Following the death of Pope Francis, ​​the Catholic Church begins an election process which has remained unchanged for 800 years.

When the newly elected Pope Francis stepped onto the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in 2013 to greet the crowd, he joked that the cardinals had gone “to the end of the world” – his native Argentina – to find a new pontiff.

Indeed, the conclave, stunned by the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, had been actively looking beyond Europe for a powerful communicator bold enough to take on the leadership of an institution plagued by sexual and financial scandals.

But as 135 cardinals, those under the age of 80, as per the voting rules, prepare to gather for a new papal conclave following Francis’s death, Vatican analysts say electors now appear to be looking for a sober and unifying figure who can piece together an institution shaken by his revolutionary style and bring stability to the Church’s central government.

“Francis was chosen because he would not have been afraid to create chaos and reform. The next pontiff must be someone who can calm things down,” said Andrea Gagliarducci, a Vatican analyst at the Catholic News Agency.

Striving for unity

Back in 2013, the goal was to shift the Church’s centre of gravity from Europe to Latin America – an indication of the growing influence of Christians there – and to restore order in the Curia, the central government of the Holy See that had come to be viewed by many as corrupt and dysfunctional.

Pope Francis did not shy away from the task. Throughout his papacy, he shook the status quo by radically shifting tone, style and priorities, causing excitement among reformers, but dismay among conservatives who accused him of diluting the Church’s teachings.

His reforms, such as allowing priests to bless same-sex couples (in certain circumstances) and overhauling the Vatican’s bureaucracy, infuriated many. His unpredictable governing style, which relied on a small group of confidantes and reduced the power of the Church’s central government, stirred tensions.

But Francis also frustrated some of the more liberal-leaning voices as his changes never seemed to translate into fundamental reforms in the Church’s doctrine, especially when it came to the role of women in the Church and same-sex marriage.

There is a consensus that the cardinals must focus on choosing a reassuring figure – someone who will not undo past progress, but equally will not push boundaries excessively.

“We must move towards a pope who finds unity in the diversity of the Church, maintains love for the poor, attention for the most marginalised, but who also rebuilds, and not restores, the governing institutions of the Church,” said Massimo Franco, a political columnist for Corriere della Sera and author of eight books about the Vatican.

Names have started to float around. A strong contender is Louis Antonio Tagle, 65, a close ally of Pope Francis and a progressive. If chosen, the Filipino would become the first Asian pontiff. There is also Cardinal Peter Erdo from Hungary, 72, a traditionalist and theologian known for opposing divorced Catholics receiving communion and his anti-migrant views. From the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, 65, is known for his stance on human rights and anticorruption efforts.

Among Italians, the most recurrent name is Pietro Parolin, 70, the Vatican’s secretary of state, who played an important diplomatic role and was a central figure in Pope Francis’s leadership. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, 60, was the Vatican’s top official for Middle East affairs, and his experience in the region gained him widespread respect.

Looking to the Global South

Geographically speaking, the choice has never been wider. During his tenure, Francis appointed 80 percent of the cardinals who will vote at this conclave, and effectively changed the face of the clerical leadership by making it far more representative of the Global South.

The voting cardinals currently hail from 65 countries – many from Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania, with those from Europe now representing 39 percent of the total, compared with 52 percent in 2013. There are also fewer North Americans than there were before Pope Francis was elected.

This means that, for the first time, there will be more cardinals from the Global South than from Europe, even though Europeans still represent a relative majority.

Cardinals from the Global South have tended to be strongly aligned with Pope Francis’s push for progress on issues such as social justice, migration, climate change and ending the conflict in Gaza and Ukraine – even when that meant angering Western leaders who often expected the pontiff to take a stronger stance against Russia, or a softer one on Israel.

In one notable case during US President Donald Trump’s first presidency from 2017 to 2021, the pope spoke against the US-Mexico border wall, saying a person who builds walls instead of bridges was “not Christian”. Trump snapped back at the time, saying the pope’s questioning of his faith was “disgraceful”.

A more conservative outlook?

The Global South’s stronger presence in the conclave may ensure that such positions will not be overlooked by the Church going forward, said Marco Politi, a Vatican expert and author of the book, Pope Francis Among the Wolves.

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Still, being appointed by Francis does not necessarily translate into supporting his vision on all fronts. “Some of the new elected cardinals from the Global South are more conservative when it comes to social and gender issues, especially concerning the role of women and homosexuals’ rights within the Church,” said Politi.

For instance, DRC’s Cardinal Ambongo, who was made cardinal by Francis in 2019, was a staunch opponent of Francis’s push to allow priests to bless same-sex couples. The pushback was such that the pope was forced to dilute a 2023 landmark ruling and allow blessings only as long as they are not part of regular Church rituals or liturgies, nor given in contexts related to civil unions or weddings.

Another factor is that many of the cardinals barely know each other and, for at least 80 of them, this will be their first conclave and their first encounter with the complexities of the Church’s central government – an “intimidating” prospect even for those accustomed to it. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, joked to the BBC that he had thought the conclave would “pass me by” as he is only a few months off his 80th birthday. When he was informed that the pope was seriously ill, he realised: “Oh Lord, this is going to come my way.”

“The pope wanted to appoint cardinals from distant countries to increase the internationalisation of the Church, but they might have little knowledge of the structure of the Church as a world body that governs 1.4 billion people,” said Politi.

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While a date has not yet been set for when the cardinals will be sealed in secrecy inside the Sistine Chapel to vote for the next pope, for the next nine days, they will gather twice per day for pre-conclave meetings inside the Vatican.

It was at one of these congregazioni, as the meetings are called in Italian, before the 2013 conclave, that Jorge Mario Bergoglio gave a speech that propelled him to prominence. A few days later, he became Pope Francis.

All cardinals, including those over 80, can attend these meetings. As they present their positions on what they believe are the main issues the new pope should tackle, they may offer a clue as to just what kind of figure they are looking for.

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The American actor Richard Gere is one among several witnesses scheduled to testify at the high-profile trial of the Italian politician Matteo Salvini, Italy’s former interior minister. Salvini is facing charges of kidnapping after allegedly blocking the humanitarian ship Open Arms carrying 147 migrants from docking at the Sicilian port of Lampedusa in 2019.

He has been accused of holding all passengers hostage as they languished at sea in the Mediterranean summer heat for 19 days. If found guilty, Salvini could face up to 15 years in prison. Gere is expected to tell the court how he came to supply the migrants on the Open Arms with food.

Despite Salvini’s attempts to discredit the trial process, his hearing has just got underway in Palermo, Sicily.

For those of us in the fight to increase the rights of today’s global migrants, Salvini’s trial is a sign of hope. It is a very public instance of state officials being held accountable amid the narratives of alienation that have been inflicted on migrants in the country in the past few years.

Still identifying as a country of emigrants rather than for immigrants, Italy struggles not only to empathise with the lives of people who arrive in search of better opportunities but also to adapt to its contemporary sociodemographic reality. It’s a country that is more and more diverse and its people older and older. Meanwhile, the younger generations are increasingly embracing cosmopolitan ideals.

Citizenship debate

Italy’s citizenship law and the many years of debate about changing it reflect these struggles and the country’s paradoxes. They raise questions about current configurations of being a citizen, and about how they address the rights of the second generation of immigrants and of the children who are born or raised in the country by foreign parents.

Different proposals have been generated along the years to replace the current system of jus sanguinis (recognising the right to citizenship only for children born from Italian citizens). Initially aiming to apply the principle of jus soli (recognising the right to citizenship to all children born on Italian ground), the latest proponents have been pushing for a strategically less radical jus culturae (enabling minors born and raised in Italy who have completed a cycle of study in the country to become citizens).

Along with these proposals, different grassroots solidarity groups in the country have been promoting a different narrative about migrants and changes to citizenship laws. Among the most vocal proponents of them have been second-generation black Italian activists, who have been pushing for citizenship reform for the past decade.

As extensively documented by scholars Camilla Hawthorne and Angelica Pesarini, their efforts to seek a pathway to citizenship for the one million children of immigrants born in Italy gained heightened visibility in the summer of 2020, with the Black Lives Matter protests that swept Italy in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

In her work, Pesarini urges against a separation of the movement for Black Lives from “the question of immigration”. She argues that these efforts would be further strengthened through explicit alignment with groups that are advocating for broadening the rights of recently arrived migrants.

Fitting in

Both second generations and newly arrived migrants have experienced racialised criminalisation and marginalisation, and are subjected to anti-black sentiment. Their belonging is perpetually held in question and they exist outside the category of “real Italians”.

They are embedded in the Italian culture, but also in their parents’ heritage, giving them the benefits of having had to negotiate among different cultures. Their backgrounds should represent a source of cultural enrichment – not recognising this potential renders Italy a hostile place for both citizens and non-citizens.

But from our continuing research in Sicily, for instance, we have observed that organisations working to advance the rights of migrants are not really examining the experiences of the second generations. And, similarly, black Italian activists – among other second-generation activists – are likewise not explicitly including recently arrived migrants. Essentially, these activities are happening independently of one another.

This needs to change, not only because migrants represent the future of Italy and it is their offspring who will still be denied the rights to participate in the country’s political life if it did not – but because doing so would yield to much broader transformations and advances in social justice.

Coalitions of different minority groups, such as that which we are proposing, do not represent anything new. They have already proved to be essential in advancing rights for people elsewhere. In the US, for example, movements of mixed-status immigrants (among them the Dreamers and the 1.5 youth, No Person Is Illegal, AbolishICE and NotOneMore) have been working together for years towards the common goal of being allowed to legally stay in the country and the ability to eventually obtain a path to citizenship.

Together, they have been able to advance important policies like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), which allowed undocumented young people to receive a conditionally renewable two-year permit to study and work in the country. Their work has also contributed to shifting ideas around what “real citizens” look like, and how laws regulating citizenship might be based on arbitrary frameworks.

Those already advocating for changes to Italy’s citizenship laws would benefit from organising and creating coalitions between the second generation and more recently arrived immigrant youth. The movement would leverage the institutional knowledge of the first group, but also become a stronger and more transformational voice by including the second.

World Opinions – theconversation.com

L’article Italy’s citizenship debate: how a country of emigrants is learning to live with immigrants est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

L’une des rencontres religieuses les plus importantes de l’histoire s’est déroulée samedi matin en Irak: le pape François, chef des 1,3 milliard de catholiques, a été reçu par le grand ayatollah Ali Sistani, plus haute autorité religieuse de nombreux musulmans chiites.

En venant dans la ville sainte chiite de Najaf, le pape argentine de 84 ans entendait tout à la fois tendre la main à l’islam chiite et porter la cause des chrétiens d’Irak, 1% de la population dans ce pays musulman, qui se disent régulièrement victimes de discrimination.

De nationalité iranienne, le grand ayatollah Sistani se pose depuis des décennies en garant de l’indépendance de l’Irak et dirige une école théologique qui prône le retrait des religieux de la politique, ils doivent seulement conseiller, au contraire de l’école de Qom en Iran.

Le grand ayatollah a d’ailleurs pesé de tout son poids pour faire tomber le gouvernement qu’ont conspué durant des mois en 2019 de jeunes manifestants fatigués de voir leur pays s’enfoncer dans la corruption et la gabegie.

C’est la première fois dans l’histoire que le chef des 1,3 milliard de catholiques du monde s’entretient avec le grand ayatollah, qui vit dans sa modeste maison de la ville sainte de Najaf, à 200 km au sud de Bagdad.

Entretien à huis clos

Mais de cette rencontre au sommet n’ont filtré que deux choses. Une photo des deux hommes: le grand ayatollah, turban noir des descendants du prophète Mahomet et tenue assortie, et à sa gauche le pape, tout de blanc vêtu et flanqué de cardinaux en chapes rouges et noires. Et, surtout, un communiqué du bureau du grand ayatollah.

L’homme de 90 ans, longue barbe et carrure frêle, n’est jamais apparu en public. Il répond par écrit aux questions qui lui sont adressées et il fait lire ses sermons chaque vendredi par des représentants.

Cette fois-ci toutefois, il a fait publier un communiqué, remerciant personnellement le pape François de sa venue à Najaf à l’issue d’un huis clos de 50 minutes entre les deux hommes.

« Attention portée » aux chrétiens

Le grand ayatollah a assuré au pape « l’attention qu’il porte au fait que les citoyens chrétiens vivent comme tous les Irakiens en paix et en sécurité, forts de tous leurs droits constitutionnels », indique le texte.

L’ajout de cette étape au programme papal est une source de fierté pour de nombreux chiites dans un pays qui va depuis 40 ans de conflits en crises, en passant par une guerre civile meurtrière entre musulmans chiites et sunnites.

« Nous sommes fiers de ce que représente cette visite (…) elle va donner une autre dimension à la ville sainte », se félicite auprès de l’AFP le dignitaire chiite Mohammed Ali Bahr al-Ouloum. A sa descente d’avion, le souverain pontife est passé devant un immense appel au dialogue placardé sur l’aéroport pour sa venue.

« Les hommes sont de deux sortes: soit vos frères dans la foi, soit vos égaux en humanité », assure la banderole, citant l’imam Ali, gendre du prophète Mahomet et figure fondatrice du chiisme enterré dans la ville sainte.

Visite sous haute sécurité

La visite du pape, sous très haute sécurité, se déroule aussi sur fond de confinement total avec plus de 5000 contaminations par le Covid-19 chaque jour. Si le pape a été vacciné avant son voyage, le bureau du grand ayatollah n’a pas fait état de telles mesures.

Après Najaf, François a continué son parcours vers le sud, à Ur, ville antique où selon la tradition est né le patriarche Abraham. Là, il a prié avec des dignitaires chiites, sunnites, yazidis et sabéens. Il faut « cheminer du conflit à l’unité » dans « tout le Moyen-Orient » et « en particulier en Syrie, martyrisée », a plaidé le pape François.

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L’article A Najaf en Irak, le pape rencontre le grand ayatollah chiite Ali Sistani est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.