much into it, noting that Benedict’s gesture in 2009 was missed by almost everyone.
“I don’t recall a lot of stories at the time saying that Benedict’s visit in 2009 made us think he was going to resign,” he said, suggesting that Francis’s pastoral visit to L’Aquila might be just that – a pastoral visit.
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