For gambling types, the conventional wisdom says not to place your money on a pope from the United States.
Yet an American who says some Vatican guards can scrape enough voices, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69, a chicago born polyglot that is seen as a church man who transcends boundaries. He had two decades in Peru, where he became bishop and a naturalized citizen and then rose to lead his international religious order. He now has one of the most influential Vatican messages.
When Ideological camps is struggling About whether I want to continue the inclusive agenda of Pope Franciscus or return to a conservative learning path, Pannen of Cardinal him as a balanced alternative Under the papabiliAs probably candidates for the papacy are known.
The Reverend Michele Falcone, 46, a priest in the order of St. Augustine who was previously led by Cardinal Prevost, described his mentor and friend as the “worthy center of the road”.
The cardinal resembles Francis in his dedication to the poor and migrants and to meet people where they are. Last year he told the official news website of Vatican that “the bishop should not be a little prince in his kingdom.” On the contrary, he said, a church leader is “authentic to be humble to suffer from the people he must be to walk with them, to suffer with them.”
Cardinal Prevost, appointed by Francis in 2023 to run the Vatican office that selects and manages bishops worldwide, has spent a large part of his life outside the United States. Ordered in 1982 at the age of 27, he received a doctorate in Canon Law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. In Peru he was a missionary, parish priest, teacher and bishop. As leader of the Augustinians, he visited orders all over the world and speaks Spanish and Italian.
The Cardinal understands that the center of the Roman Catholic Church ‘is not in the United States or the North Atlantic Ocean,’ said Raúl E. Zegarra, assistant professor of Catholic theological studies at the Harvard Divinity School.
Given the international experience of Cardinal Prevost, said knowledge of the United States and work within the Vatican hierarchy, said Marco Politi, a veteran Vatican analyst in Rome: “If he was not American, this would certainly make him a papable, certainly.”
Cardinal Prevost, which is often described as reserved and discreet, would leave stylistically from Francis, who to His death last month Drew roaring crowds and stopped to bless a baby against the advice of his doctors.
“He has no excesses,” said Father Falcone about Cardinal Prevost. “Babies bless, yes. They take them in his arms, no.”
Proponents of the Cardinal said they expected that he would continue the consultative process that Francis started to invite lay people to meet bishops.
“I know that Bob believes that everyone has the right and duty to express themselves in the church,” said the Reverend Mark R. Francis, a former classmate of Cardinal Prevost who runs the American arm of the clergymen of St. Vianator, a religious order.
While Francis said: “Who am I to judge? “Asked for Gay Clerics, Cardinal Prevost has spoken less hospitable views for LGBTQ people.
In a speech of 2012 to bishops, he complained that Western news media and the popular culture promoted “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel.” He mentioned the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families consisting of partners of the same sex and their adopted children.”
As a bishop in Chiclayo, a city in northwestern Peru, he opposed a government plan to add teachings about gender to schools. “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing because it strives to create sexes that do not exist,” he told local news media.
Although praised in Peru for supporting Venezuelan immigrants and The cardinal visits distant communities and has received criticism of his dealings with priests accused of sexual abuse.
A woman in Chiclayo who said she and two other women were sexually abused by two priests, because girls long before Cardinal Bishop accused him of the wrong to do an investigation and not to stop celebrating mass.
The diocese of Chiclayo said that Cardinal Prevost opened an investigation that the Vatican closed. After a new bishop arrived, the investigation was reopened. Proponents of Cardinal Prevost say that he is the target of a smear campaign by members of a Peruvian Catholic movement that Francis dissolved.
In Chicago, activists say that his office has not warned A nearby Catholic school that was a priest whose church leaders were determined to abuse young boys for years, was sheltered in a monastery in the neighborhood from 2000. As the head of the Midwestern Order of Augustinians at the time, Cardinal Prevost would have approved the move from the priest to the monastery.
Attempts to achieve cardinal prevost for this article were not successful.
Friends of the cardinal say he is talking carefully.
In comparison with Francis, his language is ‘more serene’, said the Reverend Alejandro Moral Antón, the successor of Cardinal Prevost as Augustine leader.
Where Francis may immediately express his opinion, Cardinal Prevost ‘stops himself a bit,’ father Moral Antón added.
Mitra Taj Contributed reporting from Lima, Peru and Josephine de la Bruyère from Rome.
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