The Sant’Egidio community wants to “set up” the closest conclave, pushing with large force its own candidate. It is not the shaft closely associated with Sant’Egidio Archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Matteo Zuspi. The candidate of Sant’Egidio is Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça of Portugal, claims a valued Italian Vaticanist, Sandro Magister.
According to Sandro Magister, members of Sant’Egidio concluded that Matteo Zuppie had besides small chance. His close relation with the community is well known, and this makes cardinals able to respect him as controlled from the outside. At 1 time Cardinal George Pell warned that if Zuppi became Pope, the throne of St Peter would actually be controlled by the chief of Sant’Egidio, influential Andrea Riccardi. Hence the thought of uncovering another candidate. It was Portuguese, Cardinal Tolentino. In the eyes of Sant’Egidio, there is much to talk for him.
The Vaticanist first points to Tolentin's "wide horizons". Born in Madeira, he was raised in the Portuguese colony, Angola. He graduated from the seminar in Portugal itself. Having obtained a doctorate in Bible Studies at the Pontifical Bible Institute in Rome to settle in Lisbon. At the same time, he held academic functions on 2 another continents – at the University of fresh York and respective universities in Brazil.
Tolentino is profoundly curious in the Bible, but besides in contemporary culture and literature, himself doing poesy writing. It engages in interreligious dialogue, first and foremost from the level of culture and science. The current Portuguese cardinal heads the Department of Culture and Education. This is an crucial unit of the Roman Curia. In the past he was headed by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. It was in 2016 that he published an article in the Italian press entitled "Cari fratelli massonici", or "Dear Masoni brothers", where he invited freemulators to dialog with the Catholic Church in areas of "common interest", specified as ecology, peace or social exclusion. Tolentino himself was the organizer of the loud gathering of Pope Francis with comedy actors from around the world, including many atheists or anticlericals.
Tolentino, like the Sant’Egidio community, avoids dealing with controversial topics. There is no position on issues specified as the demands of the German Synodary Way, which divide Catholics around the world. It is highly open to LGBT environments, but does not call for doctrinal changes, as the German-speaking hierarchs do. He accepted the admission of holy divorcees to communion in re-union, acknowledging that since the pope had decided so, this must be the case, he never promoted the solution himself. Nor did he take a position on the Fiducia supplicans case. He besides did not talk of the priesthood of women, although on the another hand he wrote a preface to a book by a well-known American feminist and theologian, Phyllis Zagano, who advocates the consecration of women to priests.
He besides wrote an introduction to the book by Spanish nun and feminist Teresa Forcades, who openly supports homosexual relationships, genderism, and the legalization of the execution of unborn children. According to Sandro Magistra, people from Sant’Egidio see in Tolentina a large ‘open mind’ that could service ‘conciliation’ in the Catholic Church and gain sympathy from different backgrounds.
Sandro Magister does not think that Tolentino truly had a chance at Papacy. In his opinion, the fact that the cardinal avoids taking a position on key and hard issues makes the conclave participants simply besides small. What's more, he's only 59, and that would indicate a very long pontificate. According to the Vaticanist, Tolentino is not a man who could reasonably be expected to "restore the minimum order" after the pontificate of Francis.
Source: deakonos.be
Pache
Sant’Egidio Community and its imagination of the world
