Francis Leo was named Archbishop of Toronto after he had been a bishop of any kind for under seven months. (The kind of bishop he was? Auxiliary. In Montreal.) He was installed as archbishop a month and a half later (2023.03.25 – I was there).
A zippy 21 months after that, Leo was elevated to the College of Cardinals, and now, for unknown reasons, calls himself Frank, leaving open the possibility that we had been deadnaming him all along. The official Vatican organ wrote about him – but about almost no one else being thus elevated at the same time.
Leo is broadly competent, young enough, and unencumbered by factions that openly hate him. Pope Francis is none of those things.
The Vatican is under malign management at present. But, as the saying goes, the Holy See must have been doing something right to have stayed in business all this time. Cooler heads are at work inside the labyrinthine Vatican bureaucracy, and they are setting the stage to actually prevail.
Francis Leo is blatantly being speedrun into position to be elected pope. Quite possibly the very next one.
Posted: 2024.12.11