Critics prayed for not-so-divine intervention, says the Pope
Some people within the Catholic Church ‘wanted me to die’ during surgery this summer, jokes pontiff
POPE FRANCIS has joked that “some people wanted me to die” when he underwent colon surgery this summer, in an apparent veiled barb against his enemies in the Catholic Church.
He suggested that some hostile clergymen went as far as to plot the next conclave, the gathering of cardinals held in the Sistine Chapel that elects a new pontiff.
“[I’m] still alive, even though some people wanted me to die,“he said in an interview published yesterday by La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit magazine.
“I know there were even meetings between prelates who thought the Pope’s condition was more serious than the official version. They were preparing for the conclave,” he said.
The comments are among his strongest references yet to his detractors within the Vatican, some of whom have branded him a communist and a heretic.
Conservatives and reactionaries have been incensed by his support for refugees and migrants, his trenchant criticism of global capitalism, his relatively sympathetic tone towards homosexual Catholics and his backing for remarried divorcees to be allowed to take Communion.
To his enemies, he had a one-word message: “Patience!”
“There are also clerics who make nasty comments about me. Some people… say I always talk about social issues and that I’m a communist,” he told the magazine.
He also hit out at an unnamed Catholic television channel, describing it as “the work of the Devil” for continually speaking ill of the Church.
He did not name the station but it was widely thought to be a reference to the EWTN media conglomerate, which is highly critical of his papacy.
“I personally deserve attacks and insults because I am a sinner, but the Church does not deserve them,“he said.
His reaction was to get on with his job as leader of the world’s billionplus Catholics.
“I just go forward without entering into their world of ideas and fantasies,” he said.
Francis, 84, made the remarks earlier this month at a meeting with fellow Jesuit priests in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, during his four-day apostolic visit to Slovakia and Hungary.
This is not the first time the Pope has said his ill health sparked speculation that he might resign, as did Benedict XVI, his predecessor.
“Whenever a pope is sick, there’s a breeze or hurricane of conclave,” he said in an interview with Spanish radio.
Pope Francis had surgery in July to remove part of his left colon in what the Vatican has described as a planned procedure.
Much of the traditionalist opposition to Pope Francis comes from the United States.
The deeply conservative American Bishops Conference has bridled at Francis’s outspoken views on the evils of capitalism, the rights of the poor and the need to protect the environment by fighting climate change.
Conservatives were furious in July when the Pope cracked down on the celebration of the old Latin Mass, a rite that had been championed by Pope Benedict XVI.