The Pope has won over some of his predecessor’s staunchest critics by filling his cardinals’ schedules with get-togethers.
At the end of a two-day consistory attended by 170 cardinals from around the world, the American Pope asked to see them again in June and pencilled in annual meetings thereafter.
This was in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Pope Francis, who held only one such extraordinary consistory in his 12-year papacy. It was enough to bring onside the German cardinal Gerhard Müller, who was Francis’s biggest critic and a point man for the Catholic Church’s hard-to-please conservative contingent.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller
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Müller, 78, said on Friday: “It is a very positive move — it is very important the Pope is not only surrounded by his personal friends. It is easy to be surrounded by people to say ‘yes, yes, yes’ to you, but this is more productive.”
After summoning cardinals to the Vatican this week, the Pope said that he was reacting to their complaints that they had been left out of decision-making when they met in April after the death of Pope Francis.
“I am here to listen,” the pontiff told them, adding that “unity attracts” while “division scatters”. During the day and a half of meetings, he frequently took notes as cardinals rose to speak. This, Müller said, showed he was keen on “real listening, dialogue and openness”.
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The consistory impressed the gathered “princes of the Church” after years in which Francis relied on a handpicked group of nine cardinals to advise him on how to run the Vatican.
Many cardinals had felt shut out by the Pope’s predecessor, Francis
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Müller claimed that Francis used his few meetings with the college of cardinals to work out who he could rely on. “It was about testing us cardinals,” he said. “It was about who is a friend and who is an enemy of the pope.”
He added that the Pope was returning to the Medieval papal practice of regular meetings with cardinals. “You might be the most intelligent man in the world, but everyone has their blind spots and needs support and discussion for the big decisions,” he said.
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Müller had challenged the mercy over dogma approach taken by Pope Francis, and in 2017 Francis ousted him from his job as the Vatican’s doctrinal chief. This week, Müller used his three-minute speaking slot at the consistory to criticise Francis’s approval of blessings for gay couples.
It was not a given that Müller would back the Pope, who has followed in his predecessor’s progressive footsteps on issues including migration and climate change, and supports Francis’s opening of synods to women and non-religious participants.
On Friday, in a clear rebuke to President Trump’s military operation in Venezuela, Leo, who comes from Chicago, bemoaned the rise of “diplomacy based on force”.
Cardinals gathered at St Peter’s Basilica as the Pope celebrated Mass for his first extraordinary consistory
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At the consistory, he told cardinals he was a keen adherent of the 1960s Church reforms which allowed the use of vernacular languages instead of Latin at mass. Some conservatives reportedly complained that a planned discussion at the meeting about bringing back the Latin mass, which they have championed, was scrapped at the last minute owing to time constraints.
But Müller was relaxed, saying a debate about the Latin mass “was not excluded from a later occasion”. He said: “Without exception, everyone was content. The essence of being a cardinal is not wearing your red vestments, but to help the Pope, to support him in a brotherly atmosphere, without absurd flattery.”
Müller said the Pope “has a well balanced personality and it is good to see he wants the best for the Church. We have had some people who have created great damage in this position.”