The nineteen papabile candidates of Edward Pentin
In his last book, The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates (Sophia Press, July 2020), Edward Pentin, Rome correspondent to the National Catholic Register, presents us with nineteen cardinals who could be be elected in the next conclave.
The records he has gathered with the help of other cardinalogists (fourteen university professors), also has for a goal to fill a demand… from cardinals. Like many analysts, he has been very surprised by the confidence of many participants to the 2013 conclave in the fact they had very little knowledge of the persons whose names were presented to them by the cardinals “grand electors”, those cardinals who campaign for a particular candidate. Thus, quite a few of those who voted for Jorge Bergoglio have confessed they did not know really who Bergoglio was. But, this situation of cardinals not knowing each other very well has only worsened since 2016, when Pope Francis ceased to hold open pre-consistory meetings where cardinals could freely speak amongst themselves.
The progressive cardinals who are emerging, according to E. Pentin, are cardinals Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, Petro Parolin, Secretary of State, and Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna. On the side that he qualifies as “more orthodox,” he places cardinals Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Peter Erdö, Archbishop of Budapest, Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, and Raymond Burke, former Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura.
In an interview given to Majke Hickson from LifeSiteNews, on 13 July 2020, Pentin raised the point that “one or two have potentially what it takes to be a holy great pope.” Obviously, he puts more of his attention on the more orthodox side when he says that the election of one of them would lead to a “frank evaluation of Vatican II.” This wish is very characteristic of the evolution of most of the admirers of the preceding pontificate, the one of Benedict XVI. As shown on the various vaticanist blogs from Sandro Magister to Aldo Maria Valli, or Marco Tosatti, their hope, or in any case their desire, now go much further than the simple come back to a line developed by Benedict XVI: indeed, they now desire an examination of the Council.
Pio Pace