ROME.- “Instead of dividing ourselves according to our ideas, we are called to put God at the center.” Pope Francis said this this Saturday, January 6, during his homily on the occasion of the solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, celebrated as usual in St. Peter’s Basilica. He invited us to “abandon ecclesiastical ideologies to find the meaning of Holy Mother Church,” and then emphasized: “No ecclesiastical ideologies, yes ecclesiastical vocation.”
These words are a call for unity to the bishops and cardinals, even to the faithful, confirming what is already a truism: there is an open war between Pope Francis and the most conservative sectors of the Church. A war that is open even before the arrival of the Argentine pontiff and that probably led to the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, but that intensified on December 18, 2023, with the publication of the Declaration Fiducia supplicans, written by the also Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, with the signature of the Pope. The reason? The document issued by the prefect of the dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Holy See authorized priests to grant blessings to homosexual couples.
However, we will deal with the Fiducia supplicans storm in a future installment. On this occasion it is appropriate to ask: Is there a schism in the Catholic Church? The answer is yes, below we present the signs.
First sign: excommunicated priests. In Italy, the year 2024 began with the news of the excommunication of Father Ramón Guidetti, parish priest of San Ranieri in Livorno, a city in the Tuscany region. The decree was issued on January 1 by order of the Pope, after the Italian priest said in his December 31 homily that Bergoglio was a “usurper,” a “Jesuit Mason” and “unfriendly.”
Just on December 31, it was one year since the death of Joseph Ratzinger and Father Guidetti made these statements based on the theory that states that on February 11, 2013, Benedict XVI would have resigned from his position, but not from the position itself. and consequently the election of Pope Francis would not be valid. And although this theory has been denied by several experts, there are groups that defend it, such as the so-called Sodalizio Sacerdotale Mariano, led by former priest Alessandro María Minutella, excommunicated for “heresy and schism” in 2018. And to the list The American Jeremy Leatherby, excommunicated in 2020, also joins.
Second sign: no more emblems of Benedict XVI. The blog specialized in Vatican issues I cannot be silent He denounced that after a year after the death of the former German pontiff, the order came from Saint Martha to remove his shield from the chasubles. The Master of the Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations and the workers of the Pontifical Sacristy would have confirmed it; who, according to the blog, would also have assured that all the other vestments with the shields of Saint Paul VI, Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II are in the pontifical sacristy and no one has dared to touch them.
Third sign: the Pope’s heavy hand. In November 2023, Bergoglio applied an administrative-economic sanction to American Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, very critical of the “doctrinal errors” of the Argentine pope, for “undermining the unity of the Church”: he took his salary and increased his rent. of the apartment in which he lives, property of the Vatican. Days earlier he had dismissed Monsignor Joseph E. Strickland from the pastoral government of the diocese of Tyler (United States) for alleged administrative mismanagement. But it is no secret to anyone that Strickland has been critical of the Synodality Synod on his social networks. So, is there an attempt to silence dissent?
Fourth sign: the bishops rebel. Francis’s decision to impose a heavy hand after ten years of pontificate has not managed to calm tempers. On the contrary, the Fiducia supplicans provoked counterreactions not only among the so-called “traditionalist” prelates, but also in the episcopal conferences located in the periphery so dear to the pontiff, in Africa.
Thus, in Spain the blessing of homosexual couples has been described as “unnecessary” and an “unsynodal” imposition, while in Poland and Ukraine the bishops have prohibited it because they fear that it will be identified with marriage. Archbishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan also prohibited his priests from blessing gay couples; and the bishops of Kenya issued a statement in which they assure that the Vatican’s decision generates “confusion” because, unlike Western countries, in Africa the traditional family is made up of only a man and a woman.
Fifth sign: the flight of Catholics. The Statistical Yearbook of the Church, produced by the Fides missionary agency In 2023, he had announced with great fanfare that the number of Catholics in the world had grown. But it is enough to scrutinize the numbers to confirm that the world percentage of Catholics has decreased slightly (-0.06) compared to the previous year, stopping at 17.67%. Furthermore, in Europe the trend is negative, with 244,000 fewer than the previous year, and the total number of priests is decreasing (-2,347), with significant losses in Europe (-3,632) and on the pontiff’s continent, America (- 963).
With these signs, a year 2024 is looming full of challenges for the Catholic Church, with an 87-year-old Pope, visibly physically exhausted, but who is accelerating the pace of his reforms, whatever the cost.
