Cardinal Raymond Burke, center, and his fellow ultraconservative prelates are working to extend ecclesiastical cover to nationalist politicians.
Franco Origlia/Getty Images
By Jason Horowitz
June 22, 2019
VATICAN CITY — When the far-right Italian politician Matteo Salvini rose to testify that he hoped to be a better Christian despite being a divorced and first-class “sinner,” one of the ultraconservative cardinals most critical of the pope smiled and clapped on the dais behind him.
“In my own little way, with my professional activity, I try to do my best to help the 60 million Italians with what doesn’t depend on us alone,” Mr. Salvini, Italy’s anti-migrant, nationalist interior minister, said in October at a pontifical university next to the Vatican.
But even as Cardinal Raymond Burke, the de facto leader of the conservative opposition to Pope Francis in the Roman Catholic Church, warmly applauded for Mr. Salvini, the pope himself has been less impressed with Mr. Salvini’s “professional activities.”
Those actions have included blocking ships full of desperate migrants from entering Italy and working to destabilize the European Union by flouting its rules and potentially undercutting its currency. On the day after Mr. Salvini’s thumping victory in elections for the European Parliament, Francis warned, as he had for months, that fearmongers had made people “intolerant, closed and perhaps even, without realizing it, racist.”
While the pope has emerged as a leading champion for refugees and migrants around the world, anti-immigration politicians with a populist appeal have found increasing support among once-powerful conservative Catholic figures who have been sidelined within the church by Francis.
Cardinal Burke and his fellow ultraconservative prelates are working to extend ecclesiastical cover to nationalist politicians by hailing them as champions for Western Christianity and traditional values in the face of what they suggest is a Muslim migrant invasion. In the process, the cardinals’ support has helped inoculate the populists from criticism by the pope’s allies and has facilitated their political appeal to conservative Catholic voters.
Catholic bishops in sync with Francis’ inclusive vision of the church have criticized nationalist leaders in Poland, Hungary and the United States for their hard-line views on migration, but those politicians have also enjoyed the support of a small but vocal group of conservative clerics. Perhaps nowhere is that dynamic as stark as in the pope’s own backyard.
By Jason Horowitz
June 22, 2019
VATICAN CITY — When the far-right Italian politician Matteo Salvini rose to testify that he hoped to be a better Christian despite being a divorced and first-class “sinner,” one of the ultraconservative cardinals most critical of the pope smiled and clapped on the dais behind him.
“In my own little way, with my professional activity, I try to do my best to help the 60 million Italians with what doesn’t depend on us alone,” Mr. Salvini, Italy’s anti-migrant, nationalist interior minister, said in October at a pontifical university next to the Vatican.
But even as Cardinal Raymond Burke, the de facto leader of the conservative opposition to Pope Francis in the Roman Catholic Church, warmly applauded for Mr. Salvini, the pope himself has been less impressed with Mr. Salvini’s “professional activities.”
Those actions have included blocking ships full of desperate migrants from entering Italy and working to destabilize the European Union by flouting its rules and potentially undercutting its currency. On the day after Mr. Salvini’s thumping victory in elections for the European Parliament, Francis warned, as he had for months, that fearmongers had made people “intolerant, closed and perhaps even, without realizing it, racist.”
While the pope has emerged as a leading champion for refugees and migrants around the world, anti-immigration politicians with a populist appeal have found increasing support among once-powerful conservative Catholic figures who have been sidelined within the church by Francis.
Cardinal Burke and his fellow ultraconservative prelates are working to extend ecclesiastical cover to nationalist politicians by hailing them as champions for Western Christianity and traditional values in the face of what they suggest is a Muslim migrant invasion. In the process, the cardinals’ support has helped inoculate the populists from criticism by the pope’s allies and has facilitated their political appeal to conservative Catholic voters.
Catholic bishops in sync with Francis’ inclusive vision of the church have criticized nationalist leaders in Poland, Hungary and the United States for their hard-line views on migration, but those politicians have also enjoyed the support of a small but vocal group of conservative clerics. Perhaps nowhere is that dynamic as stark as in the pope’s own backyard.
