No sooner had Pope Francis been laid to rest in the Roman Basilica of St Mary Major, on April 26, than local media were busy cooking up a story about French “manoeuvres” to elect his successor.
The story revolved around two meals French President Emmanuel Macron attended before and after the pontiff’s funeral: one with the founder of the influential Community of Sant'Egidio at a famous Roman eatery, the other with four French cardinal electors in the sumptuous grounds of the Villa Napoleone, France’s Vatican embassy.
The dinner and lunch were enough for the domestic press to cry foul and speak of a Gallican plot to secure the first French pope in more than five centuries.
“Macron even wants to choose the pope,” read a headline on right-wing newspaper La Verità, while the like-minded Roman daily Il Tempo criticised an “interventionism worthy of the Sun King (Louis XIV)”. Libero, another conservative paper, quipped that the French president was attempting to “crash the conclave” much as he had “crashed” a meeting in St. Peter’s Basilica between US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.
The uproar is indicative of the frenzy that has gripped Italy in the run-up to the conclave, which many Italians hope will return the papacy to one of their countrymen. It also reflects deep suspicion of the French president and the ties he has cultivated with the Community of Sant’Egidio, a champion of the progressive camp that was close to Francis.
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The French presidency issued a statement denying the “undignified” rumours spread by the press. Andrea Riccardi, the Sant’Egidio founder, also dismissed talk of a French plot as “idiocy”, reportedly joking that he and Macron dined “over a plate of fettucine, not escargot”.
Vetos and geopolitics
Whatever was discussed during Macron’s Roman stay, analysts caution that any overt attempt to sway the conclave, which opens on Wednesday, May 7, is unlikely to bear fruit – and could even backfire.
“For a president to suggest he would like to see a cardinal from his country elected is a little chauvinistic but no big deal,” Olivier Mathonat, a communications expert and Vatican observer, told the told French Catholic radio station RCF.
“On the other hand, should there be more overt and insistent diplomatic manoeuvres, it would be a different matter,” Mathonat added. “There is nothing cardinals hate more than to feel they are being manipulated.”
Speaking on the same radio, Frédéric Mounier, a former Rome correspondent for Catholic daily La Croix, said the French president would have “no influence whatsoever” over the conclave.
There was a time when French kings did weigh heavily on papal elections, jostling for influence with other powerful Catholic monarchies, from the Spanish king to the Hapsburg emperor. Those days officially ended in 1904 with the abolition of “jus exclusivae” – effectively a veto power – under Pius X.
The previous year, Austria’s Emperor Franz Joseph I had vetoed Cardinal Mariano Rampolla’s candidacy, possibly on the grounds that he leaned towards France, in the last known use of “jus exclusivae”.
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Long a mirror of the power struggles between Catholic states and Italian noble families, the papal conclave now claims to be independent of outside influence. However, this does not prevent foreign diplomats and leaders from taking a close interest in the proceedings.
Influence can still be exercised via the media, public opinion and the Catholic world’s various ideological currents, as well as by securing strategic appointments within the Church itself.
At the last conclave in 2013, geopolitical considerations are widely believed to have favoured the election of Pope Francis, reflecting a desire to balance global power dynamics and counter the rise of evangelical churches by appointing a pope from the Global South.
Decades earlier, in 1978, the newly-elected pope John Paul II – the first non-Italian pope in 455 years – enjoyed the blessing of the United States, which saw the onset of a pontiff from Eastern Europe as a strong signal against the Soviet bloc. Indeed, Karol Wojtila’s election sparked panic in Moscow, where the Polish cardinal’s profound anti-communism was well-known, says Aaron Bateman, a professor of history and international relations at George Washington University.
Writing in the security review War on the Rocks, Bateman noted that a declassified CIA report from that year “presciently stated that a Polish pope would rejuvenate nationalism in Poland and the other Soviet-occupied states, posing a serious challenge to Soviet authority and stability.”
Smear campaigns
While traditional diplomatic channels have declined in influence when it comes to electing a pope, today’s influencers use different means to sway a conclave, whether voicing opinions in the press or spreading rumours on social media.
Two recent incidents have stood out as deliberate attempts to sabotage leading “papabili” – the cardinals seen as most likely candidates for pope – using underhand tactics.
Soon after Francis’s death, a six-year-old video of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, a bookmakers’ favourite to become pope, emerged on social media showing the Filipino prelate singing parts of John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
American and Italian conservatives promptly accused Tagle, seen as a progressive in Francis’s mould, of heresy. His supporters countered that he had sung an abbreviated version that excluded the lyrics about no heaven and no religion.
Read moreExplainer: How a new pope is elected
Days later, Italy’s Cardinal Pietro Parolin, another frontrunner in the race, became the target of a smear campaign when right-wing Catholic groups in the US relayed rumours that he had suffered a health scare and required medical treatment during pre-conclave meetings.
A Vatican spokesman said the story was fabricated and Italian media soon spoke of “crows” spreading “poisonous” lies aimed at discrediting the 70-year-old cardinal, who served as the Vatican’s no. 2 through much of Francis’s pontificate. Many recalled a similar attempt to undermine the future Argentinian pope ahead of the 2013 conclave with claims he only had one lung.
“This was a clear attempt to penalise Parolin,” Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, who at 87 is too old to vote in this conclave, told Italy's Quotidiano Nazionale.
Caving in to China
Parolin’s exposure as the Vatican secretary of state could pose a more serious threat to his papal chances, particularly regarding a deal with China he engineered in 2018 that gives the Chinese Communist Party a say in the appointment of Catholic bishops.
Parolin’s supporters say the controversial agreement helped end a decades-long standoff with China and prevent a schism between Catholics loyal to Beijing and those who went underground. Critics, however, argue that the deal sent a dangerous message to autocrats and signaled a betrayal of those who stood up to them.
“Generations of Chinese Catholics have been martyred for their refusal to accept Communist control of the Catholic Church,” John Allen Jr, editor of Catholic news website Crux, told the Financial Times on Monday. “Others have been imprisoned, tortured, harassed and persecuted (...) and some of them regard this deal as a betrayal of their suffering.”
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Parolin’s dealings with China are likely to further alienate the more conservative US Catholic Church, as well as the current White House administration, which both yearn for a policy shift at the Vatican after Francis’s broadly progressive pontificate.
In the run-up to the conclave, prominent conservative journalists Edward Pentin, a Briton, and Diane Montagna, an American, prepared a 200-page book in English and Italian called “The College of Cardinals Report”, which includes profiles of 30 cardinals and their stand on key doctrinal and social issues. Montagna has been handing to cardinals as they enter and leave meetings in Rome.
Pentin told Reuters the inclusion of profiles of several ultra-conservative cardinals generally seen as having no chance of being elected was to give space to the possibility of “divine intervention” during the conclave.
At the other end of the spectrum, progressive Catholics from northern Europe have penned an open letter urging cardinals to vote for continuity with Francis’s reforms. Groups representing victims of the Church’s sexual abuse scandals, meanwhile, have held news conferences in Rome to rate the actions of cardinals – and notably accuse Parolin of foot-dragging on the matter.
As the Catholic Church prepares to open a new chapter in its history, the manoeuvres – both visible and concealed – are a reminder that papal elections remain eminently political, even behind the closed confines of the Sistine Chapel.
This article was adapted from the original in French by Benjamin Dodman.
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