Maike Hickson
The recent announcement that Pope Francis has chosen seventeen new cardinals has already raised much concern and debates among Catholics. The decision to select Archbishop Jozef de Kesel of Brussels, Belgium to be now a cardinal seems especially to have become a matter of controversy.
An interview published in Cologne, Germany on 10 October on the website Domradio.de concerning Archbishop Jozef de Kesel himself has already received much attention. For example, the Austrian website Kath.net, as well as the Dutch website Katholieknieuwsblad.nl, have already reported on this interview given by Domradio’s journalist and specialist in theology, Jan Hendrik Stens.
Stens claims in this interview concerning Francis’ new set of cardinals that in Brussels – where de Kesel himself is now the Archbishop – there has been a rather frequent rotation of personnel in the recent past. For example, the former Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, according to Stens, “is one of the great supporters of [Pope] Francis.” Already in 2010, Danneels’ own preferred successor to become Archbishop of Brussels was supposed to have been de Kesel, a protegée of Danneels. However, says Sten, the then-reigning Pope Benedict XVI chose André-Joseph Léonard, instead, to be the Archbishop of Brussels. It was then only Pope Francis himself who later, in 2015, chose de Kesel to be the successor of the then-retiring Archbishop Léonard in Brussels.
Stens thus comments, as follows, on this most recent development with regard to the pope’s decision to select de Kesel to be a new cardinal: “Now Francis nominates Jozef de Kesel – who originally had been meant to be Danneel’s successor [in Brussels] – as Cardinal. It is perhaps not easily to be dismissed that Danneels as Emeritus still has had a direct hand in this new action. After all, he is known to be the popemaker [“Papstmacher”] of Francis, and he was also one of the participants at the Synod on the Family in Rome, even though there were protests in Belgium against it, because Danneels had been accused of not having especially helped to clear up the abuse case there [concerning Bishop Roger Vangheluwe]. And at the presentation of his own biography last fall [2015], Danneels admitted to have been part of a group of reform-oriented cardinals which he incautiously denominated to be ‘mafia-like’. Everything thus has a certain ‘little taste or overtone’, but – also in the Church – there are [preferential] politics being made.”
Also important to note in this context is that the website Domradio.de is the official radio station of the Diocese of Cologne, Germany. Thus this report comes to us from an official ecclesiastical source and not from some conservative or tradition-oriented source.
Additionally, it is noteworthy that Bishop de Kesel himself is in favor of married priests, proposing to allow them now also for the Latin Rite, similar to the practice of the Eastern Rite. He also reportedly has recently decided to shut down a flourishing conservative seminary in his own Diocese. The Belgian prelate has additionally espoused other troubling positions, for example, concerning homosexual relationships and also women’s ordinations.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress