Latest / The Front / Pope Francis - and who will be next?
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
- 0:08Speaker 1: It's Monday, February twenty four. All eyes are on Rome,
- 0:13Speaker 1: where eighty eight year old Pope Francis is critically ill
- 0:16Speaker 1: with pneumonia. Today we look at the complex legacy of
- 0:22Speaker 1: Francis born Joge Becoglo in Argentina, and who's positioning to
- 0:27Speaker 1: replace him as the leader of one and a quarter
- 0:30Speaker 1: billion Catholics around the world. Looking right now, that smoke
- 0:46Speaker 1: is now coming out of the chimney. It is oh
- 0:51Speaker 1: very much.
- 0:52Speaker 2: Wait, we have a new pope and you can hear
- 0:55Speaker 2: the cheers from Saint Peter's Square out there.
- 0:59Speaker 1: Let's listen. In has the protos reactor secretive? Yes, melodramatic, absolutely.
- 1:12Speaker 1: This is how a new pope is chosen, not by
- 1:15Speaker 1: a ray of light from heaven, but in a long,
- 1:18Speaker 1: slow election by secret ballot, surrounded by politicking and lobbying
- 1:23Speaker 1: for the highest stakes, the guidance of more than one
- 1:26Speaker 1: point three billion Catholics. Only men may vote the most
- 1:32Speaker 1: senior cardinals from around the world, who must be under
- 1:35Speaker 1: eighty to get into the conclave. That's Latin for lockable room.
- 1:40Speaker 1: The conclave takes place in the Vatican City's Sistine Chapel,
- 1:44Speaker 1: where Michelangelo's hi Renaissance fresco on the ceiling shows God
- 1:49Speaker 1: touching the hand of Adam, the sacred and the mundane,
- 1:53Speaker 1: just like the work of the cardinals below. The latest
- 1:59Speaker 1: cinematic iagining of all this is in the movie Conclave,
- 2:02Speaker 1: starring Ray Fines, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini, all swishing
- 2:07Speaker 1: around in robes with no makeup but still managing to
- 2:11Speaker 1: look glamorous.
- 2:13Speaker 2: What happened, they say, a heart attack?
- 2:17Speaker 1: Based on a Robert Harris novel. The movie is appropriately thrilling.
- 2:23Speaker 3: This is a conclave, alder, it's not a war.
- 2:25Speaker 4: It is a war, and you have to comment to a.
- 2:30Speaker 1: Side on screen and in real life. The factions lobby
- 2:36Speaker 1: for their candidates in the open, but the vote is
- 2:39Speaker 1: taken in strict secrecy under threat of excommunication. As each
- 2:44Speaker 1: round of voting concludes, ballots accounted, threaded together and then
- 2:48Speaker 1: burned in a stove inside the chapel for centuries. Thick
- 2:52Speaker 1: soot produced by these stoves caked that exquisite work by
- 2:57Speaker 1: Michelangelo above. Black smoke means the vote is split and
- 3:02Speaker 1: the cardinals must vote again, repeating the process up to
- 3:05Speaker 1: four times a day until a victor emerges. White smoke
- 3:10Speaker 1: means a new pope has been elected by a majority
- 3:13Speaker 1: of at least two thirds.
- 3:18Speaker 2: After four rounds of voting. Carnal Jorge Mario Brigoglio was
- 3:22Speaker 2: selected as the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church,
- 3:25Speaker 2: succeeding pulp Benedicta sixteenth.
- 3:30Speaker 1: When he was elevated to the papacy in twenty thirteen,
- 3:33Speaker 1: Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Begoglio became the first non European pope
- 3:38Speaker 1: to serve in more than a millennium. He adopted the
- 3:41Speaker 1: papal name Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi. To the
- 3:46Speaker 1: church's progressives, he represented a new era, someone who understood
- 3:49Speaker 1: the challenging modern lives of its congregation. He had worked
- 3:53Speaker 1: as a nightclub bouncer. After all, Francis wasn't into lavish accommodation.
- 3:58Speaker 1: He slept not in the paper palace, but in a
- 4:01Speaker 1: simple motel style room, and he made the embraceive immigrants
- 4:05Speaker 1: and refugees a foundation of his papacy. My people are poor,
- 4:09Speaker 1: he said more than once, and I am one of them,
- 4:13Speaker 1: an nod to his modest upbringing in the suburbs of
- 4:16Speaker 1: Buenos Aire's. Still, progressives have been largely disappointed Francis didn't
- 4:21Speaker 1: push it.
- 4:21Speaker 3: More.
- 4:22Speaker 1: To some Catholic traditionalists, Francis went too far when you interview.
- 4:27Speaker 1: Pope Francis has discussed the possibility of relaxing the discipline
- 4:31Speaker 1: of priestly celibacy, recommending the church ordine married men to
- 4:36Speaker 1: service priests.
- 4:37Speaker 2: Pope Francis met with the Vatican department that he created
- 4:40Speaker 2: himself nine years ago.
- 4:42Speaker 1: It is the office of the Auditor.
- 4:44Speaker 2: General in charge of fighting corruption and keeping tabs on finances.
- 4:48Speaker 1: Ope Francis says Catholic priests can now bless same sex couples,
- 4:52Speaker 1: but not for marriage, but no one expects this will
- 4:55Speaker 1: lead the Pope to reconsider women priests. Francis has said
- 4:59Speaker 1: that to the war is closed. In the almost twelve
- 5:04Speaker 1: years since Pope Francis was elected, there have been controversies.
- 5:08Speaker 4: The claim is explosive that Pope Francis covered up sexual
- 5:13Speaker 4: abuse in the American.
- 5:14Speaker 1: Church, and contradictions. Francis acknowledged people have a right to
- 5:19Speaker 1: be outraged by the Church's response to what he called
- 5:22Speaker 1: repulsive crimes against children. Popularity, Francis knew is fleeting shortly
- 5:32Speaker 1: after that white smoke rose into the air in Saint
- 5:35Speaker 1: Peter's Square. In twenty thirteen, he told an Argentinian radio
- 5:38Speaker 1: station Jesus also for a certain time was very popular,
- 5:42Speaker 1: and look how that turned out.
- 5:46Speaker 4: I think there will be a lot of people that
- 5:48Speaker 4: remember him as a reformist, someone who is very liberal,
- 5:52Speaker 4: somebody who took the church in a direction that others
- 5:56Speaker 4: may not have wished it to go to.
- 5:58Speaker 1: Jacqueline Magnet is the Australia's Europe correspondent, and she's had
- 6:01Speaker 1: her bags packed for days, ready to rush from her
- 6:05Speaker 1: home in London to Rome.
- 6:06Speaker 4: On my computer screen at the moment, I actually have
- 6:09Speaker 4: the hotel booking ready to go, so that I just presend, unfortunately,
- 6:14Speaker 4: anyone wanting to go to Rome.
- 6:15Speaker 5: At the moment.
- 6:16Speaker 4: It is the jubilee here, which is of course a
- 6:19Speaker 4: year long celebration for the church, and a lot of
- 6:22Speaker 4: pilgrims are going to Rome at the moment. So accommodation
- 6:26Speaker 4: is very tight, and so it's very difficult to find
- 6:29Speaker 4: something that's one affordable and two available.
- 6:32Speaker 1: From the moment, Francis was admitted to hospital. Thoughts turned
- 6:35Speaker 1: to how he might be remembered, whether he survived this
- 6:38Speaker 1: battle with illness or not.
- 6:40Speaker 4: Will he be considered a man of his time? I'm
- 6:44Speaker 4: not sure. It's a very extreme position he's had for
- 6:50Speaker 4: the leader of the Catholic Church, and I think people
- 6:54Speaker 4: felt that he delved into politics more than he needed to,
- 7:00Speaker 4: and that he went where the church wouldn't normally go.
- 7:04Speaker 4: Where we're talking issues of immigration, of the environment, of
- 7:08Speaker 4: aspects of life that are outside of religious instructions. So
- 7:14Speaker 4: I think it will be interesting to see how he's remembered,
- 7:18Speaker 4: isn't it in the next few years, especially when politically
- 7:21Speaker 4: we've got so much upheaval in the world. And I
- 7:24Speaker 4: think that could also play a part in the election
- 7:26Speaker 4: of the new pope, that maybe they do want somebody
- 7:30Speaker 4: that's not quite so dramatic or is willing to put
- 7:36Speaker 4: the church in an extreme position. They really want someone
- 7:39Speaker 4: to take it down the middle road.
- 7:40Speaker 1: I think yeah. In the recent US election, he was
- 7:44Speaker 1: critical of both Kamala Harris for herst and on abortion
- 7:47Speaker 1: and Donald Trump for his stand on immigration, and in
- 7:51Speaker 1: fact has really slated the president for mass deportations. For
- 7:56Speaker 1: example of undocumented people from the United States. That's an
- 8:00Speaker 1: unusual level of political involvement for a pope in our
- 8:04Speaker 1: modern times. But of course the archetype of the scheming
- 8:07Speaker 1: pope being very much involved in politics is something from history,
- 8:10Speaker 1: isn't it.
- 8:11Speaker 4: Yes, But I think in modern days people are looking
- 8:14Speaker 4: for religious instruction, not a lecture, and so they're seeking
- 8:21Speaker 4: guidance rather than a blanket signpost. And so I just
- 8:27Speaker 4: think in Rome that there really is a sweech or
- 8:31Speaker 4: mood at the moment to not be following Pope Francis
- 8:37Speaker 4: with someone in the same vein, and some of the
- 8:40Speaker 4: people that Pope Francis elected have a more conservative bent
- 8:44Speaker 4: than what perhaps he may have expected.
- 8:48Speaker 1: Coming up what a new leader could mean for the church.
- 9:05Speaker 1: About fourteen days after the death or resignation of a pope,
- 9:09Speaker 1: a conclave is called okay jack. So who's next?
- 9:16Speaker 4: Well, there's about a dozen front runners, but I think
- 9:20Speaker 4: that the main one at the moment. In Italy they're
- 9:23Speaker 4: called papabilli as well, so all the papabilly are maneuvering
- 9:27Speaker 4: at the moment. So there's an Italian cardinal and Pietro
- 9:32Speaker 4: Paroline now he's the Vatican Secretary of State, and so
- 9:36Speaker 4: he knows all the secrets for some significant amount of time,
- 9:42Speaker 4: all the skeletons, and there's a reason that he's a
- 9:45Speaker 4: front runner because he's considered to be a steady hand.
- 9:49Speaker 1: Pietro Paoline is Pope Francis's chief advisor and he's been
- 9:54Speaker 1: his mistry advocating for climate change mitigation around the world.
- 10:00Speaker 3: We have to really to change our way of living,
- 10:04Speaker 3: and this is the task interested by God to the
- 10:08Speaker 3: human kind when he created him.
- 10:11Speaker 4: And it's also the Philippines Cardinal Louis Antonio Tagel, he's
- 10:15Speaker 4: also fairly moderate.
- 10:20Speaker 2: Children.
- 10:21Speaker 4: What do you see in your parents? A gift or
- 10:26Speaker 4: an atm card?
- 10:30Speaker 5: Parents?
- 10:31Speaker 4: Parents, what do you see in your children? A gift
- 10:36Speaker 4: or a burden?
- 10:39Speaker 5: Priests and deacons, what do you see in your bishops?
- 10:46Speaker 4: I'm sorry. We've got Cardinal Peter Urdo from Hungary. Now
- 10:54Speaker 4: he was a very close friend of Cardinal George pell
- 10:59Speaker 4: he's very pop pillar amongst all of the cardinals. And
- 11:03Speaker 4: then you've got people like will the church go and
- 11:06Speaker 4: elect someone who's from the Congo Fridolin and Bongo is
- 11:11Speaker 4: somebody who's he's the president of the African and Madagascar Symposium.
- 11:18Speaker 4: So he has control or authority of a significant area
- 11:23Speaker 4: of the world. But he's also quite politically outspoken, so
- 11:27Speaker 4: I don't know whether the cardinals will turn to him.
- 11:32Speaker 4: I'm not sure he is being named as someone who's
- 11:34Speaker 4: one of the front runners. And then Robert Sarah of Guinea.
- 11:39Speaker 4: He's also very conservative.
- 11:43Speaker 1: Cardinal Sarah has railed against gender ideology, abortion and euphanasia.
- 11:49Speaker 5: If we pass laws destroy an innocence shaild in the womb,
- 11:56Speaker 5: or to cut sorts the distance of a def Angeles
- 12:01Speaker 5: elder person, what are you there to stop men from
- 12:06Speaker 5: taking the life of someone considered to be an enemy
- 12:11Speaker 5: or a fat And.
- 12:13Speaker 4: So if the church was to go swing from the
- 12:16Speaker 4: left to the right in quite a violent way, he
- 12:20Speaker 4: might also be a consideration.
- 12:24Speaker 1: Jacqueline Magne is The Australian's europe correspondent. You can get
- 12:30Speaker 1: all the lattest from the Vatican and the rest of
- 12:32Speaker 1: the world right now at the Australian dot com do
- 12:35Speaker 1: AU