ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has sparked rumors about the future of his pontificate by announcing that he would visit the central Italian city of L’Aquila in August for a celebration initiated by Pope Celestine V, one of the few popes who resigned before Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013.
Italian and Catholic media are abuzz with unfounded speculation that 85-year-old Francis plans to follow in Benedict’s footsteps, given his increased mobility issues that have forced him to use a wheelchair in the past month.
Those rumors picked up steam last week when Francis announced a consistory to create 21 new cardinals, scheduled for August 27. Sixteen of those cardinals are under the age of 80 and are eligible to vote in a conclave to elect Francis’ successor.
Once added to the ranks of princes of the church, Francis will have piled up the College of Cardinals with 83 of the 132 cardinals of voting age. While there is no guarantee how the cardinals will vote, the likelihood is increasing that they will tap into a successor who shares Francis’ pastoral priorities.
In announcing the August 27 church board, Francis also announced that he would hold two days of lectures the following week to inform cardinals about his recent apostolic constitution reforming the Vatican bureaucracy. That document, which comes into effect on Sunday, allows women to run Vatican offices, imposes term limits on Vatican priestly employees and positions the Holy See as an institution serving local churches, rather than the other way around.
Francis was elected pope in 2013 on a mandate to reform the Roman Curia. Now that the nine-year project has been rolled out and at least partially implemented, Francis’ main task as pope has in a sense been accomplished.
All of this left Saturday’s otherwise routine announcement of a pastoral visit to L’Aquila carrying more speculative weight than it would otherwise have.
Remarkable was the timing: The Vatican and the rest of Italy are usually on vacation in August through mid-September, with all but essentials closed. The convening of a large church council in late August to create new cardinals, the gathering of church members for two days of talks about the implementation of his reform, and a symbolically important pastoral visit suggest that Francis may have extraordinary things in mind.
“With today’s news that @Pontifex is going to L’Aquila in the middle of the August consistory, things got even more intriguing,” Vatican commentator Robert Mickens tweeted, referring to an essay he published in La Croix International about the rumours. swirling around the future of the pontificate.
The basilica in L’Aquila houses the tomb of Celestine V, a hermit pope who resigned in 1294 after five months, overwhelmed by the job. In 2009, Benedict visited L’Aquila, which had been destroyed by a recent earthquake, and prayed at Celestine’s grave, leaving his pallium stole on it.
No one appreciated the meaning of the gesture at the time. But four years later, 85-year-old Benedict would follow in Celestine’s footsteps and resign, as he no longer had the strength of mind and body to continue the rigors of the papacy.
The Vatican announced on Saturday that Francis would visit L’Aquila to celebrate Mass on August 28 and open the “Holy Door” at the basilica that houses Celestine’s tomb. The timing coincides with the celebration of the Feast of Forgiveness by the Church of L’Aquila, which was created by Celestine in a papal bull.
No pope has since traveled to L’Aquila to conclude the annual feast, which celebrates the sacrament of forgiveness so dear to Francis, noted the current Archbishop of L’Aquila, Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi.
“We hope that all people, especially those harmed by conflict and internal divisions, will (come) find the path of solidarity and peace,” he said in a statement announcing the visit.
Francis has hailed Benedict’s decision to retire as “opening the door” for future popes to do the same, and had originally predicted a short papacy for himself lasting two to five years.
Nine years later, Francis has shown no signs of wanting to step down, and he still has big projects ahead of him.
In addition to upcoming trips this year to Congo, South Sudan, Canada and Kazakhstan, he has planned a major meeting of the world’s bishops in 2023 to debate the increasing decentralization of the Catholic Church, as well as the further implementation of his reforms.
But Francis is hampered by the strained ligaments in his right knee that have made walking painful and difficult. He has told friends he does not want surgery, allegedly because of his reaction to anesthesia last July when he removed 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon.
This week, one of his closest advisers and friends, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, said rumors of a papal resignation or the end of Francis’ pontificate were unfounded.
“I think these are optical illusions, brain illusions,” Maradiaga told Religion Digital, a Hispanic Catholic site.
Christopher Bellitto, a church historian at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, noted that most Vatican onlookers expect Francis to resign eventually, but not before Benedict dies. The 95-year-old retired pope is physically weak but still alert and receives occasional visitors at his home in the Vatican Gardens.
“He won’t have two former popes floating around,” Bellitto said in an email. Referring to Francis’ planned visit to L’Aquila, he suggested not reading too much into it, noting that Benedict’s 2009 gesture was missed by nearly everyone.
“I can’t recall many stories at the time that said Benedict’s 2009 visit made us think he was going to resign,” he said, suggesting Francis’ pastoral visit to l’Aquila could be just that: a pastoral visit.
