ROME – Amid the blooming jasmine and influx of tourists, Rome is alive with activity. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, cardinals gather for dinner parties, coffee meetings, and private discussions as they deliberate on choosing a successor to Pope Francis.
In similar gatherings back in March 2013, retired archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, along with other European reformers, advocated for Argentine Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Their efforts at the dinner table were successful, and Pope Francis was elected on the fifth ballot.
Although Cardinal Vincent Nichols has stepped into Murphy-O’Connor’s role as the archbishop of Westminster, he has not assumed the mantle of leading the papal lobbying efforts among cardinals in these crucial days of decision-making.
“We’re of quite different styles,” Nichols said Friday, chuckling during an interview in the Venerable English College, the storied British seminary in downtown Rome where he studied in the 1960s. “Cardinal Cormac would love to be at the center of the party. I’m a little more reserved than that and a little bit more introverted.”
Nevertheless, Nichols, 79, provided an insiders’ view of what’s going on among his fellow cardinal-electors — between meals of Rome’s famous carbonara — as they get to know one another after bidding farewell to the pope who made 108 of them “princes of the church.”
Nichols says he is spending these days before his first conclave listening, as cardinals meet each morning in a Vatican auditorium to discuss the needs of the Catholic Church and the type of person who can lead it. These meetings are open to all cardinals, including those over 80, while the conclave itself in the Sistine Chapel is limited to cardinals who haven’t yet reached 80.
‘Not a boys’ brigade that marches in step’
Nichols said a picture of the future pope is beginning to form, at least in his mind, as cardinals look back at Francis’ 12-year pontificate and see where to go from here when they begin voting on Wednesday.
“I suppose we’re looking for somebody who even in their manner not only expresses the depth of the faith, but also its openness as well,” said Nichols.
Pope Benedict XVI named Nichols archbishop of Westminster in 2009 but he didn’t become a cardinal until 2014, when Francis tapped him in his first batch of cardinals. Francis went on to name Nichols as a member of several important Vatican offices, including the powerful dicastery for bishops, which vets bishop nominations around the world.
“My experience so far, to be quite honest with you, is there’s a lot of attentive listening,” Nichols said. “That’s listening to the people who might have an idea today of who they think is the best candidate, and I wouldn’t be surprised if by Monday they might have changed their mind.”
Nichols said the picture that is emerging is of seeing Francis’ pontificate in continuity with the more doctrinaire papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and of appreciating the multicultural reality of the Catholic Church today. Francis greatly expanded the College of Cardinals to include cardinals from far-flung places like Tonga and Mongolia, rather than just the traditional centers of European Catholicism.
Yes, divisions and disagreements have been aired. “But I can never remember a time when Catholics all agreed about everything,” Nichols said.
“We’re not a boys’ brigade that marches in step.” But he said he sensed that cardinals believe Francis’ reforming papacy and radical call to prioritize the poor and marginalized, to care for the planet and all its people, needed further consolidating with another papacy.
“There’s a sense that the initiatives that this man of such originality took, they probably do need rooting a bit more to give them that stability and evident continuity,” Nichols said. “So that these aren’t just the ideas of one person, one charismatic person, but they are actually consistently part of how the church reflects on humanity, our own humanity and our world.”
‘Team Bergoglio’
In his book “The Great Reformer,” Francis’ biographer Austen Ivereigh described the 2013 election of Francis and how Nichols’ predecessor, Murphy-O’Connor and other reform-minded Europeans within the College of Cardinals seized the opportunity to push Bergoglio after it was clear the Italians were fighting among themselves over the Italian candidate, splitting their vote.
“Team Bergoglio,” as these reform-minded cardinals came to be known, had tried to talk up Bergoglio in the 2005 conclave, but failed to get their man through after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s momentum grew and Bergoglio bowed out.
In 2013, with many too old to vote in the conclave itself, “Team Bergoglio” talked up the Argentine at dinner parties around Rome in the days before the conclave to try to ensure the Argentine could secure at least 25 votes on the first ballot to establish himself as a serious candidate, the book said.
“The Great Reformer” recounts a dinner party at the North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome, on March 5, 2013 to which Murphy-O’Connor and Australian Cardinal George Pell were invited and where the British cardinal talked up Bergoglio’s name.
“He held a number of these dinners, and I think there were a few of them involved, a few who had grown convinced that Bergoglio was what the church needed,” Ivereigh said Friday.
Nichols doesn’t have any such calculations or candidate, at least that he is willing to divulge.
“For me, it’s no good going into a conclave thinking it’s like a political election and I want my side to win. I’m not going to do that,” he said. “I’m going to go in certainly with my own thoughts but ready to change them, to listen and maybe try and persuade others to change theirs too.”
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