May 1, 2025
MM#406--Who Will Guide the Barque of Peter? The Next Pope, part 2: The Men
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The death of Pope Francis has thrust the Catholic Church into its ancient process of selecting a successor, but this conclave comes with unique challenges. Unlike previous transitions, today's cardinal electors have had fewer opportunities to meet face-to-face, creating an atmosphere where many voters know surprisingly little about potential candidates.
This fascinating episode breaks down the leading contenders to become the 267th successor to St. Peter, categorizing them into three broad ideological factions. The conservative bloc, approximately 50 cardinals strong, emphasizes doctrinal clarity and traditional teachings. Their frontrunners include Hungary's Cardinal Erdő, Guinea's Cardinal Sarah (who could become the first sub-Saharan African pope), Dutch Cardinal Eijk, and American favorite Cardinal Burke, though geopolitical considerations make an American pope unlikely.
The liberal faction, smaller but influential, aligns with Francis's progressive vision. Their standard-bearers include the Philippines' Cardinal Tagle (nicknamed "Francis II"), Malta's Cardinal Grech, and Germany's outspoken Cardinal Marx. However, the most crucial role may belong to moderate cardinals who can bridge divides. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin leads this group, alongside promising candidates from Italy, France, and African nations.
Geographic considerations add complexity to the selection process. With Catholicism booming in Africa and Asia but declining in traditional European strongholds, many believe the Church will continue moving away from Italian popes. Francis deliberately appointed cardinals from underrepresented regions, creating the most globally diverse College in history.
Most revealing is the unpredictability of conclaves. No one expected the conservative John Paul II to emerge from a liberal College in 1978, nor Francis from a conservative group in 2013. As Catholics worldwide pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance over this sacred process, we're reminded that divine wisdom often transcends human calculations and expectations.
Key Points from the Episode:
• Conservative cardinals (approximately 50 electors) emphasize traditional teachings and oppose progressive reforms
• Leading conservative candidates include Hungary's Cardinal Erdő (72), Guinea's Cardinal Sarah (79), Netherlands' Cardinal Eijk, and America's Cardinal Burke
• Liberal cardinals (fewer than 45 electors) align with Francis's progressive reforms and outreach to marginalized communities
• Liberal frontrunners include Philippines' Cardinal Tagle, Malta's Cardinal Grech, and Germany's Cardinal Marx
• Moderate cardinals are crucial bridge-builders between factions with Vatican Secretary Parolin leading this group
• Africa and Asia's growing Catholic population may influence selection toward candidates from these regions
• Conclave outcomes remain unpredictable, as evidenced by previous surprise selections like John Paul II and Francis
• Catholics worldwide pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance in this crucial decision
Let us pray for these cardinal electors, that they may have wisdom in their next election of the successor to the apostle Peter, and as always, let's keep fighting the good fight.
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00:00 - Introduction to the Next Pope Series
03:25 - Edward Penton's Guide to Papal Candidates
08:55 - The College of Cardinals Report Website
13:00 - Conservative Papabili Cardinals
22:00 - Liberal Papal Frontrunners
28:40 - Moderate Cardinal Candidates
42:25 - Holy Spirit's Guidance in the Conclave
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.
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Now here's your host, david Kaiser.
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Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute and a special Mojo Minute episode it is.
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This is part two of the Next Pope, subtitled the Men.
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Today we're going to talk about the candidates the church calls papabali Papabali sorry, my Italian is horrific papabali.
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That basically means popable, or better yet, more casually translates into the running, into the running.
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So we'll look at those.
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We'll also look at some big issues facing the church as we move deeper into this third decade of the 21st century.
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But if you didn't catch our last episode, be sure to check that out.
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We talked about the qualities of a new holy father and what he needs.
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We did so with George Weigel as our guide and for you, mojo Academy members, please don't miss the latest Mojo Academy review that is published in your inbox right now.
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It's fresh off the press.
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That's where we dived into that same book, george Weigel's the Next Pope, and we broke down six major key ideas for you, and I think you're going to love how deep we go with that book.
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It's already again waiting for you in the member section and in your inboxes, so please go check it out.
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But for today we're going to lean on another guide, mr Edward Penton and his book the Next Pope.
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It's the same as the last book we covered, but this book is a little bit different.
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It's going to cover all the men who could succeed Pope Francis.
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Profiles 19 cardinals, diving into their careers, teachings and views on key issues like priestly celibacy and the Latin mass issues like priestly celibacy and the Latin mass and the goal is to give readers and, even more importantly, cardinal electors, insight into these influential figures.
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The book also explores, much like our first book, what makes a great pope, as we have observed down through the years.
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Now the book does come from a more conservative perspective, but it's well-researched.
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It's packed with valuable insights for anyone curious about church leadership.
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And who is Edward Petten?
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He's a guy that I follow all the time.
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He's a British journalist.
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He's an author.
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He focuses primarily on the Vatican and Catholic Church affairs.
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He's based in Rome.
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He works as a Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register.
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Now, over the years, he has covered the papacies of John Paul II, benedict XVI and Pope Francis, and he's also the author of, like we said, the Next Pope the Leading Cardinal Candidates that was published in 2020.
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And he's also helped create a fantastic site called the College of Cardinals Report and I'll link to it in the show notes.
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It's a fantastic interactive tool with 40 profiles of the Cardinals.
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His work is thorough, it's detailed, certainly leans a little bit more to a traditional perspective, but that's what I lean towards, not so much traditional but I would say conservative.
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I do not attend the Latin Mass.
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I attend a very reverent Novus Ordo Mass.
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For those of you that are wondering, but that means you know Edwards, reporting sometimes gets mixed reactions, but regardless, I'll leave a link to that website.
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We're actually going to use that as a more up-to-date resource.
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Today, again, it's collegeofcardinalsreportcom.
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But let's go to our first pull quote from the book the Next Pope, the Leading Cardinal Candidates, by Edward Penton.
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Go on to the book.
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At the election of a new pope, we tend naturally to focus on the man in white appearing on the balcony of St Peter's Basilica.
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But what of the many men around him dressed in red?
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The pope is the vicar of Christ, the bishop of Rome, the earthly spiritual leader for over a billion Catholic souls and arguably the best-known, most influential and widely revered moral and religious voice in the world.
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But the cardinals who elect him, among whom was the new pope until just a few moments earlier are much less known.
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Moreover, at a conclave, the election of a cardinal to lead the Catholic Church is usually not just the public, who have little or no knowledge of a prospective Pope Perhaps surprisingly, neither do the cardinals who are voting for him.
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Unlike a political leadership contest where the candidates are publicly scrutinized, often ad nauseum, few of us know much about these men who play an enormous but sometimes unknown role in the church and in the world.
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This book therefore aims to equip readers with a detailed knowledge of some of the cardinals considered to have the greatest likelihood of being elected Pope.
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For this first edition, 19 candidates are discussed in detail, ones whom I and others believe are currently a papably nailed that a tie in the first time.
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Thank you very much.
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That is most likely to be elected Pope.
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Okay, of course, the next successor to Peter may not be none of them.
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Cardinal Jose Bergoglio was not among the papably list in 2013, as he was considered by most observers to be too old, especially after Benedict XVI had chosen to retire, largely on age grounds.
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Tire largely on age grounds.
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So I wanted to include that first pull quote, because that's a solid nugget of wisdom.
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Most people think, or at least Americans think this is just like a US presidential candidate or a Super Bowl or a college football national championship we know almost everything about everything.
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We just have talking heads that have broken down all this information.
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And that is not the case with conclaves.
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Now, prior to Pope Francis, we can say that they were a little bit better informed down through the years because they had been meeting.
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They would often meet in Rome for many consistories or general congregations to get together as a geographic group or over an important topic, for instance like a synod of the family, where they would all talk about the challenges to families all around the world and how to better support them.
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So that is not the case, for two reasons.
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Number one COVID obviously separated everybody.
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That was that way for two years to three years, and then Pope Francis just did not get the congregations together as often, which was kind of a different way to govern the church.
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Regardless, that's just a fact and that's what we're going to have to deal with.
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So that's mainly the reason Edward Penton wrote this book.
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Now we're not going to use the book per se.
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We're going to pull a little bit from the book, but we're going to primarily use the collegeofcardinalsreportcom because this was created by Edward Penton along with another wonderful, well-seasoned Vatican journalist, diane Montagna.
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I think I'm pronouncing that right, montagna.
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She teamed up.
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They both teamed up with Sophia Institute Press and Cardinalis Magazine to create this website.
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The whole idea came because, again, the Cardinals, clergy and even lay people were asking about trustworthy and detailed information about the cardinals who might become the next pope, and let me tell you, they delivered.
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With this website you can filter the cardinals by region, by age, even their stance on the key issues.
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There's a super cool interactive map that shows the global representation of the cardinals.
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There's even a section with resources on the history of Cardinals and how the conclave process works.
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Site was launched in December of 2024, and it's meant to be a resource for the Cardinal electors and Catholics and, frankly, anyone curious about church leadership.
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Often the major media gets things wrong.
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I don't know how.
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It's simply just you got to be able to ask questions, but the major media really doesn't want to ask questions.
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Sometimes I don't think they even want to know the answer.
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So this website is a very objective look, contains the biographies and profiles of, like we said before, some 40 different cardinals.
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You can actually break it down by probably you know the most likely folks to get elected and almost everybody that I've read reviews on this website.
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They like it.
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Some don't like it.
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It's only in English.
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They're trying to get the Italian out pretty fast.
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Probably not going to make the cut for the conclave.
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But here's where things get.
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Interesting is if we break down the cardinals in the categories like conservative, moderate or liberal.
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It's not as simple as it sounds.
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Most people, most Americans, especially American Catholics, want to break things down that way.
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There are so many theological nuances and there's not a ton of public information out there and plus, much like politicians usually stay within a very neat section or a neat perspective.
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Many of the cardinals just continue to evolve on these issues.
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It's not a one-size-fits-all like the Republicans or the Democrats.
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It's quite hard to label anyone.
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The cardinals just don't fit into one category, and that's a good thing.
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You know whether it's moral or social or theological views, we certainly want to have a diversity of thought in the church, but then you also, you want to be very grounded in what you believe and have the supporting evidence for that, and sometimes it's just a matter of prayer.
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So we absolutely pray for all these cardinals that they make a good, wholly informed choice.
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But I just remind everybody stay cautious about introducing.
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You know, if he's a conservative cardinal, then throughout all the different issues he's going to be conservative, he's going to fall down in lockstep with that group.
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It just it's not.
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It doesn't happen.
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These labels aren't perfect and we just have to be mindful of the biases we bring.
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So you can take that all with a grain of salt.
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But I still think it's fascinating that we actually have this website and it's quite good.
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You can see all the differences.
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You can see how people don't fall into specific categories.
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That all said, you're waiting on me to break everything down, so let's get to that.
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And we are still going to use the conservative, moderate and liberal labels Because as a group you can understand where they're coming from on the issues and then it's just a matter of whether that specific cardinal supports that issue or wants to go a different direction with that issue.
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I'll give a brief rundown of each of the groups the conservatives and these are all front runners, we believe.
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I think I've picked 15, 14.
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You know, conservative cardinals for the most part emphasize traditional Catholic teachings.
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They often oppose reforms like same-sex blessings, which is what fiducia.
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Supplicans ran all the way up to the line on doing, and they are against women's ordination.
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They are against relaxing priestly celibacy.
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They support the traditional Latin mass for the most part, they prioritize doctrinal clarity and roughly by most counts.
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Again, this is not science, this is more of an art.
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There's roughly approximately 50 of the 135 or 133 cardinal electors that are considered conservative or at least traditional leaning.
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That gives them a significant block, but certainly not enough for a majority without some moderate support.
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And that's all assuming, like we said, that they're all going to vote in lockstep, which we can almost guarantee they won't, because of human nature and promptings of the Holy Spirit, however, that's going to guide them.
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So let's start with the conservative frontrunners, and again we're going to use the College of Cardinals report.
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And our first Cardinal candidate is Cardinal Erdo, from Hungary, and he is age 72.
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He's a canon lawyer.
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He's a former president of the Council of European Bishops Conference.
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He's known for opposing same-sex blessings, also opposing allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion, equating taking in refugees to human trafficking.
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Why is he the frontrunner?
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Well, because of his conservative credentials, his European prominence.
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He also has some very good connections with the African cardinals, which makes him a strong candidate for seeking a shift from Francis's reforms to coming back to a more moderate stance.
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Yet, leading with a conservative cardinal, he could be seen as a political consensus between the moderates and the conservatives.
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Now, that all said, he does have some challenges.
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His hardline stances may alienate some moderates.
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You don't know how well he will be received.
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And then the Eastern European cardinals, for the most part, have a strong skepticism of immigration.
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It's been very divisive in their region.
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So Cardinal Erdo, from Hungary, age 72, could be the next boat Moving on to number two, cardinal Robert Sara, from Guinea.
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He's age 79.
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He was the former prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship.
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He's a vocal traditionalist defending clerical celibacy, opposing same-sex blessings, very prominent criticizing this gender ideology component, as was Pope Francis.
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Many people never the major media never talked about that, but if you read Pope Francis's writings he was very critical of the gender ideology trend that was happening worldwide.
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He wanted to put a dramatic stop to that.
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Also, cardinal Robert Serra, very against Islamic fundamentalism, grew up in Guinea with a very Marxist, tyrannical president.
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His parents converted from I forget what they converted from, but to Catholicism.
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And then he has he does have, I should say more of a nuanced respect for Islam from his Guinean heritage and context.
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But he, in terms of Islamic fundamentalism, he is very outspoken.
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So he's very popular among conservatives for his theological rigor, his traditional liturgical advice and advocacy.
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He does represent the African group.
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He's probably the major front runner from them and their growing Catholic population which we talked about on the previous episode.
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You know major media will say he's going to, if elected, he will become the first black Pope.
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That's just not true.
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We've had three or four North African Popes.
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Um, some say that one was, was pretty black and skin color.
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Does it really matter?
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It doesn't.
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Um, we know God, god does.
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God does not see skin color.
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He makes, makes all kinds of skin colors and all kinds of, you know, just bodily features.
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All that is incidental, it is not important.
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As we know, character and virtue and staying away from sin is what matters to our Lord.
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He has a challenge.
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One of his challenges is he well, let me go back because the historic first black Pope that the major media wants to keep pronouncing.
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I think they would be more accurate if they said he could be the first sub-Saharan Pope and that would be a first and that would be very important, especially in church history.
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You know we have St Augustine from North Africa, we have my patron saint, st Athanasius, we have many church fathers from North Africa, but nothing, the faith, other than Ethiopia and Southern Sudan.
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The faith never really got below the Saharan desert.
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So if you look back through church history, so he would be the first sub-Saharan pope and that could be and would be very important, especially that's the most growing part of the church in the world.
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Now back to his challenges.
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He is approaching 80.
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So he's still able to vote in the conclave.
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I think he turns 80, maybe in June.
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So that would be interesting.
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If he's elected Pope, he's allowed to vote.
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Right now you don't get.
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The cutoff is 80.
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So once you turn 80, you're not able to vote.
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And so, anyhow, it would have been interesting had Pope Francis lived just two, three, four months later or longer, and that would make a premier front runner like Cardinal Robert Serra ineligible to vote.
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He could still be elected, but he would be ineligible to vote.
00:20:49.032 --> 00:20:50.917
He could still be elected, but he would be ineligible to vote.
00:20:50.917 --> 00:21:10.798
So just a little nugget of wisdom, a little nugget to keep in mind, because what most say is if you're not a voting member, there's a strong reduction of your chances just because people have forgotten about you.
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You're not in the conclave voting.
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So one other challenge Cardinal Roberts, sarah, a little bit more traditional.
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That could polarize the progressive and the moderate factions.
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They might not want to have a whiplash between Francis's liberal reforms and coming back to a very, not very conservative, but a traditional view.
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And he's outspoken on some things very prominently, cardinal Roberts, there is.
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So that is another front runner on the conservative side.
00:21:42.974 --> 00:21:48.788
Number three is Wim Cardinal, wim Ejek, I think.
00:21:48.788 --> 00:21:50.153
He's from the Netherlands.
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This is a very interesting cardinal.
00:21:54.932 --> 00:22:02.113
Yeah, he's a former doctor, a staunch critic of Pope Francis's social reforms.
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He is pretty conservative on the issues.
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Let's go to the website here Against ordaining female deacons, against blessing same-sex couples, against making priestly celibacy optional.
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And, just as a side note, when you go to this website, it actually has evidence where they have vocally said or written things on these certain issues.
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That's where the evidence comes from, so you can see all that.
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Some things he just has not been vocal about is restricting the, the old Latin mass.
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Uh, he's been, he.
00:22:59.888 --> 00:23:13.798
He has not voiced one way or the other on accords, which I am just horrified from what Pope Francis did with the Chinese church giving up the right of the church to appoint its own bishops.
00:23:13.798 --> 00:23:22.713
That Vatican China accord, secret accord has been reaffirmed three times.
00:23:22.713 --> 00:23:24.727
It came out in 2018.
00:23:24.727 --> 00:23:30.551
The public and the church wanted details, but Francis said he would provide them.
00:23:30.551 --> 00:23:32.747
We got to 2020.
00:23:32.747 --> 00:23:34.307
He reaffirmed it again.
00:23:34.307 --> 00:23:39.839
Everybody took their eye off this issue because of COVID.
00:23:39.839 --> 00:23:43.211
And then in 2022, it was reaffirmed again.
00:23:43.211 --> 00:23:51.299
Now it seems like every two years it has to be reaffirmed and we went all the way through 2024 and did not hear anything.
00:23:51.299 --> 00:23:53.864
So I'm curious where that stands now.
00:23:54.064 --> 00:23:59.352
But Cardinal Ejek, he has not come out one way or the other.
00:23:59.352 --> 00:24:07.342
On that, uh, promoting the synodal church, which was a big issue for Pope Francis, he's kind of murky Um.
00:24:07.342 --> 00:24:17.029
But then then, uh, for the other three remaining issues, completely against reassessing Humanae Vitae he believes it was true and accurate.
00:24:17.029 --> 00:24:21.519
Um against communion for divorce and remarried Catholics.
00:24:21.519 --> 00:24:30.470
And he was against the German synodal way to to totally different issues the German synodal way versus a synodal church.
00:24:30.470 --> 00:24:32.625
There's differences there.
00:24:32.625 --> 00:24:37.779
You can read up, get in the weeds on on these different issues and what they represent.
00:24:37.940 --> 00:24:47.541
But Cardinal EJEC very could be somebody that no one sees coming 71 years old, a little bit younger.
00:24:47.541 --> 00:24:59.390
I personally think the conclave is probably going to want somebody maybe 75 or even maybe Cardinal Sarah's age, all the way to 79.
00:24:59.390 --> 00:25:01.974
I think they want a transitional Pope.
00:25:01.974 --> 00:25:16.232
So they're going to select somebody maybe a little bit older, knowing they probably have five, maybe at the most 10 years, and allow that breathing room from Pope Francis's liberality.
00:25:16.232 --> 00:25:25.673
That's what my hope is, it's what my prayer is, but my prayer is also for the Holy Spirit to come and work in the lives of all these cardinal electors.
00:25:25.673 --> 00:25:27.926
So that's Cardinal Ejig.
00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:32.990
That's our third conservative and the final one is a favorite of all the American Catholics.
00:25:32.990 --> 00:25:37.970
I get questions all the time Can we elect an American cardinal pope?
00:25:37.970 --> 00:25:42.234
I'm going to say most likely not, obviously.
00:25:42.234 --> 00:25:44.382
God can do everything through the Holy Spirit.
00:25:44.382 --> 00:25:52.804
But the favorite is Cardinal Raymond Burke, united States Cardinal, age 76.
00:25:52.804 --> 00:25:58.141
He's the former Archbishop of St Louis and the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
00:25:58.141 --> 00:25:59.944
He is a traditionalist.
00:25:59.944 --> 00:26:07.468
He has clashed a lot with Pope Francis for allowing communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.
00:26:07.468 --> 00:26:10.222
He's clashed with him over contraception.
00:26:10.222 --> 00:26:13.172
He's clashed with him over gay rights.
00:26:13.172 --> 00:26:16.542
He's opposed to Catholic politicians supporting abortion.
00:26:16.542 --> 00:26:25.547
He was very vocal against President Joe Biden and he's like I said, he's a favorite among conservative Catholics, especially in the United States.
00:26:25.547 --> 00:26:30.761
He's very doctrinal and people love him for that.
00:26:30.761 --> 00:26:41.571
His challenges, his public disputes with Francis and his polarizing reputation make him unlikely to gain the necessary two-thirds support.
00:26:42.079 --> 00:26:45.788
And also some people believe this theory.
00:26:45.788 --> 00:27:03.843
I kind of hold more water on this theory that it's just highly unlikely that the United States is a superpower, that the College of Cardinals is going to select a pope from a country that is a superpower, not to say again that God can't change hearts and minds.
00:27:03.843 --> 00:27:25.981
But I think the cardinals often look at the geopolitical state of the world and they don't want to have too much power in one concentrated area, power in one concentrated area.
00:27:25.981 --> 00:27:27.064
So that's why the Americans just get no love.
00:27:27.064 --> 00:27:42.694
But many people think that that theory is out the window because we're more advanced, we have more information, we're more advanced, and that was kind of a medieval or a reformational or counter-reformational stance.
00:27:42.694 --> 00:28:08.093
I just personally think there's more cardinals that if they could speak, if they could speak wholeheartedly and out in the open, publicly, they would say that They'd say I'm against American cardinals because I don't want too much power residing in one area or one country of the world, there's too many other Catholics that would be perceived to be disadvantaged from that.
00:28:08.093 --> 00:28:15.580
So no matter what the Cardinals' stances were, so I think you're always running uphill if you're an American Cardinal.
00:28:15.580 --> 00:28:20.529
So that rounds out the conservative faction.
00:28:20.750 --> 00:28:24.722
We will now turn to the liberal frontrunners Again.
00:28:24.722 --> 00:28:37.532
Hate these labels, but it's the only way to talk about them, to try and understand and get your arms around how the church views these different issues.
00:28:37.532 --> 00:28:50.740
But liberal cardinals for the most part align with Pope Francis's progressive reforms, his outreach to minority groups, minority communities to be generous, I guess.
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