Pope Francis turned 87 on Sunday, closing out a yr that saw big milestones in his efforts to reform the Catholic Church in addition to health scares that raise questions on his future as pope.
Francis celebrated his birthday with cake during a festive audience with children Sunday morning, and there have been “Happy Birthday” banners in St. Peter’s Square during his weekly noon blessing.
One early present got here Saturday, when a Vatican tribunal handed down a combination of guilty verdicts and acquittals in an advanced trial that Francis had supported as evidence of his financial reforms. The biggest-name defendant, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 5½ years in prison.
“It was quite a yr for a pope who’s obviously fascinated with legacy and ending up,” said Christopher Bellitto, professor of history at Kean University in New Jersey.
Only seven popes are known to have been older than Francis on the time of their deaths, in keeping with the web resource Catholic Hierarchy. Francis is fast closing in on one among them, Pope Gregory XII, perhaps best known for having been probably the most recent pope to resign until Pope Benedict XVI stepped down in 2013.
Gregory was 88½ when he voluntarily stepped down in 1415 in a bid to finish the Western Schism, wherein there have been three rival claimants to the papacy. Francis has said he, too, would consider resigning if his health made him unable to hold on, but more recently he said the job of pope is for all times.
Twice this yr, nevertheless, Francis’ less-than-robust respiratory health forced him to cancel big events: In spring, a bout of acute bronchitis landed him within the hospital for 3 days and made him miss the Good Friday procession on the Colosseum.
More recently, a recent case of bronchitis forced him to cancel a planned trip to Dubai to take part in the U.N. climate conference. Francis had a part of one lung removed as a young man and appears to be increasingly susceptible to respiratory problems that make respiratory difficult and speaking much more so.
In between those events, he was hospitalized again in June for nine days for surgeons to repair an abdominal hernia and take away scar tissue from previous intestinal surgeries.
The hospitalizations have raised questions on Francis’ ability to proceed the globetrotting rigors of the modern-day papacy, which is increasingly depending on the person of the pope, said David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University.
“It’s a fantastic improvement from the time when the pope was only a king in his throne surrounded by a royal court,” he said. “But with such expectations can any pope govern into his 80s and even 90s and be effective?”
While Francis’ health scares punctuated his 87th yr, perhaps the most important milestone of all, and one which is prone to shape the rest of Francis’ pontificate, was Benedict’s Dec. 31 death.
Benedict largely stuck to his promise to live “hidden to the world” and permit Francis to control unimpeded. But his death after 10 years of retirement removed the shadow of a more conservative pope looking over Francis’ shoulder from the opposite side of the Vatican gardens.
His death has seemingly freed up Francis to speed up his reform agenda and crack down on his right-wing opponents.
For starters, Francis presided over the primary stage of his legacy-making meeting on the longer term of the Catholic Church. The synod goals to make the church more inclusive and reflective of and attentive to the needs of rank-and-file Catholics. The first session ended with “urgent” calls to incorporate women in decision-making roles within the church. The next phase is scheduled for October 2024.
“The effort to vary the rigidly top-down nature of governance in Catholicism is the principal reform project of the Francis papacy and its success or failure will likely be his chief legacy,” said Fordham’s Gibson. He said the jury was still out on whether it will succeed, because the transition period is “messy and absolutely exhausting.”
“Will the sense of exhaustion overcome the inspiration that invigorates so many?” he asked.
Alongside the synod, Francis this yr appointed an unusually progressive theologian because the Vatican’s chief doctrine watchdog, and he has already begun setting a really recent tone for the church’s teachings that might have big effects on the church going forward.
Cardinal Victor Fernandez has issued decrees on all the things from methods to take care of cremated ashes (in an outlined and sacred place) to membership in Masonic lodges (forbidden) and whether transgender people might be godparents (they’ll).
At the identical time, Francis has begun hitting back at his conservative critics, for whom Benedict was a degree of reference for the past 10 years.
Francis exiled Benedict’s longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, to his native Germany after a series of infractions culminating with a tell-all memoir published in the times after Benedict’s death that was highly critical of Francis.
Then, he forcibly removed the bishop of Tyler, Texas, Bishop Joseph Strickland, whose social media posts were highly critical of the pope. And most recently, he cut off the previous Vatican high court judge, Cardinal Raymond Burke, after he warned that Francis’ reform-minded synod risked dividing the faithful.
Natalia Imperatori-Lee, professor of non secular studies at Manhattan College, said the pushback against Burke was less of a “smackdown” and would have little tangible effect, since he has loads of wealthy backers within the U.S.
But she said it was a part of a crucial yr that had as its high point the synod, the conclusion of which can drive Francis no less than for one more yr.
“I believe the Pope is fascinated with his legacy in a way he hasn’t done before. Perhaps that has to do with Benedict’s death, perhaps it’s more a matter of his own mortality becoming more real given his recent illnesses,” she said. “The synod is a big a part of that legacy, obviously, and you may see his investment in having it succeed. I’m willing to bet that seeing part 2 of the synod to fruition is a big motivator for him immediately.”
