Pope Francis, 88, suffered a prolonged and critical asthmatic respiratory incident on Saturday morning after spending several days in a Rome hospital being treated for pneumonia and a complex lung infection
The cardinals of Rome had been holding secret meetings behind the Pope’s back to decide his successor long before he fell ill, it has been claimed.
On Sunday morning, the Vatican issued an update saying the 88-year-old pontiff had a “tranquil” night after suffering a critical incident for a complex respiratory illness on Saturday.
Catholics across the world have turned their thoughts to the Pope’s wellbeing, with many fearing the worst after his seven-day stint in hospital. And with the prospect of Pope Francis’ passing now a possibility, the enormous responsibility of choosing his successor falls on the Vatican’s College of Cardinals.
While openly campaigning to take over the Catholic top spot could get a cardinal booted out of the Church, Rome’s top bishops will be holding hushed conversations and meetings in the gilded corridors of the Vatican.
John Allen, editor of Catholic news website Crux and expert of Papal process, told The Times: “Not only do I think the political conversations have begun, I think they’ve been going on for quite some time.
“We know for a fact that in the mid-1990s, a group of cardinals organised and had regular meetings to try to ensure a liberal successor to John Paul II.”
This group was dubbed the St Gallen Mafia, a cohort of senior Catholic figures who met with the purpose of choosing a liberal pope to take over after John Paul II. Though their plans were foiled with the election of Pope Benedict XVI, they got their way when he retired and Pope Francis was chosen.
“I think if you wait for the Pope to get sick to start having these conversations, it’s way too late,” said Allen. He believes that on this occasion, it is the conservative cardinals hoping to get someone who represents their interests elected.
He added: “I couldn’t give you names of the conservatives who are meeting this time and having these conversations, but I guarantee you they’re out there and I guarantee you these conversations have been going on for a while. I know of at least one cardinal who was leading some of those conversations, but he has since died.”
A senior official compared Vatican politics to what you would see hundreds of years ago in a Renaissance court – several small factions or cliques, each of them trying to earn the pope’s favour. They said the political jockeying can involve using underhanded tactics, like deploying information about the “sins” of rival cardinals.
Most of the cardinals – the most senior clergy under the pope – have “some kind of a sin, whether it’s money, a boyfriend or a love child”. Should they need to remove this cardinal from the race, they will deploy the information to tar their reputation, the official added.
Doctors have said Francis’ condition is touch-and-go, given his age, fragility and pre-existing lung disease, and that the main threat facing him is if the infection enters the bloodstream, a serious condition known as sepsis.
As of Friday, there was no evidence of any sepsis, and Francis was responding to the various drugs he is taking, the pope’s medical team said in their first in-depth update on the his condition.