Cardinals begin pre-conclave meetings amid scandal

Nicole Win­field, Asso­ci­ated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Car­di­nals from around the world gath­ered Mon­day inside the Vat­i­can for their first round of meet­ings before the con­clave to elect the next pope, amid scan­dals inside and out of the Vat­i­can and the con­tin­ued rever­ber­a­tions of Bene­dict XVI’s deci­sion to retire.

The Vat­i­can said 103 of the 115 elec­tors had arrived, while the other dozen are en route. The dean of the Col­lege of Car­di­nals has said a date for the con­clave won’t be set until all car­di­nals have arrived.

Among the first orders of busi­ness was the oath of secrecy each car­di­nal made, pledg­ing to main­tain “rig­or­ous secrecy with regard to all mat­ters in any way related to the elec­tion of the Roman Pontiff.”

The col­lege of car­di­nals also agreed to send Bene­dict XVI a mes­sage on behalf of the group — the text was being worked on.”

The core agenda item is to set the date for the con­clave and set in place pro­ce­dures to pre­pare for it, includ­ing clos­ing the Sis­tine Chapel to vis­i­tors and get­ting the Vat­i­can hotel cleared out and de-bugged, lest any­one try to lis­ten in on the secret con­ver­sa­tions of the cardinals.

The first day of dis­cus­sion was again rocked by rev­e­la­tions of scan­dal, with Scot­tish Car­di­nal Keith O’Brien admit­ting that he had engaged in sex­ual mis­con­duct not befit­ting a priest, arch­bishop or cardinal.

O’Brien last week resigned as arch­bishop of St. Andrews and Edin­burgh and said he wouldn’t par­tic­i­pate in the con­clave after four men came for­ward with alle­ga­tions that he had acted inap­pro­pri­ately with them — the first time a car­di­nal has stayed away from a con­clave because of per­sonal scandal.

Sep­a­rately, the Vat­i­can is still reel­ing from the fall­out of the scan­dal over leaked papal doc­u­ments, and the inves­ti­ga­tion by three car­di­nals into who was behind it.

Ital­ian news reports have been rife with unsourced reports about the con­tents of the car­di­nals’ dossier. Even if the reports are false, as the Vat­i­can main­tains, the leaks them­selves con­firmed a fairly high level of dys­func­tion within the Vat­i­can bureau­cracy, with intrigues, turf bat­tles and alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and crony­ism at the high­est lev­els of the church hierarchy.

In one of his last audi­ences before resign­ing, Bene­dict met with the three car­di­nals who pre­pared the report and decided that their dossier would remain secret. But he gave them the go-ahead to answer car­di­nals’ ques­tions about its contents.

Another topic fac­ing the car­di­nals is the rea­son they’re here in the first place: Benedict’s res­ig­na­tion and its impli­ca­tions. His deci­sion to end 600 years of tra­di­tion and retire rather than stay on the job until death has com­pletely altered the con­cept of the papacy, and car­di­nals haven’t shied from weigh­ing in about the impli­ca­tions for the next pope.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Mar 4 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.