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Some see the byword as a rallying call in a conservative campaign to reverse Francis’ push for a more inclusive church.
April 27, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
Even before Pope Francis was entombed in a Rome basilica on Saturday, conservative cardinals who felt his pontificate was a divisive disaster that endangered the church’s traditions had begun politicking to sway the conclave electing the next pope.
They have a seductively simple slogan: unity.
It is hard to imagine a less offensive rallying cry, but in the ears of Francis’ most committed supporters, it rings as a code word for rolling back Francis’ more inclusive vision of the Roman Catholic Church.
The concerns are a clear sign of the maneuvering by ideological camps that is already taking place among the cardinals as their shared mourning gives way to the looming task of voting for Francis’ successor in the conclave, which is expected to begin the first week of May.
The discussions leading up to the election are likely to touch on whether a successor to Francis should push forward, or roll back, his openness to potentially ordaining women as deacons or making some married men clergy or offering communion to divorced and remarried Catholics, among other deeply contested issues.
Already, the cardinals have been gathering in daily meetings behind the Vatican walls. Kicking off the sandals he was wearing with black socks after one such meeting last week in his book-lined study, one conservative cardinal, Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Germany, said he had spent the morning making the unity case.
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