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    Decoding the Vatican: Key Terms in the Papal Transition

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    From “camerlengo” to white smoke, here’s what to know about the words and phrases that guide the process after a pope dies.The transition from one pope to the next can be a mystifying time for those who aren’t familiar with the workings of the Roman Catholic Church — and even to some who are.The process is governed by centuries-old rules and traditions that come with their own vocabulary, much of it in Latin. The election of a new pope is likely to play out over weeks or months as a small group of Catholic prelates decides on the next leader of a global flock of more than a billion faithful.With the first papal transition in more than a decade underway following the death of Pope Francis, who was laid to rest on Saturday, here are some terms to know:ConclaveThis is the meeting of cardinals, set to begin next month, that will elect the next pope. The word comes from the Latin “with key,” and refers to the isolation imposed on the men (and they have always been men) as they make their decision inside the Vatican. They cannot leave the conclave except in rare cases, and phones, the internet and newspapers are not allowed. The cardinals vote by secret ballot until a two-thirds majority is reached, and a new pope is elected. The process was recently dramatized in the movie “Conclave,” which papal experts said presented a fairly accurate depiction. (The New York Times has written about some of the possible contenders.)College of CardinalsCardinals, known as the “princes of the church,” are the second highest ranking Catholic prelates, and together they are known as the College of Cardinals. There are 252 cardinals, appointed by the pope to assist and advise him on Church affairs, and when a pope dies, it falls to the college to choose a successor.The word cardinal comes from the Latin “cardinalis,” which means “serving as a hinge.” The group is led by a dean, a position currently held by Giovanni Battista Re, a 91-year-old Italian who has spent most of his career serving in the Roman curia. He will preside over the meetings that lead up to the conclave but will not attend the gathering, as only cardinals under the age of 80 are eligible to vote for pope.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Pope’s Funeral

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      We are live from the Vatican.VATICAN CITY — A patchwork of clergy in red, white, purple and black vestments. World leaders including President Trump seated on the stairs of St. Peter’s Basilica for an outdoor ceremony. A simple cypress casket. Haunting chants and some 200,000 faithful embraced by Bernini’s colonnade.In a solemn and majestic funeral that ended moments ago, the Roman Catholic Church laid to rest Pope Francis, the first South American pope, whose humble style and pastoral vision both reinvigorated and divided the institution that he led for a dozen years. He was 88.It’s warm and clear here in Rome. A group of refugees and homeless people, like those Francis advocated for around the world, joined presidents, prime ministers and the church’s cardinals — one of whom will be the next pope — to bid the Holy Father farewell.During the funeral.Eric Lee/The New York Times“He was a Pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said in the homily. “The guiding thread of his mission was also the conviction that the church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open.”He spoke in Italian. Texts were also read in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Portuguese.Before the service, priests from Myanmar talked about how Francis had energized their small church when he visited and elevated their bishop to a cardinal. Pilgrims from Ecuador said he had made them feel seen. Conservative clerics from the Czech Republic said they still weren’t sure what to make of him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Francis Wanted a Church of the Poor and Put It Into Practice

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      Around St. Peter’s Square, the pope offered services to the homeless and migrants, in ways that often did not go down well with his fellow clerics.Throughout his papacy, Francis was an outspoken advocate for the downtrodden. Shortly after he was elected in 2013 he said, “How I would like a church that is poor and for the poor.”But Francis, who died on Monday at 88, didn’t just pay lip service.When the vehicle carrying his coffin pulls up at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he will be buried on Saturday, a group of “poor and needy” people will be waiting on the steps, the Vatican said this week. After all, the statement added, the pope “had chosen the name Francis to never forget them.” St. Francis of Assisi renounced his wealth to live in poverty.Marginalized groups will be present at the funeral, the Vatican said Friday.One of the first people to pay their respects when Francis was brought to St. Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday was Sister Geneviève Jeanningros, who until last year lived in a camper in a fairground outside Rome, serving those in need. She was in regular contact with Francis, who visited the fairground, and images of her weeping in front of his coffin moved many.Sister Geneviève Jeanningros, center in blue, was one of the first people to pay their respects to Francis.Pool photo by Alessandro Di MeoCloser to his own home, Francis “strongly supported” transforming the Vatican post office located on the right side of the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square into a free medical clinic for the homeless and for undocumented migrants. The clinic opened in 2018 and averages 100 visits a day, said its director, Dr. Massimo Ralli.“It’s putting the Gospel into practice because caring for people is one of the aspects of charity,” said Dr. Ralli. “So it absolutely mirrors the message of the Holy Father toward the least.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cardinal Roger Mahony, Accused of Hiding Sex Abuse, Will Help Close Pope Francis’ Casket

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      Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who was accused of covering up cases of abuse as archbishop of Los Angeles, will have an official role in the ceremonies around Francis’ funeral.An American cardinal who was accused of covering up cases of sexual abuse by priests and was later stripped of some duties, is set to play an official role in the ceremonies surrounding Pope Francis’ funeral.Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, will participate in the closing of the pope’s casket at St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday evening and in his burial at the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore on Saturday, according to Vatican announcements.The cardinals taking part were chosen based on seniority, a spokesman for the Vatican, Matteo Bruni, said at a news briefing on Thursday.Cardinal Mahony, 89, was the archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until his retirement from the Roman Catholic Church in 2011. In 2013, internal church personnel files released as part of a civil case revealed that Cardinal Mahony had played a role in covering up cases of sexual abuse by priests.The documents show that Cardinal Mahony and others worked to protect abusive priests from punishment and withhold evidence of sexual abuse from law enforcement agencies. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the United States, also sent priests who had molested children out of state for treatment, in part because therapists in California were legally obligated to report evidence of child abuse to the police, according to the documents.In 2007, the Los Angeles archdiocese agreed to pay $660 million to settle claims from more than 500 victims, the largest settlement for priest sexual abuse at the time. Last year, the church agreed to pay another $880 million to settle abuse claims from 1,353 people.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pope Francis and the End of the Imperial Papacy

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      Pope Francis, who passed to his reward on the morning after Easter at age 88, was a version of the liberal pope that many Catholics had earnestly desired all through the long reign of John Paul II and the shorter one of Benedict XVI — a man whose worldview was shaped and defined by the Second Vatican Council and whose pontificate sought a renewal of its revolution, a further great modernization of the Catholic Church.In one way, at least, he succeeded. For generations, modernizers lamented the outsize power of the papacy, the anachronism of a monarchical authority in a democratic age, the way the concept of papal infallibility froze Catholic debates even as the world rushed forward. In theory Francis shared those concerns, promising a more collegial and horizontally oriented church, more synodal, in the jargon of the Catholic bureaucracy. In practice he often used his power in the same way as his predecessors, to police and suppress deviations from his authority — except that this time the targets were dissenting conservatives and traditionalists instead of progressives and modernizers.But just by creating that novel form of conflict, in which Catholics who had been accustomed to being on the same side as the Vatican found themselves suddenly crosswise from papal authority, Francis helped to demystify his office’s authority and undermine its most imposing claims.That’s because the conservatives whose convictions he unsettled were the last believers in the imperial papacy, the custodians of infallibility’s mystique. And by stirring more of them to doubt and disobedience, he kicked away the last major prop supporting a strong papacy and left the office of St. Peter in the same position as most other 21st-century institutions: graced with power but lacking credibility, floated on charisma without underlying legitimacy, with its actions understood in terms of rewards for friends and punishments for enemies.Two rebellions, in particular, illustrate this shift. The first is the continuing resistance to the pope’s attempt to suppress, in the name of Catholic unity and the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, the faith’s traditional Latin Mass. After Vatican II in the late 1960s, when Pope Paul VI remade the church’s liturgy, he commanded enough deference that he was able to swiftly consign the Mass that every Catholic in the world had grown up with to the modern equivalent of catacombs — to church basements, hotel rooms and schismatic chapels.Whereas when Francis attempted a similar suppression, reversing the permissions granted by Benedict, only his most loyal bishops really went along, and the main effect was to stir resistance and complaint, garner new media attention for the old Latin Mass and increase traditionalism’s cachet among younger Catholics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

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      Archdiocese of Los Angeles Agrees to Pay $880 Million to Settle Sex Abuse Claims

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      The settlement is the highest single payout by an archdiocese, experts said, and brings Los Angeles’s cumulative payout in sex abuse lawsuits to more than $1.5 billion.The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest archdiocese, has agreed to pay $880 million to 1,353 people who say they were sexually abused as children. The settlement, which experts said was the highest single payout by an archdiocese, brings Los Angeles’s cumulative payout in sex abuse lawsuits to more than $1.5 billion.The settlement was announced on Wednesday in a joint statement by lawyers for the plaintiffs and the archdiocese. “I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart,” Archbishop José H. Gomez said in a statement. “My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered.”The agreement represents the near conclusion to decades of litigation against the archdiocese, with only a few suits remaining. In 2007, it reached a $660 million settlement in abuse lawsuits brought by 508 people who accused Catholic clergy and members of religious orders of abuse. Over the years, the archdiocese has sold off real estate, liquidated investments and taken out loans to cover the staggering costs of litigation.Archbishop Gomez said in a statement that the new settlement would be paid through “reserves, investments and loans, along with other archdiocesan assets and payments that will be made by religious orders and others named in the litigation.” He said that donations designated for parishes, schools and specific mission campaigns would not be used for the settlement.“It’s never going to be full justice when the harm is a child’s life,” said Michael Reck, a lawyer with Jeff Anderson & Associates who helped represent some of the plaintiffs. “But it’s a measure of justice and a measure of accountability that gives these survivors some sense of closure at least.”This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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      Former Deacon Excommunicated After Confronting Priest’s Sexual Abuse

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      A Louisiana priest was convicted in the sexual abuse of the ex-deacon’s son. What followed was a lawsuit and now the Catholic Church’s highest censure.A Catholic priest who sexually assaulted an altar boy in Louisiana is in prison, and a diocese has paid a settlement to the victim’s family. Now the diocese’s bishop has punished the victim’s father, a former deacon, with the Church’s highest censure: excommunication.It was the latest turn in a yearslong battle pitting the former deacon, Scott Peyton, and his family against the Diocese of Lafayette.The Peytons and the diocese have found themselves on opposing sides of a state law that gave childhood sexual abuse victims more time to file lawsuits.The law, which was passed in the State Legislature in 2021 but struck down on Friday by the state’s highest court, did not apply exclusively to victims of clergy abuse. However, the law prompted new civil suits against Louisiana churches and clergy members who worked for them.The battle has its roots in 2018, when Mr. Peyton’s son Oliver accused the parish priest at St. Peter Catholic Church in Morrow of sexually assaulting him three years earlier, when he was 16. Scott Peyton served the same priest, Father Michael Guidry, as a deacon.While the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office investigated the allegations, Father Guidry was suspended from his church duties and later confessed to the assault, according to court records.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      AME Church Leaders Call for End of U.S. Aid to Israel

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      The African African Methodist Episcopal Church Bishops Council says American financial assistance to help Israel fight its war in Gaza supports “mass genocide.”Leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the country’s oldest and most prominent Black Christian denominations, called this week for the United States to end its financial aid to Israel, saying the monthslong military campaign in Gaza amounted to “mass genocide.”The statement was issued by the church’s Council of Bishops, its executive branch, and signed by four senior bishops, including the council president, Bishop Stafford J. N. Wicker.Black churches and other faith groups have pushed for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war for months in advertisements, open letters and social media campaigns. Black faith leaders across denominations have amplified their calls as the number of dead rises. More than 28,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials there, many of them women and children.But the A.M.E. council’s statement goes further than a cease-fire demand, insisting that the United States immediately stop its financial support of Israel. It came as Israeli forces pushed into southern Gaza and prepared for a ground assault on Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians are trapped.The latest war between Israel and Hamas erupted on Oct. 7, after a Hamas attack on Israel killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. The conflict has been a point of tension between President Biden, who has stood by Israel during the war, and African Americans, many of whom have taken up the Palestinian cause.Several Black clergy members said the war could weaken an already fraught relationship between Mr. Biden and Black voters, Democrats’ most loyal voting bloc. The Black church is viewed as crucial to helping marshal support for Mr. Biden.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

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      Raphael Warnock, From the Pulpit to Politics, Doesn’t Shy From ‘Uncomfortable’ Truths

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