Pope Francis, 2013 to 2025. One of the last images from the Vatican Image Service.
A first obituary by Giuseppe Nardi
Almighty God has called Pope Francis to Himself at 7:35 AM. Thus ended the most recent pontificate, which will go down in Church history as one of the most unspeakable, after twelve years, one month, and eight days. Katholisch.info has critically followed this pontificate from the beginning. Our database documents this pontificate, accessible to everyone.
It will now be said that it is "too early" to draw a balance. But that is not so. Attentive and sensitive Catholics already felt the looming trouble for Catholicism on the day of his election, March 13, 2013. And precisely this sense of those whom God allows to recognize more was confirmed with each day of the 266th pontificate.
The titles that characterized the now-ended pontificate have already been written: There was talk of the "dictator pope" and the "lost shepherd." The pope from Argentina did not heed the warning voices until the end. He followed his agenda, which gave faithful Catholics an uneasy feeling from the beginning, confirmed by the harshness of the facts and verifiable at any time.
The pontificate will remain inextricably linked to his distancing from non-negotiable values, with unspeakable documents like Amoris laetitia, the document on the fraternity of all people from Abu Dhabi, with Fiducia supplicans and Traditionis custodes, with the homo-agenda, the Corona pandemic-lie, the pandering to the globalist agenda, the disregard for the sacred liturgy and its rubrics. The pontificate will be recorded in the annals of the Church as that of the pope who did not want to kneel and did not administer communion, who made the Holy Thursday liturgy with the institution of the Sacrament of the Altar and the Sacrament of Holy Orders invisible, and who fled the public veneration of the Holy Eucharist on Corpus Christi. The talk will inevitably be about the false friends with whom Francis surrounded himself, with Emma Bonino, Marco Pannella, and Eugenio Scalfari, to name the church-hostile, Freemason atheists; but also with the false advisors in the Church itself, such as Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo and Victor Manuel "Tucho" Fernández. It was not the false advisors who misled him. Francis himself set the direction and chose the appropriate advisors and friends for it.
Francis will also be remembered as the pope of the McCarrick boys and the absolution for abortion politicians like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. Also as the pope of arbitrariness against orthodox bishops, communities, and churchmen.
He will also be recorded as the pope who wanted to radically reshape the constitution of the Church like no other before him through synodality and his bitter and unjust struggle against the clergy, but also through already implemented legal norms or at least the groundwork for them. This hidden revolutionary side will demand much reparation from his successors, in this and many other areas. Not least, consider the neo-absolutism that Francis quietly imposed, and which was "overlooked" by the mainstream so well-disposed to him, up to the strangulation of contemplative women's monasteries and the fact that the rights for religious foundations were taken away from the bishops.
Among the shadows of the past years is also that too many have remained silent. This is based, consciously or unconsciously, on a false understanding of the papacy, whereby the papacy is absolutized in the wrong place, while where it is absolute in the preservation and defense of worship, tradition, and Catholic identity, it was dismantled, not least by Francis himself.
Francis was also the pope, which should not be concealed, who did not cover up the West's complicity in the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, but spoke of the "too loud barking of NATO" at Moscow's door.
The cardinals, that mass of purple-clad men whom Francis himself appointed with great urgency in recent years to make the processes he initiated irreversible, will gather in a few days for Francis's funeral mass in St. Peter's Square and shortly thereafter convene for the general congregations that precede the conclave. What will follow is the conclave, which, in all likelihood, will give the Holy Church of Jesus Christ the 267th pope by mid-May at the latest.
As the 2013 conclave showed, much is done in certain high Church ranks to lock the Holy Spirit out of the Sistine Chapel at the "Extra omnes." However, He works, that is the justified confidence of every Catholic, where and how He wills.
The succession games have long begun, even before Francis was admitted to the Gemelli Clinic in mid-February. The lists of the so-called papabili have been circulating for months. Francis knew at the end, as much as he tried to lay down his papacy, at least how to die like a pope, by not resigning, although it would have been appropriate for him to do so, unlike his predecessor. He died in office, as is fitting for a pope elected for life, and he died in the Vatican, not in any hospital. That may be little, some will find, given the less than pleasant balance of the pontificate, to put it euphemistically, but at least.
The purple-clad men have begun to play election sum games. The numbers are on the table: 135 cardinals are eligible to vote in the upcoming conclave, should Cardinal Becciu's resignation be legally valid, which is to be assumed. If all papal electors appear, at least 90 votes are necessary for the election of the 267th pope to reach the two-thirds majority. That is more than ever before in church history.
Many of the cardinals will see and get to know each other personally for the first time at the general congregations. This is a byproduct of the Bergoglian appointment practice. However, not all were inactive. There are preparations on various sides, because: when a pope dies, a new one is elected.
The faithful, earthly speaking, in the holy Church, which is hierarchically structured by Christ, have no voice in the chapter of the papal election. But they have a powerful means at hand, prayer.
~We have to thank God that the 266th pontificate of history has come to an end.
~We have to ask God for mercy for the late pope. The personal judgment has already passed for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, elected in 2013 as the Vicar of Christ on Earth.
~We have to ask God for a holy pope, whom He may give to His Church: for a holy, apostolic, charismatic, and missionary pope, who celebrates the holy liturgy and strengthens His brothers in faith.
Francis has already passed the moment of personal judgment, which occurs immediately at the moment of death. The Lord knows everything, the good and the bad of a long life. May He repay all the good and be merciful.
Lord, grant Francis eternal rest,
and let eternal light shine upon him.
May he rest in peace. Amen.
Image: VaticanMedia (Screenshot)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG
