A word from the editor in chief: Hagan lío. Usually translated as “make a mess,” it can also be rendered more idiomatically as “shake things up” or “make some noise.” It was a call Pope Francis made to young people at his first World Youth Day in Rio in 2013, when the Vatican’s official English translation read it as “make yourselves heard.” He repeated the line as recently as March 2024, when the official English version let it stand as “Hagan lío! Make a mess!”
Pope Francis was not afraid of messiness. That seems to have been part and parcel of his pastoral freedom, charging into crowds to embrace people and, as I once saw on that 2013 World Youth Day trip, accepting a cup of mate passed to him through the window of his Fiat by someone in the crowd.
But messiness is a more complicated strategy within the church’s governance and the collegial relationship between the pope and the bishops. There, the word that might make more sense is “parrhesia,” or frank speech, which Pope Francis also frequently praised. There seems to be, as Sebastian Gomes details below, some particularly frank speech going on among the cardinals, at least according to our colleague Gerry O’Connell’s reporting. There’s also (to be frank myself) plenty of more calculated speech going on here in Rome: careful positioning, strategic ambiguity, the maintenance of dignity referred to as “bella figura.”
The Spirit can and will work through all of it—but maybe we should pray for the whole church to have a little more of the freedom necessary to trust that frankness and messiness can be a means to cooperate with God. And for God to dole that messiness out in doses that don’t entirely overwhelm us. – Sam Sawyer, S.J.
Some cardinals are attacking Pope Francis. He would have welcomed it.
By Sebastian Gomes
You may have been shocked, as I was, to read my colleague Gerard O’Connell’s report that Cardinal Beniamino Stella “openly attacked Pope Francis” in the pre-conclave general congregation meeting of cardinals on April 30. He accused Francis of “bypassing the long-standing tradition of the church” and imposing “his own ideas” by opening positions of governance in the Roman Curia and the church to individuals who are not ordained clergy. The information was leaked by another cardinal who was present at the meeting and asked to remain anonymous since the cardinals take an oath not to reveal to outsiders what is said inside.
Setting aside the obvious questions about the disclosure of specifics from a meeting that is supposed to be secret, Cardinal Stella’s comments and the manner in which they were—and weren’t—expressed require some analysis.
First, it has to be said that if Pope Francis himself were in that meeting, he would likely not only have listened attentively to Cardinal Stella’s criticism but also applauded his courage and frankness in making it. Francis always insisted that bishops and cardinals speak to each other with boldness and listen with humility. At the opening of the 2014 Synod on the Family, in the very room where Cardinal Stella leveled his criticism, the pope recounted this story:
After the last Consistory (February 2014), in which the family was discussed, a Cardinal wrote to me, saying: what a shame that several Cardinals did not have the courage to say certain things out of respect for the Pope, perhaps believing that the Pope might think something else. This is not good, this is not synodality, because it is necessary to say all that, in the Lord, one feels the need to say: without polite deference, without hesitation. And, at the same time, one must listen with humility and welcome, with an open heart, to what your brothers say. Synodality is exercised with these two approaches.
When in 2023 it was revealed that the late Cardinal George Pell had written a memorandum calling Francis’ papacy a “disaster” and a “catastrophe,” Francis replied that he had every right to criticize, and called Cardinal Pell “a great guy.”
We might have been shocked by Cardinal Stella’s opinion or the bluntness with which he expressed it. But Francis would have called it progress. If you’re a person who appreciated Francis’ exercise of the Petrine ministry, it would be a betrayal of his memory to criticize Cardinal Stella for being willing to say what he said.
Having said that, Pope Francis was obviously not in the plenary meeting on April 30. And listening humbly to criticism requires the person levying the criticism to say it to one’s face. As much as the late pope encouraged open and honest conversation in the church, he detested it when cardinals and bishops gossiped and complained secretly behind his back. “The only thing I ask,” he said in a 2023 interview with the Associated Press, “is that they do it to my face because that’s how we all grow, right?”
Cardinal Stella was a trusted collaborator of Pope Francis. At least Pope Francis thought he was. It was Francis who appointed him the prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy in 2013 and made him a cardinal in 2014. Cardinal Stella sat in the synod aula with his brother bishops and cardinals in 2014 when Francis made his powerful intervention about speaking boldly and listening humbly. But Cardinal Stella did not speak up publicly about his concerns regarding governance during Francis’ pontificate.
I can respect Cardinal Stella’s criticism of Pope Francis’ decision to open the governance structures of the church to lay people. But the real betrayal of Francis was the disrespect the cardinal showed by waiting until after Francis’ death to criticize him. As is often the case in the Christian life, actions speak louder than words.
Here are the other stories you need to read today:
- New conclave podcast: Cardinals are asking for prayers. What should we be praying for, specifically?
- Vatican firefighters were seen on the roof of the Sistine Chapel installing the chimney, a key moment in the preparation for the May 7 conclave. After every two rounds of voting in the Sistine Chapel, the ballots of the cardinals are burned in a special furnace to indicate the outcome to the outside world.
- On Outreach, Christopher Vella offers an LGBTQ Catholic’s prayer for the conclave.
- With five days before the conclave, all but four cardinal electors are in Rome.
