An ailing Pope Francis – and the vultures circling in the Vatican

An unholy war is brewing in the Catholic Church, said Paola Totaro in The Australian (Sydney). While "Conclave", a film about the "murky web of curial politics", is getting Oscar-season buzz, in the real-world Vatican "a series of events has unfolded behind the Leonine Walls in past months that are just as intriguing". With only one lung, the fragile 88-year-old Pope Francis sparks alarm with "every cough or hospital admission". Around him, the vultures circle – devising strategies to ensure their preferred candidate becomes the next leader of the Catholic Church and its 1.4 billion faithful.

On one side are Francis's progressives, who want to modernise the Church; on the other, conservative traditionalists who fear "a shift too far on issues of capitalism, homosexuality, abortion and the role of women". This week, an unabashed Pope Francis appointed an Italian nun, Sister Raffaella Petrini, to run the Vatican City State – the first time a woman has ever been given the role. Women make better managers than men, said the Pope, adding: "Women have been running things since the Garden of Eden."

It's all part of Francis's restructuring of Vatican affairs, said Mikael Corre in La Croix (Paris). Under his leadership, some 20 women have been appointed to senior positions in the Holy See, "from the governing board of the Financial Information Authority to the Secretariat of State, the Vatican Library and the Museums". The ultimate aim, Francis says, is to incorporate women into every part of ecclesiastical life.

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But in doing so, said the Catholic Herald, he risks stirring up an already febrile atmosphere in Rome. A Vatican employee, identified only by the initials G.F., claims the Argentinian Pope has "surrounded himself with Spanish-speaking favourites with progressive agendas", and that the Vatican is in the grip of two distinct lobbies: a powerful gay clique on the one hand, and the left-wing Santa Marta club on the other. To join the latter, says G.F., "you have to be green, pro-migrant and above all pro-Palestinian. For them, Nicolás Maduro is a saint and Donald Trump is a devil."

Francis should "brace" himself for a battle, said John Kenneth White in The Hill (Washington DC), particularly in the US, where a "conservative wave" has flooded the Church. More than half of the country's 3,500 priests described themselves as "conservative/orthodox" or "very conservative/orthodox" in a recent survey; not one priest ordained after 2020 described himself as "very progressive". Meanwhile, President Trump has launched his own "frontal assault on the papacy" by appointing Brian Burch – a firebrand anti-Francis "agitator" – as his US ambassador to the Vatican.

It makes for a dramatic final chapter of a pontificate, said Damian Thompson on UnHerd (London). The next conclave "can't be far off", but for now Francis remains, combative and compulsively secretive. The Cardinals wait patiently, "sharpening their knives".