Cardinal Kasper Evokes a Time “After Francis”

In the light of history, Cardinal Walter Kasper is not the one who contributed the least to the election of Jorge Maria Bergoglio to the sovereign pontificate. He was helped in this by several of his colleagues who saw in the high prelate Argentinian well before 2013 the ideal figure to accomplish a reform of the Church in a way that is not very favorable to Tradition.

It is also interesting to note the analysis developed by the progressive theologian in mid-December 2022, during a meeting with the Order of Journalists of Lazio devoted to Pope Francis’s pontificate.

For the cardinal, the mechanism set in motion by the synod will probably not be concluded by Pope Francis. “Such a process of transformation cannot be achieved overnight, it takes time, a little like taking a long breath. This cannot be done in a single pontificate, it will take two or three,” he explains.

This is a way of also recognizing the disruptive nature of a synod called to upset whole sections of Christian ethics and ecclesiology.

Kasper rejoices in the fact that faith and doctrine are not the priority of the current pontificate. “In Praedicate Evangelium [the document on the reform of the Curia promulgated by Pope Francis, ed.] the Dicastery for Evangelization took precedence over the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

“We no longer preach the God who threatens, condemns, and punishes, but a God who welcomes, accepts, forgives, and reconciles in love. It's a new tone, which is good for the Church, even if not everyone likes it.”

It is not a new tone and its effects have been felt in the Church for nearly 60 years. It is moreover quite surprising to see that, a few moments later, the cardinal went on to deplore the “identity crisis” that Catholicism is going through, without being able to see in it the necessary link with the putting the faith and its principles on hold.

Nevertheless, the high German prelate recognizes that such reformism is far from self-evident. “Pope Francis is in a difficult situation. On the one hand there are the fundamentalist conservatives, on the other the ideological progressives.” That’s one way to look at the ambiguity of the current pontificate.

Because this concerns the almost 10-year-record of an unprecedented papacy which appears implicitly in Cardinal Kasper’s interview with the Latium journalists, a record for which he himself is accountable and which primarily concerns him, for having been the principal agent of the 2013 election.

“The success of the current pontificate will be achieved through Pope Francis’s successors,” warns the theologian who hopes that the current reign “is not an accident, but the beginning of a new era.”

And the President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity confides, by way of conclusion: “I hope that we can keep Pope Francis for a few more years.”