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A conclave to test Pope Francis’ legacy
The Catholic Church is not simply a spiritual enterprise. The choosing of the next pontiff could see a coalescing of conservative forces to regain power.
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The choosing of the next pontiff could see a coalescing of conservative forces to regain power, says the writer.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Howard Chua-Eoan
Before he became Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a devotee of La Virgen Desatanudos – Mary the untier of knots, the virgin mother of Jesus as a solver of gnarly problems. He’d need the help.
As the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, he inherited two millennia of convoluted history and controversy, ranging from geopolitics to theology, from accounting for the Vatican’s riches to addressing the rancid legacy of priestly child abuse, from separating being pious and being just, from preserving influence to projecting power.
