Did Pope Francis help push out Rome’s beleaguered Mayor?
EvenPopeFrancisisclaimedto have stuck the knife in Rome’s Mayor, Ignazio Marino, who was dramatically forced from his post this week, leaving a capital city already under siege from debt and corruption in a state of political chaos.
Mr Marino quit after most councillors in his own centreleft Democratic Party (PD) turned against him, following a series of scandals and PR blunders, as well as attacks that appeared motivated more by spite than reason.
But the Vatican had already signalled that it was unhappy with the Mayor. And yesterday, the Dagospia political website reported that Pope Francis’s right-hand man, the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, had told one of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s closest allies, the infrastructure minister man Graziano Delrio: “Arrange for the Mayor to be dismissed.”
Mr Delrio, one of the many devout Catholics in the PD, was said to have replied that it would not be possible. Nonetheless, Mr Renzi made little effort to disguise his satisfaction at news of the resignation of Mr Marino, who is from the left of his own party.
Another senior church figure, Monsignor Enrico Feroci, the directorof Caritas in Roma, said he “appreciated” Mr Marino’s resignation and that it been necessary to “unblock a situation that had become negative for the city”.
The claims in Dagospia follow a series of reports suggesting that Pope Francis was at odds with the Mayor on account of his outspoken support of gay marriage and his failure, at least in the Vatican’s eyes, to prepare the city adequately for the papal jubilee year, which is from 8 December this year to 26 November 2016 and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council.
Mr Marino is said to have further annoyed the Pope by falsely indicating that he had been officially invited by the Vatican to join Francis’s recent US tour – and even crashing one of the Pope’s photo opportunities wearing his mayor’s sash. If claims that the Vatican attempted to interfere in the affairs of Rome city council are true, this would scotch the belief that Pope Francis has stopped the sort of meddling in politics that marked the reigns of his predecessors.
The scandal that finally tipped the balance against Mr Marino, however, was the evidence that he’d paid for