Since there are some 6000 bishops in the world today, I am surprised Sandro Magister over-reaches with his conclusion when he can only name a handful of antis,
and some of them are not even really anti!
A very popular pope -
but not among the bishops
May 28, 2017
With his appointment of Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti as president of the Italian bishops' conference (VEI), after naming the secretary- general three years ago, Pope Francis now has full control of the CEI, one-third of whose bishops have been installed by him, even in dioceses of the first rank like Bologna, Palermo, the vicariate of Rome, and soon also Milan.
Appointments are a key element in the strategy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. It should suffice to look at how he is reshaping in his image the college of cardinals, which in the future will elect his successor. After the latest batch of cardinals, announced one week ago for the end of June, chances are slimmer that the next pope could mark a return to the past.
Italy aside, however, winning the agreement of the bishops is anything but easy for Francis.
The only national episcopates that he can count on today are those of Germany, Austria, and Belgium, nations in which the Catholic Church is in the most dramatic decline.
[You're forgetting the Philippine bishops - I feel I should apologize for their general fecklessness, easy subservience and embarrassing sycophancy to this pope.]
While on the contrary the more vital Churches of Africa are those that stood together, in the two combative synods on the family, against the innovations desired by the pope.
If one then looks at the Americas, both North and South,
the picture appears even more unfavorable for the pope.
In Canada, the six bishops of the region of Alberta have publicly taken a position against the go-ahead given by Francis to communion for the divorced and remarried
[Yes, but look where the rest of the bishops are, expecially those from the Northeast and the West],.
In the United States the episcopal conference last November elected as its president Cardinal Daniel N. Di Nardo, precisely one of the thirteen cardinals of the memorable protest letter that infuriated Bergoglio at the beginning of the last synod.
[Probably the only anti-Bergoglio indication he has ever made! After he was elected USCCB president, all he has done is to profess fealty and fiefhood to Bergoglio.]
In the American media, this election was covered as a referendum on Pope Francis, and there was reason for this. One year before, on a visit to the United States, Francis had ordered the bishops to change course and to get into step with him; and he had accompanied these commands with a series of appointments close to his mentality, in the first place that of Blase J. Cupich as archbishop of Chicago and as cardinal.
But if there was a referendum, Bergoglio lost it altogether. In the pr-eselection for the appointment of the president, out of ten candidates elected only one to his liking made it in. And the elections of the vice-president - archbishop of Los Angeles José H. Gómez, a member of Opus Dei
[yet a very Bergoglian progressive in the matter of immigration, climate catastrophism, and other social issues!] - and of the heads of the commissions were also contrary to the pope’s expectations.
[Still, the general posture of the US bishops on the so-called 'social justice' issues is very Bergoglian. And his favorite US cardinals - Cupich, Tobin and Farrell - hog the headlines with their increasingly audacious anti-Catholic statements.]
Even in Latin America, Bergoglio has few admirers.
In Colombia the bishops did not like - and they let him know this - the prejudicial support that Francis gave for the “yes” vote in the referendum on an agreement with the guerrillas of the FARC, an agreement that many bishops judged as a surrender and that in effect was rejected by the popular vote.
In Bolivia the bishops simply cannot stand the blatantly friendly relationship between Bergoglio and “cocalero” president Evo Morales, their bitter enemy especially since they publicly accused the “high structures” of the state of connections with drug trafficking.
In a Venezuela plunged into catastrophe, there is sadness and anger every time President Nicolás Maduro lashes out against the bishops while appealing to Pope Francis, whose support he boasts having. And unfortunately for the bishops, the words spoken by the pope in commenting on the Venezuelan crisis during his latest in-flight press conference, on the way back from Cairo, sounded too benevolent toward the president and malevolent toward the opposition.
An analogous sentiment of being betrayed by the pope had also arisen among the bishops of Ukraine after the embrace between Francis and Moscow patriarch Kirill in Havana, which they saw as the latest of many shows of “support of the Apostolic See for Russian aggression.”
Not to mention China, where Francis continues to say that “one can practice religion” precisely while some bishops, precisely those who most want to obey the pope, are persecuted and imprisoned.
There's a great commentary by Aldo Maria Valli on Bergoglio's in-your-face paladins that I still have to translate, plus two by Fr. Scalese, and two ore by Marco Tosatti, including his reaction to the Jesuit Superior-General's latest 'pontification' that "we have created symbolic figures like the devil to express evil". The man oughta be committed!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/06/2017 10:19]