Keywords: Conclave
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RELIGION
- John Warhurst
- 05 May 2025
As the cardinals prepare to elect a new pope, the centuries-old conclave process proceeds with solemnity and speed. But beneath the tradition lies the question of whether a closed, clerical system still reflects the needs of a diverse, divided, and global Church.
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RELIGION
- Miles Pattenden
- 01 May 2025
As cardinals gather in Rome, they must confront declining trust, shifting global power, financial scandals, and unresolved doctrinal divides within the Church. More than a choice of leader, this moment is a reckoning with modernity and the future direction of the Church itself.
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RELIGION
- Michael McVeigh
- 30 April 2025
Pope Francis’ pontificate was marked not by triumph but by a humble reckoning with failure. In a Church marked by scandal, division, and decline, he didn’t reverse the tide but pointed to another measure of faithfulness: mercy over mastery, presence over power, and the courage to fail, not downward, but upward.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 23 April 2025
Francis was a pope prepared to blur the edges of doctrine, or at least its application, opening the doors of the Church to all those seeking love, mercy and forgiveness. He never doubted God’s capacity to love and forgive all who sought that love and forgiveness. He maintained the certainty, not of doctrine but of the simple piety of believers.
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RELIGION
- Bill Uren
- 11 December 2024
A contentious graduation speech at Australian Catholic University laid bare divisions between traditional Catholic values and modern sensibilities. The backlash, marked by audience walkouts, underscores broader challenges facing the Church.
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RELIGION
- Miles Pattenden
- 23 July 2024
6 Comments
Schism is an entrenched idea within Church History. What should we make of Pope Francis’ very modern schism: a decision by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to declare Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò guilty of ‘public statements resulting in a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church’ and to excommunicate him?
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RELIGION
- Miles Pattenden
- 06 September 2023
4 Comments
In a recent interview, Professor of Church History and conclave expert Alberto Melloni passionately argued that the current conclave system, shrouded in secrecy and absent of clear criteria, might be outdated. With the Catholic Church facing unprecedented scrutiny, and in light of reforms initiated by Pope Francis, is it time for the Vatican to reconsider how its supreme pontiff is chosen?
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RELIGION
- Bill Uren
- 14 December 2022
4 Comments
The recent election of Archbishop Timothy Broglio as President of the United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference has significant implications for the United States Church, for the global Church, and potentially for the Australian Church.
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RELIGION
- Bruce Duncan
- 21 June 2022
3 Comments
Some 278 Catholic bishops, clergy, religious personnel and lay people will meet as members of an unprecedented Plenary Council during 3-9 July to finalise the resolutions of their first assembly last year. However the May working document ‘Framework for Motions’, despite much worthy content, especially on Indigenous affairs, relies on a narrow notion of mission overly focused on inner-church issues at the expense of the wider social engagement that Francis emphasises.
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RELIGION
- Brian Lucas
- 29 March 2022
12 Comments
Prior to the conclave that elected Pope Francis, the Cardinals who met together identified the need for a reform of the Vatican finances and a broader reform of the Roman Curia. Shortly after Francis was elected, work began on the reform of the Roman Curia. There was wide consultation including with the various bishops’ conferences around the world.
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RELIGION
- Gail Grossman Freyne
- 05 October 2018
26 Comments
The numbers show this is not a witch hunt, merely the tip of a conclave. Any man who becomes a seminarian, then a deacon, then a priest, then a bishop, then a cardinal, will almost certainly have bumped into, bounced off or blindfolded himself to the endemic problem within the Church of the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable persons.
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RELIGION
- Neil Ormerod
- 13 March 2014
10 Comments
No one can deny the impact Francis has had. The question remains whether the differences between him and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI are a matter of style or substance. Francis has downplayed the prospects of major doctrinal changes, yet the rehabilitation of liberation theology and the bringing in from the cold of outspoken 'extreme centrist' theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper do reveal a fundamental shift.
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