VATICAN City – Pope Francis marked 10 years as head of the Catholic Church on Monday with a podcast, a non-public mass and a sequence of interviews, one in all which triggered a diplomatic spat with Nicaragua.
“It seems like yesterday,” the 86-year-old recalled of his election throughout a podcast for the official Vatican News outlet — after first having to be instructed what a podcast was.
Asked what he would really like as a present for his 10-year anniversary, for which he had no public plans past a mass with cardinals, Francis added: “Peace. We need peace.”
Jorge Bergoglio was elected pope on March 13, 2013, after his predecessor Benedict XVI surprised the world by changing into the primary pope to resign because the Middle Ages.
He has mentioned he by no means anticipated to be elected, solely packing a small suitcase to journey from Argentina to Rome for the conclave on the belief he would quickly be again in Buenos Aires, the place he was archbishop.
But he had a imaginative and prescient, and over the following decade he would overhaul the governance of the Church, together with cleansing up the Vatican books and taking motion towards clerical youngster abuse.
He additionally shifted many individuals’s notion of the papacy by partaking much less in theology and extra with social points from migration to the setting.
And even whereas sustaining conventional doctrine on points equivalent to abortion and homosexual marriage, he has sought to forge a picture of a extra open, compassionate Church.
Nicaragua row
“He is a Pope for this time,” mentioned Italian priest Father Roberto, who travelled to Saint Peter’s Square to listen to the pope ship his weekly Angelus prayer on Sunday.
“He managed to grasp today’s needs and to propose them to the whole universal Church… And now he’s giving the Church a push forward for the years to come. He is sowing good for the future.”
However, not everyone seems to be enamored of Francis’ method, notably the conservative wing of the Catholic Church. One critic, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, not too long ago criticized the pope’s “doctrinal confusion”.
Francis has by no means shied away from controversy, recurrently utilizing his pulpit to rail towards the whole lot from the mafia to consumerism and the arms business.
In one in all his anniversary interviews, with Argentine news outlet Infobae, he described the federal government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega as a “crude dictatorship”.
Ortega’s authorities — which has lengthy had tensions with the Catholic Church — responded on Sunday by saying it was contemplating suspending diplomatic ties with the Vatican.
In one other interview, with Swiss broadcaster RTS final week, the pope denounced the involvement of all of the “great powers” within the Ukraine battle.
He prays recurrently for the victims of the battle, though he has been criticised for failing to squarely put the blame on Russia because the aggressor.
‘It’s not simple’
Pope Francis has sought to enhance ties with Islam throughout his papacy, and Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar mosque, was a type of who despatched their congratulations on his 10-year milestone.
In a letter printed by Vatican News, al-Tayeb hailed the pope’s efforts to “build bridges of love and fraternity among all human beings”.
Messages of congratulations additionally got here in from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the chief of the world’s Orthodox Christians, and Anglican chief Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Welby joined Francis on a latest peace mission to conflict-ridden South Sudan, the place large crowds flocked to see the pontiff, as they do in every single place he goes.
The pope continues to journey extensively, regardless of his age and well being points.
Francis was hospitalized in 2021 for colon surgical procedure and now makes use of a wheelchair on account of knee hassle — one thing he admitted in a single interview he was “a little ashamed” about.
The pope has mentioned he would observe Benedict in resigning if he ever turned too infirm for the job however insists that’s not on his agenda.
Asked by Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano what his hopes for the long run had been, he replied: “That the Lord be merciful with me. Being the pope is not an easy job.” — Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
