Opposition to Pope Francis can often be found at its most rancorous in the English-speaking Catholic world. Beside the articles weighing up the achievements and disappointments of the dramatic decade since his election, no one was surprised that several commentators chose to mark the occasion by launching splenetic attacks on the Francis papacy. All good knockabout stuff, perhaps. But some senior officials in the Church, including in Rome, were alarmed to see that one of these pieces was reproduced in the official publications of several English-speaking dioceses.
George Weigel, the widely-respected biographer of Pope John Paul II, wrote a column entitled “A Somber Anniversary”, in which he describes Francis as an autocrat presiding over a “slough of dysfunction”, creating a “miasma of fear”, systematically trying to deconstruct the legacy of Pope John Paul II and failing to implement much-needed reforms on finances and abuse. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, has since offered a rebuttal to some of Mr Weigel's claims.
The bracing critique of the Pope by Mr Weigel was written for the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver. Its archbishop, Samuel Aquila, once described Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio who released a dossier of accusations against Francis and called on him to resign, as “a man of deep faith and integrity”. Weigel’s column is syndicated widely. It also appeared in The Pilot (Archdiocese of Boston) and The Catholic Weekly (Archdiocese of Sydney).
The Archbishop of Boston is Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a member of the Pope’s council of advisers and president of the Holy See’s abuse commission. Sources close to the cardinal told me that when he was informed of the article in The Pilot, he immediately called for it to be taken down. In Sydney, however, it has stayed up.
The archdiocese is led by Anthony Fisher, who was appointed to his current role by Francis and is also a member of the synod of bishops council and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Archbishop Fisher, a Dominican friar with a doctorate from Oxford, is a talented man. Last year, he addressed the US hierarchy on the theme of fraternity and communion among bishops.
But as I witnessed while reporting on the Australian Church’s synod assembly (the Plenary Council) in Sydney last July, his archdiocese’s publication ran a series of hostile articles about the council and has been very critical of synodality, a signature Francis reform.
Their publication of Mr Weigel’s article was called out by Austen Ivereigh, a journalist, commentator and former Deputy Editor of The Tablet, who asked what this said about communion between bishops and Rome. To the publication's credit, the editor offered Dr Ivereigh the chance to respond to Mr Weigel's commentary. It's also important to point out that the publication ran several articles on the Francis anniversary, focussing on the central themes of the pontificate.
Dr Ivereigh points out that Mr Weigel is free to be “an incessant, querulous, ideological critic of Francis”, but the question is whether diocesan publications should give him a platform to do so. This is a crucial point.
“A spirit of communion does not mean being uncritical or adulatory. But it asks us to assume the good faith of the successor of St Peter,” Dr Ivereigh writes.
“It asks us to listen respectfully to him, to seek to understand him and his intentions. What counters the spirit of communion is casting what he does and says in the worst possible light, as if seizing weapons to use against him. This Dr Weigel does in every line.”
The Weigel article also comes weeks after The Catholic Weekly published a 95-page supplement devoted to Cardinal George Pell, paying tribute to the late Australian cardinal’s many gifts. Archbishop Fisher, 63, has been effusive in his praise of his predecessor’s legacy but has not distanced himself from Cardinal Pell’s notorious description of Francis’ pontificate as a “catastrophe” or his characterisation of the synod as a “toxic nightmare”.
It has left some people asking: what is going on in Sydney?
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