Vatican expert predicts where the new Pope will be from and notes who his favorite is: “I would campaign for him”.
Giovanni Maria Vian predicts a long Conclave but believes Pope Francis’s successor will be European: “If I were a cardinal, I would vote for Arborelius.”
Following Pope Francis’s death, the cardinals will begin the Conclave in early May, a closed-door meeting in which the next pontiff will be elected as the head of the Catholic Church. It’s a standard process, but this time it may be marked by polarization and a potential return of the papacy to Europe.
That’s according to Giovanni Maria Vian, former director of L’Osservatore Romano, in an interview with La Nación. The author of “The Last Pope: Present and Future Challenges of the Catholic Church” and professor of Christian literature philology at La Sapienza University described Jorge Mario Bergoglio as “an absolutist pope” whose leadership produced clear contradictions, and stated that the next pope will be European.
“Right now, the Church is more divided and polarized than it was when Bergoglio was elected in 2013,” he said during the interview.
Giovanni, who admits he is critical of Pope Francis, believes that following his death, “the main issue in the Conclave will be to secure Francis’s legacy, but in a more collegial way.” Therefore, “the new pope will somehow need to distance himself from Francis, as happened after the death of John Paul II.”
A role that, according to the writer, does not necessarily belong to Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin or Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the two leading papal candidates. Giovanni believes that although they are “often mentioned,” the Conclave is like a lottery, and it’s impossible to know who will succeed Francis. Still, amidst the unpredictability, he claims: “Francis’s successor will be European.”
“Arborelius, the Swede. If I were a cardinal, I’d vote for him and campaign for him,” he stated.
With the Conclave expected to start between May 5 and 10, many—including Giovanni himself—have expressed concern about how long it might last, suggesting it will take time to choose a successor.
“If they agree quickly, it will be short. But I doubt it. Many cardinals don’t know each other, they’ll need time to talk and get acquainted,” the writer shared.
A papacy of light and shadowGiovanni described Francis’s papacy as “a pontificate of light and shadow,” in which, while he succeeded in spreading the faith more than any of his predecessors, “he was also contradictory.”
“Francis, in an era of simplified communication, has mastered messaging extraordinarily well. But at the same time, he’s been a contradictory pope, speaking often, improvising frequently, and sometimes saying very different things,” he said during the interview.
One of the main contradictions Giovanni highlighted was the canonization of John Paul II. The professor argued that, given the many sexual abuse accusations surrounding John Paul II’s papacy, canonizing him is “reckless” because “you also end up canonizing a political legacy.”
“I believe that’s precisely why popes shouldn’t be canonized. Francis is the only pope who has canonized three of his predecessors. His has been a papacy full of contradictions, one that pushed papal absolutism to the extreme,” he explained.
Likewise, the 2022 reform of the Vatican’s fundamental law, which in its preamble states that the pope is head of state as Peter’s successor, showed the clear absolutism of his rule.
“But despite everything, one must bow their head before this pope, who pushed his papacy to the limit. Just 20 hours before his death, up to his last breath, the pope wanted to be with the faithful, offering his most solemn blessing, urbi et orbi, to the city and the world,” he concluded.
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