Pietro Parolin, the natural heir to Pope Francis

Obviously, Pietro Parolin, 70 years old, Secretary of State (number two) of the Holy See during the twelve years of the reign of François, who, while remaining faithful to the line of the Argentinian Pope worked to round the angles; is among the most serious papabili. After an agitated pontificate, it can be seen as the reassuring candidate of the compromise and a certain appeasement.

His assets: having assumed the regency during François’s illness, being well known, having met the cardinals around the world in his many trips, having repeated the coat of arms of a diplomacy tarnished by his controversial predecessor Tarcisio Bertone. To also embody the image of the honest man, listening to others, subtle, benevolent not without humor, capable of speaking as well to a homeless in Trump or Putin.

The Vatican Viet Viet sees in him “a man of deep delicacy, who fixes his interlocutors in his eyes with a phenomenal memory and a great capacity for synthesis. This is also what I had experienced when I approached it in the first years of the pontificate.

He is in the line of the deceased pontiff: in his Divine Mercy Sunday Homely, he paid a vibrant tribute to “a light witness of a church which leans with tenderness on those who are injured. »»

Perceived more as a diplomat than as a pastor

But, on societal subjects, particularly divisive, if he expressed quite little, he is neither in a conservative sense nor in an ultra -proposed sense, criticizing the radical reforms claimed by the German Church. He sometimes had to reframe the words of his impetuous master, for example during the controversy Fiducia supplicans On the blessing of irregular couples, especially homosexuals. He has the image of a moderate. He can thus see votes from different camps flow, even if he will not have the votes of the sworn enemies of François.

What plays against him is paradoxically to be too obvious, to be Italian too-his election would be perceived as a return to the era before John Paul II-, to be deeply European, Western. Also to have also been the right arm of a pope labeled “anticlerical” which still arouses strong grudge. And finally to be perceived more as a diplomat than as a pastor, while a majority of the new cardinals who came in particular from Asia and Africa wish to continue to rely on a pastor who takes into account the inculturations in their peripheral diversity. Cardinal voter the oldest, he will preside the conclave from start to finish, like Joseph Ratzinger in 2005.

Originally from Veneto, an orphan of father at the age of ten, Pietro Parolin followed a classic ecclesial course before an impressive diplomatic career, from Nigeria to Mexico, with numerous missions from Rwanda to the Middle East.

This polyglot was nuncio in Venezuela under the anti -religious dictatorship of Hugo Chavez. Among his titles of glory, his diplomatic fingering will have enabled the reconciliation between the United States of Barack Obama and Cuba of Raul Castro.

A great geopolitical experience

He will tackle two major files: China and Vietnam, in order to achieve a freedom of worship of Christians in these two countries of communist ideology. If he rather succeeded with Hanoi, the 2018 agreement between the Holy See and the Xi Jinping regime, encouraged by François and allowing Beijing to have his say in the appointment of bishops, was very criticized because perceived as a shameful concession, for example by Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong. He was criticized for his too diplomatic and flexible approach. And Pietro Parolin himself recognized that the agreement had not produced the expected effects.

François’s dream of a fully welcoming China in Christianity failed. He will have proposed his good offices in the war between Russia and Ukraine, calling, according to the pacifist line, constant of François, to “honest negotiations” and criticizing the deliveries of arms. A line criticized in kyiv. In total, his vast geopolitical experience and his image of sage capable of listening to give Pietro Parolin certain assets in the conclave, at a time when the “World War by songs” denounced by François.