A Magazine for Cardinals Before the Conclave

The magazine, which is titled Cardinalis, is being sent to all the members of the Sacred College and is being published in four languages, all available online. It is published in France, in Versailles. The writing is being carried out by “a team of Vaticanists from all countries and from various tendencies.”

The first issue was released in November 2021 with Iraqi Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, on the cover, and the second in April of this year with Cardinal Camillo Ruini on the cover.

The first issue takes its inspiration from Vatican II and seeking to serve as a link between the cardinals, presents Cardinal Sako. This is followed by an article by Andrea Gagliarducci on Traditionis Custodes, who reacted and who did not react. He then presents the main architects of the motu proprio: Cardinals Pietro Parolin, Marc Ouellet, Giuseppe Versaldi, and Beniamino Stella.

The issue continues on with various articles: one on “The French case” and the communiqué of the ex-Ecclesia Dei communities; then one on the Pope's trip to Hungary and Slovakia, and finally one introducing two cardinals: Dieudonné Nzapalainga and Timothy Dolan.

The first article of the second issue is an interview with Cardinal Camillo Ruini by the American Vaticanist Diane Montagna. The cardinal insists on the “central and decisive” truths of Christianity, on which the Church wins or loses everything.

“The first and most important point is … faith and trust in God, the primacy of God in our lives. The second point, inseparable from the first, is faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and our only Savior. The third is man, created in the image of God and made His adopted son in Christ, man who is called to eternal life, man who already today seeks to live as a child of God.”

In particular, we must not conceal – emphasizes Ruini – the truth of Jesus Christ, the only savior of all, affirmed by the New Testament and reaffirmed by the declaration Dominus Jesus of 2000, a “fundamental document” against the relativism present even in Church.

The idea that this capital truth should return to the center of the attention of the cardinals called to elect the next pope is underlined a few pages later in this same issue of Cardinalis, by an article with a title that speaks for itself: “Memorandum for a Future Conclave.”

Signed by Professor Pietro De Marco but produced by a larger think tank, this “Memorandum” warns against equating Christian revelation with other religions or stripping Jesus’ death on the cross of any redemptive value, reducing it to an ethical message on the transformation of hearts and/or societies.