What the cardinals in the Vatican are currently talking about

The College of Cardinals meets daily in the Vatican. Since Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, they have been meeting to discuss practical issues that need to be dealt with before the election of his successor. Since the Pope's funeral on 26 April, more and more fundamental issues have also been discussed.

The meetings of the now almost 200 old and very old men in the Vatican Synod Hall are not open to the public. However, they are not quite as hermetically sealed as the actual conclave, which will convene in the Sistine Chapel on 7 May. Now, at the so-called pre-conclave, some things become known in a roundabout way.

Contacts with journalists

Some participants in the pre-conclave talk to the waiting journalists as they go in in the morning or at lunchtime after their work is done. Others have good contacts in the media world and organise behind-the-scenes meetings in which they talk "in private". And then there are the cautious statements from the Vatican press spokesman Matteo Bruni and the sermons of the few cardinals who are celebrating public services these days.

All of this results in a mosaic of themes and tendencies that can foreshadow the election and even the coming pontificate. In response to questions from several journalists on Tuesday, Bruni explained that the Vatican's strained financial situation had not been addressed as a separate topic. However, it had been mentioned in some contributions when it came to the Church's service to the world.

No complaints about the Vatican Curia

However, one topic that dominated the 2013 pre-conclave is not on the agenda this time: complaints about a Roman Curia that is often inefficient and perceived as arrogant. Here, the twelve years of modesty cure under Francis and the major reform of the Curia that he pushed through seem to have permanently changed the landscape at the top of the Church. According to Bruni, the topic of synodality, which was propagated under Francis as a synonym for a new culture of broad-based co-determination in the Church, was only mentioned in passing in the cardinals' meetings.

Instead, he said, topics were often mentioned that had to do with the very different developments in the various regions of the world. He did not elaborate on what these were. But there are also highlights here. For example, a cardinal from Central Europe indicated that the growing disorientation of many people and their indifference to religious issues had been raised as a challenge for the Church.

And an African said that some cardinals from Africa and the Middle East had called for more clarity in dealing with other religions. The Church's very far-reaching concessions to "fraternity" with Islam and other religions under Francis had led to confusion among some believers.

The price of change

The contrast between conservatives and reformers in the church, which the media likes to invoke, obviously also played a role. Canadian Curia Cardinal Michael Czerny, who belongs to the reform camp, was quoted with an interesting analysis. He said that the unity of the Church invoked in some speeches (in contrast to the often very lively debate and culture of dispute within the Church under Francis) was ultimately just an invitation to turn the clocks back again in order to recapture the conservatives who had become restless. But if you want reforms, you have to accept differences of opinion.

The Pope's cardinal vicar for the diocese of Rome, Baldassare Reina, is one of the few cardinals in Rome who, according to canon law, continue to hold their office despite the Pope's death. He used a sermon to the cardinals on Monday evening to take a similar position: "We cannot surrender to the spiritual inertia that binds us to past experiences of God and ecclesiastical habits (...) and is dictated by fears of loss in the face of necessary change."

Many people were worried about what would now become of the reform processes that Francis had initiated. Reina's answer was clear - albeit with a pinch of caution at the end: "The ship of Peter needs this broad, boundary-breaking and surprising orientation," he said. It is now the duty of the cardinals "to sift through and organise what has been started in the light of our mission".