The Election of Pope Francis is informative and captivating—and raises many questions

Gerard O’Connell’s ability to weave many threads together into a coherent narrative is a true gift and one for which he must be commended. But his book also leaves readers looking for many important answers.

Gerard O’Connell is one of the top Vaticanistas working today. An associate editor and Vatican correspondent for America magazine, he has rightly earned a reputation for his fair and in-depth reporting. While his sympathies skew in a more progressive direction, he avoids the ideological blinders and baggage often seen in the work of other Vatican commentators, such as Austen Ivereigh, Robert Mickens, and Massimo Faggioli.

In his recent book The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Account of the Conclave That Changed History, O’Connell turns his considerable talents to the 2013 Conclave that elected Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as the first Jesuit pope. O’Connell’s book is a page-turner packed with genuine insights from his deep reporting. In addition, O’Connell’s personal connection to Pope Francis makes the story richer. O’Connell is married to Elisabetta Piqué, an Argentinian Vatican correspondent who has known Cardinal Bergoglio for years. Cardinal Bergoglio baptized their children. And just days before he was elected pope, Cardinal Bergoglio ate with the family.

There are many virtues of O’Connell’s book, but perhaps the greatest is that it draws together disparate facts and threads into one cohesive narrative. You may have heard bits and pieces of this story before. But to have it all drawn together in one place is a great gift. Finally, reading the book raises certain questions that are beyond O’Connell’s scope but, nevertheless, await the attention of future historians and journalists.

A surprise resignation

O’Connell’s book begins with Pope Benedict’s shocking announcement on February 11, 2013 that he was going to resign the papacy effective February 28, 2013. O’Connell writes that “Benedict XVI had kept the cardinals and other officials of the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s civil service, totally in the dark regarding his decision. It was the best-kept secret in a pontificate marked by leaks.”

The effect of the papal resignation on the College of Cardinals was significant. O’Connell states, that for “the first time in more than seven hundred years,” the College “would enter the pre-conclave meetings . . . free to focus entirely on the current situation in the Church and the world.” Indeed, in O’Connell’s opinion, “Benedict’s resignation opened the way to a frank and unrestrained pre-conclave discussion.” But his unexpected resignation also meant that the “time for advance canvassing” for a candidate was “radically reduced.”

This was in contrast to the 2005 Conclave, when groups had gathered a head of steam for their preferred candidates. In particular, O’Connell discusses the Sankt Gallen group—a coterie of “progressive” European cardinals who “met periodically from 1995 to 2006” to discuss the state of the Church and who might serve as pope to advance their view of the Church. On the eve of the 2005 conclave, the “cardinals linked to the Sankt Gallen group and others too concluded that Bergoglio was the candidate best suited to be the next pope.” While the group was no longer meeting in 2013, many were still alive and active.

Post-announcement and the interregnum

O’Connell shares the day-to-day reporting of and handicapping by the media regarding who the next potential pope might be after Pope Benedict’s resignation announcement. Most of the names are familiar; some are not. It is also interesting to see how split the reporting was with respect to Cardinal Bergoglio. Some media suggested he was a dark horse candidate. Others, like O’Connell himself, believed Bergoglio was viable. Surprisingly, many media did not have him on their radar even though he was runner up to Cardinal Ratzinger in the 2005 Conclave.

The General Congregations—the meetings of the elector and non-voting cardinals during the interregnum—were, according to O’Connell, “of great importance in the pre-election period, because they provide[d] an opportunity for cardinals to get to know each other. Very many cardinals do no know their brother cardinals, and certainly not in depth.” Furthermore, with a vacant See of Peter, the cardinals felt “free to speak boldly and say what [was] on their minds regarding the last pontificate.”

The General Congregations began on Monday, March 4, 2013. That day Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the Capuchin preacher of the Pontifical Household, gave the first of two mediations required by the constitution for a papal election. During his meditation, Fr. Cantalamessa “among, other things . . . raised two important issues he believed the cardinals should address in these meetings: the question of communion for the divorced and remarried, and the question of the ordination of mature married men to the priesthood.”

O’Connell writes that many “foreign cardinals, but also several Italians, were looking to elect a pope who could govern, clean house, and bring order in the Roman Curia. They wanted to a pope who could bring transparency to Vatican finances and ensure that the Vatican would incentivize rather obstruct the preaching of the Gospel.” An anonymous cardinal stated that they needed to elect a pope “who knows how to reform the Curia and make it more credible and transparent.” Cardinal Kasper was of like-mind as well. He stated that “the reform of the Curia is a priority.”

On Saturday, March 9, 2013, the turning point occurred. At the penultimate session of the General Congregations, Cardinal Bergoglio gave a short but powerful speech. According to O’Connell, Begoglio’s speech “touched hearts, and many more cardinals began to see him as the candidate to succeed Benedict.” In the speech, Cardinal Bergoglio discussed the need for boldness in evangelization. Furthermore, he diagnosed the “evils that . . . happen in ecclesial institutions” as having “their root in self-referentiality. The self-referential Church seeks to keep Jesus Christ within herself and does not let him out.” Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said that some of the cardinals began to “wonder if they might not have heard the voice of the man who would lead the church to recover its vigor and give it a fresh sense of direction.”

Things solidified the night before the Conclave began. That evening a group of cardinals met at Cardinal Attilio Nicora’s Vatican apartment. The group of 15 or so cardinals included Cardinals Kasper, Murphy-O’Connor, Coccopalmerio, Maradiaga, and Turkson. O’Connell writes: “During the meeting, each one confirmed or revealed that he had decided to support Bergoglio on the first ballot, and also mentioned other cardinals that he believed were thinking along the same lines and could vote for him.” Cardinal Coccopalmerio kept “a tally” and at the end concluded that Bergoglio had at “least twenty-five votes” going into the Conclave. At least three cardinals who attended the meeting told O’Connell that “this was the decisive meeting.”

The Conclave

On the afternoon of March 12, 2013, the 155 cardinal-electors were sealed in the Sistine Chapel to begin the papal election. O’Connell gives a moving account of the pageantry of the Conclave. In the first vote, “twenty-three cardinals received at least one vote each on the first ballot.” The top vote getters were Scola (30), Bergoglio (26), Ouellet (22), O’Malley (10), and Scherer (4). 77 votes were needed to be elected.

Analyzing this first tally, O’Connell writes that, while to “an outsider, that scattered first vote might have given the impression of great uncertainty, . . . the electors saw it in a very different light.” “Scherer was out of the race; he was seen as a candidate of the status quo in a conclave that was looking for radical change.” This meant that other than Scola, there were three candidates: Bergoglio, Ouellet, and O’Malley. There was only one ballot on March 12. More voting would have to wait until the next day.

In the second ballot of the Conclave on March 13, the top four vote-getters were Bergoglio (45), Scola (38), Ouellet (24), and O’Malley (3). As O’Connell writes, this second vote “revealed a dramatic shift from the previous evening.” The shift continued. In the third vote, Bergoglio’s tally rose to 56. Scola gained three votes. Ouellet dropped to 14 votes. This showed that the “dynamic was clearly in Bergoglio’s favor.” According to O’Connell, “[m]any cardinals . . . interpreted it as a sign from the Holy Spirit that this was the man God was calling to be successor to Saint Peter.”

The cardinals then broke for lunch at Casa Santa Marta. During lunch, the human machinations that are so present in the history of the Church, broke out in earnest. The “allegation that Bergoglio has only one lung was spread during the lunch break by supporters of another candidate in a last-ditch effort to block his election.” Another rumor—which in light of recent revelations may have had some truth to it—was shared that Bergoglio had “allegedly ‘handled badly a case of abuse.’” Still, as several cardinals told O’Connell, “there was in fact little opposition to Bergoglio’s election.”

After lunch, the cardinal-electors returned to the Sistine Chapel to resume voting. The fourth vote resulted in the following tally: Bergoglio (67), Scola (32), Ouellet (13), Vallini (2), and O’Malley (1). Still, the requisite 2/3rds majority had not been reached, so the cardinals proceeded to another vote. Unfortunately, a cardinal cast a vote with a second blank ballot stuck to his first ballot. Thus, because there were 116 ballots, the vote was void. The cardinals immediately proceeded to vote again.

This sixth vote was decisive. Cardinal Bergoglio received 85 votes. The next closest was Scola with 20 votes. A new pope had been elected. Cardinal Bergoglio accepted his canonical election and informed the presiding cardinal, Cardinal Re, that he had selected the name Francis.

O’Connell concludes The Election of Pope Francis by stating that he wrote the book “to offer the reader a narrative from a historical perspective about what happened at [the] conclave. I hope I have succeeded.” O’Connell has. His book is a gripping narrative, a page-turner. O’Connell is an excellent reporter with deep sources. It is hard not to believe that this will be the definitive account of the 2013 Conclave. Some of O’Connell’s reporting will be old news. Much of it will be a revelation. His ability to weave all these threads together into a coherent narrative is a true gift and one for which O’Connell must be commended.

Postscript: Lingering Questions

At the same time, O’Connell’s book should leave any reader with many questions. While these questions are beyond the scope of O’Connell’s project, they point to work future journalists and historians will have to undertake.

The first set of questions involves the Sankt Gallen group. Why, for instance, were the cardinals who made up the Sankt Gallen group so enamored of Cardinal Bergoglio in 2005 and why did those cardinals who remained in 2013 have such a high opinion of him? We often hear of the continuity in the last three papacies but what was it about Cardinal Bergoglio that convinced the likes of Cardinal Kasper, Cardinal Danneels, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor and others that Cardinal Bergoglio would mark a departure from John Paul II and Benedict XVI (putting aside the question whether Francis’ papacy has actually been a departure from theirs)? One need not be a conspiracy theorist to be genuinely puzzled by this support of Cardinal Bergoglio by cardinals who hardly seem to think with the mind of the Church and who have battled the Magisterium.

The second set of questions involves the seeming disconnect between Cardinal Bergoglio’s inspiring and decisive speech at the General Congregations and the first seven years of Pope Francis’ papacy. That speech was about the Church going out from herself, bringing Christ to the world, not being inwardly focused. Thus, it is odd that much of the first seven years of this pontificate have been bogged down by questions and debates that already had been definitively resolved.

For instance, much of the first three or four years of Pope Francis’ papacy were consumed by debates regarding the question of communion for the divorced and remarried. This was not a new or unanswered question. Indeed, as recently as 2007, Pope Benedict had addressed the question in Sacramentum Caritatis. While the question is hardly unimportant—is marriage an objective reality in which people participate or an “ideal” to which people aspire—a renewed focus on the question in 2013, just a few years after the prior Pope had dealt with it, smacks of the very sort of “self-referentiality” and “theological narcissism” against which Cardinal Bergoglio rightly warned.

Then, following endless debates on that question, the last few years have seen a renewed focus on the question, hardly new and hardly unanswered, on whether or not married men should be ordained in the Latin Rite. Again, such a question certainly has implications for evangelizing, but it is the sort of secondary concern which seems the very sort of navel-gazing against which Pope Francis rightly warns. Future historians and journalists will have to answer why so much evangelical zeal and energy has been dissipated in these last seven years to relitigating the questions that roiled the Church in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s?

The seed of an answer may lie in O’Connell’s own narrative. O’Connell’s account suggests that the frame did not so much change as that these two questions in particular—communion for the divorced and remarried and ordination of mature men—were present from the very beginning in the lead up to the 2013 Conclave. Father Cantalamessa highlighted them in his opening mediation to the assembled cardinals. Cardinal Kasper reiterated the communion question during the interregnum in an interview with the media. It seems that despite Cardinal Bergoglio’s call for the Church to put aside such self-referentiality, there were others who seized the opportunity of a new pope to bring these internal questions back to the fore.

The third set of questions The Election of Pope Francis raises is the gap between what the cardinals were seeking in a pope—someone who could reform the Curia—and the seeming lack of reform seven years into the papacy. What are we to make between the yawning gap between what the cardinals saw as the need to reform the Curia and the actual results of that reform seven years into this papacy? One need only read Christopher Altieri’s indispensable work here and in other publications to see the halting nature of that reform. The scandals continue. The lack of transparency abounds. What basis did the cardinals have to believe that Cardinal Bergoglio had the experience and administrative skills to pull this feat off? Was it primarily because he was an outsider, not beholden to various Vatican coteries? Are the dismaying results of the reform an indication that the Curia is simply unreformable—that even an outsider like Pope Francis cannot reform the entrenched bureaucracy in the Vatican? Are they an indication that the cardinals did not vet their candidate strongly enough on their desired ends? Or are they ultimately a lesson in how any pope swaps out his predecessor’s preferred bureaucracy for his own?

The work to answer these questions will have to be taken up by other journalists and historians who share the sort of objectivity and fairness O’Connell brings to this book. The Election of Pope Francis will be an indispensable starting point for that work. Meanwhile, we should be grateful for O’Connell’s account and pray for Pope Francis and for his successors who will face the herculean task of walking in the shoes of the fisherman.

The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Account of the Conclave That Changed History
By Gerald O’Connell
Orbis Books, 2019
Hardcover, 336 pages


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About Conor Dugan 16 Articles
Conor B. Dugan is a husband, father of four, and attorney who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

42 Comments

  1. Yes – the election of the Pontiff Francis “changed history.”

    We now have a pontiff who openly promotes idolatry and opposes the 6th Commandment.

    • Really? You imply that the Holy Spirit has somehow failed, and thereby God is in error. That is called apostasy.

      28 Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. 29 But whoever blasphemes against the holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” Mark 3: NAB

      • “But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”

        Matthew 16:23

      • Ha ha the Holy spirit is willing, but the Cardinals are weak! The Spirit inspires, but that doesn’t mean that human beings are receptive to Him, as the election of many bad popes in church history clearly indicates.

      • Good grief. As any reasonably catechized 8th-grader knows, the Holy Spirit doesn’t pick the pope or guarantee that the pope will be effective, wise, or holy. (If He did, He’d have a lot of ‘splainin to do.)

        The reviewer asks, “Why, for instance, were the cardinals who made up the Sankt Gallen group so enamored of Cardinal Bergoglio in 2005 and why did those cardinals who remained in 2013 have such a high opinion of him?”

        Because they were heterodox (a polite way of saying they were and are heretics), and they could observe the same tendencies in Bergoglio’s disastrous tenure in Buenos Aires.

    • I agree. Bergoglio, before election, made a simplistic remark about the state of ecclesiology in the Church and some of the intelligence challenged Cardinals at the conclave swooned, and commentators since obviously still swoon displaying the same type of desperation whenever elitists think they’ve identified wisdom in stupidity, the sort that Peter Sellers satirized through his Chauncey Gardiner character in the movie “Being There”.

    • Jorge Bergoglio openly opposed The Sixth Commandment by denying sin done in private is sin, as a cardinal, prior to his election to The Papacy, revealing that he was not in communion with Christ and the teaching of The Magisterium, which includes the teaching of every validly elected Pope, regarding The Deposit Of Faith, grounded in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. The vote of every cardinal who knew that prior to his election to the Papacy, Jorge Bergoglio claimed sin done in private is not sin, demonstrates that they too, ipso facto, had separated themselves from The One Body Of Christ, existing Through Christ, In The Unity of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).

      “If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected.”- Jorge Bergoglio On Page 117 of his book. “On Heaven And Earth”, where In Heaven, there is no sin, and on Earth, sin done in private is sin.

      CCC II. THE DEFINITION OF SIN
      “1849 Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as “an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.”121

  2. This pope baptized the book author’s children and has had dinner in home? Nice. O’Connell knows who butters his bread
    No wonder Sankt Gallen was not mentioned.

  3. It seems as if there was a bait and switch going on at the conclave. Words have many different meanings to different people. Motivations are hidden behind words. The progressives are masters of hiding behind the words they speak. They are craftsmen of saying things that sound good but really have an evil intention behind it. Take a look at the conversation of the Devil with our first parents. He used slick words to confuse and misdirect them into questioning God and His motives. I propose these same techniques are being used by those around Francis, and Francis himself, to promote all kinds of evils today. Divorce & remarriage & Communion, active homosexuality, abortion, socialism & communism, and now married priests. It is through questions like “Surely God wouldn’t ….? You fill in the blank. We are being duped. They say and do very Catholic things occasionally to keep you off balance, and then they question and appear to be open to debate. But they have no intention to debate the issue. It has already been determined by them. They are revolutionaries who are in essence revolting against the authority of God and what God has made. And the “holy” Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa is and has been one of them. Pretends to be a holy man of God, and work for the destruction of the Church from within. His so called meditations at the conclave were not meditations but a manifesto for the ‘new” church of man. When will the bishops and cardinal open their eyes to what has been going on. Are we that naïve to what is and has been happening.

    • Yes, I’ve always found Cantalamessa a curious figure. I’ve read many of his lenten talks to the papal household over the years and found most of them quite tepid and pedestrian and I wondered why he was the person the popes, not only Francis but his predecessors, wanted to lead such meditations. Certainly I have encountered deeper spiritual priests in my life, and the popes have the whole world to draw from. That he put communion for those living in adulterous unions front and center as a central issue is eye-opening.

    • True, this book, as well as https://www.amazon.com/ Heaven-Earth-Francis-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0770435068 should be evidence enough that The Holy Ghost would certainly not be involved in a Catholic Conclave that was anti Poe and anti Filioque.
      See page 117, where prior to the election Jorge Bergoglio claims the inherent sinful nature of sin done in private.

      • That should read where Jorge Bergoglio denies that sin done in private is sin.

        If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected. Now, if the union is given the category of marriage, there could be children affected. Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help shape their identity.”- Jorge Bergoglio, denying The Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and the fact that God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, while denying sin done in private is sin.

        “1849 Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as “an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.”121
        1850 Sin is an offense against God: “Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in your sight.”122 Sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become “like gods,”123 knowing and determining good and evil. Sin is thus “love of oneself even to contempt of God.”124 In this proud self- exaltation, sin is diametrically opposed to the obedience of Jesus, which achieves our salvation.125“

    • Absolutely correct – these people use words to hide, not to reveal. Pope Francis has not reformed the Curia because he has no intention of reforming the Curia. The powers that operate and support him are the homosexual networks and these feed the interests that are dependent upon the Vatican wealth. The issues of ‘married priests’ and ‘communion for divorced ‘ had been definitively settled – this does not stop them being used for their own agenda, as if never a word had been said in these issues in the history of the Church. Why? Because the issue is a camouflage for another issue – the handing over of power to those sympathetic to the homosexual agenda (the German, Dutch and French) and promoted under this pontificate, so that the essence of the faith is distorted and it is enabled to be swept up into the one-world religion. I am not impressed by a book written by someone who had dinner with Bergoglio. I would be more impressed with an author who would research who funded the advertisement for Pope Francis which is called ‘The Two Popes’ and whether the one-world government manipulators are also behind the manipulation of Christ’s Church to distort it into a safe and convenient one world moral club to use against those who worship the crucified Christ.

  4. How can a reputable magazine like Catholic
    World Report heap praise on this book when it’s
    author mentions nothing about Pope Francis
    being a total disaster and the worst Pope, by
    a landslide, in my seventy five years as a proud
    catholic? Please take your heads out of the
    sand and help us end his reign.

  5. This article reads like a Hollywood movie or Broadway production, full of high drama, and lots of emotional appelatives, sentimental words, high praise for that book writer who allegedly even if he moves “… in a more progressive direction, he avoids the ideological blinders and baggage often seen in the work of other Vatican commentators…” Really?

    What the author of “The Election Of Pope Prancis” does is use his highly emotional writing talents to make it look like electing Pope Francis was an electrifying, hyper-dramatic, monumental achievement for the Catholic Church, with just a few questions to be answered, and that really Francis is just blocked by that pesty Curia and others getting in his “heroic” way. No such thing!!

    We can’t read or condemn a person’s hidden intentions BUT as Jesus said: “You will know them by their fruits”, (Matthew 7:16). There’s a LOT to condemn there about Pope Francis! He is not a hero, but the Jesus that he so consistently ignores IS!!

      • With all due respect, we do not need to have read the book as the author of this post revealed all the evidence needed to demonstrate that the election of Jorge Bergoglio, was not valid according to Canon Law

      • My dear brother Carl, I preface my comment with “This article reads like a…” Everything else that follows is centered on the article itself and the trust in your personal article/author selection for CWR so that this or other articles accurately reflect the tone, attitude and contents of this book or any other book that you introduce here. I do appreciate that you include both a selection of articles that are favorable to Pope Francis in some way, manner or form, and you also include those that are not so favorable to him, including some of your own, as you said above.

        I’m no personal enemy of Pope Francis (or anyone else for that matter) but of his negative actions and lack of action where it is due, commission and omission, at such a level and consistency that it inflicts serious damage to the Church Jesus died for. The 8 bad popes we had in the past were guilty of big personal sins, but Pope Francis is DIRECTLY attacking Church Truth through the very same, identical, devious, emotionally-charged means as the very core of anti-Catholic, anti-Truth activists everywhere else, disguising every stab as a new-and-improved-compassion-and-love. There was a lot of Canon Law illegal “bargaining” and “lobbying” for Pope Francis selection as Pope and if his true record in Argentina had been known, he would have never even figured among the top choices in the Conclave.

        He would have been assigned to serve coffee and snacks to the other prelates, something a lot more useful and fitting to his dire need for mature spiritual growth. A lot of manufactured drama, sentimentalism and compromise is destroying the world and the Church today. Unless this article is a total distortion and misrepresentation of the book, it does deserve condemnation for helping to appeal to the devious stirring of emotions that is transferring Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals into the Catholic Church. My dear brother Carl, we are being led into Hell by the heart. “Of all the things guarded, guard your heart”, Saint Teresa of Avila.

  6. As O’Connell writes, this second vote “revealed a dramatic shift from the previous evening.” The shift continued. In the third vote, Bergoglio’s tally rose to 56. Scola gained three votes. Ouellet dropped to 14 votes. This showed that the “dynamic was clearly in Bergoglio’s favor.” According to O’Connell, “[m]any cardinals . . . interpreted it as a sign from the Holy Spirit that this was the man God was calling to be successor to Saint Peter.”

    This is just superstition.

    • I was wondering about that, too. How could he (or for that matter, anybody else) have access to credible information regarding the Conclave in-session, unless it was leaked? How do we know for a FACT that Card. Bergoglio was the “runner up” in the previous conclave? It can only mean someone (i.e., some cardinal) violated his oath before almighty God to keep the secret, or…could the author have gotten it from the one man in the whole world who could licitly divulge that information over a limoncello?

  7. Thank you for pointing out the author’s children were baptized by Jorge Mario Bergoglio. It provides an honest context. That given I’ll allow this informative review to serve as a substitute for purchasing the book.

  8. Kyrie eleison! Carl E Olson has done a tremendous service for and to the Kingdom of God and The Church through his writing and ministry via CWR. Even when I don’t agree with some authors, I believe CWR has done a much better job of being “fair and balanced” than any of the other traditionalist soap boxes.

    But then I read the vile and putrid comments of too many CWR readers and recoil: rampant proof-texting, conspiracies and machinations around every corner, and a horrid lack knowledge of Sacred Scripture and the totality of the Magisterial teachings of The Church.

    Many of y’all need to go back to CCD, and many more need therapy for their anger, selfishness, narcissism, and absolutely undeserved sense of victimization.

    • Well said Randell. There is an underlying malevolence towards Pope Francis by some commentators on here which is difficult to reconcile with the tenants of the Catholic faith of which they vehemently declare they practice.

  9. Citing the author’s personal familiarity with Jorge Mario Bergoglio and that the individual baptized his children provides an honest context. That given I’ll allow this informative review to serve as a substitute for purchasing the book. Forgive me if I perceive a bit of hagiography of the Ivereigh school or some such.

  10. The book sounds like an important documentation of how an election of the bishop of Rome is a human and a political process, mixed with some superstition apparently. It may not fit the narrative that some prefer but I don’t think the author had intended to do anything more than focus on the election of Francis. If anything such a look should give sufficient reason for one to reconsider the historical development of the human institution surrounding the bishop of Rome, instead of taking that as a divine mandate.

    • Conor Dugan’s analysis of the book demonstrates his keen ability as a lawyer to sift through information and illuminate that which is necessary to demonstrate which facts speak for themselves; only a validly elected Pope, who first and foremost, is in communion with Christ and His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, could be a True Vicar Of Christ, and only a True Vicar Of Christ, having been validly elected, has “the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church”.

  11. It was my understanding that the proceedings of a papal conclave were secret, including the ballots. So from whom did the author obtain his information and why was it provided? Perhaps, over dinner conversations with the one who baptized his children…

  12. America magazine? Isn’t that the one in which I read that the editor and at least one of the writers are Jesuits and proud, card carrying communists !?! I mean they actually came out and proclaimed it!!!

  13. A minor addition. It has been reliably reported, and never denied that I have seen, that the election of PF was also a “return to Rome”. Since he was of Italian ancestry, as many Argentinians are, he was thought to be sympathetic to the Vatican establishment and its views on running Church organization and policy. His performance since, not withstanding his more interesting comments from time to time, has not evidenced a desire to disrupt those in Rome who are comfortable in their niche. Only those with a high profile of Orthodoxy like Cdnl. Burke and Arch. Chaput seem to have gotten crosswise with his favor. Cdnl. Sarah enjoys a certain immunity due to the importance of keeping good relations with the fastest growing geographical part of the Church.

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