Cardinals from around the world gathered yesterday inside the Vatican for their first round of meetings before the conclave to elect the next pope, amid scandals inside and out of the Vatican, and the continued reverberations of Benedict XVI’s decision to retire.
Cardinals were treated like rock stars as they entered the Vatican yesterday morning, with television crews swarming around the red-capped churchmen and their handlers pushing their way through the crowds.
“A Latin American Pope is possible, everything is possible,” Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins said as he entered.
The core agenda item is to set the date for the conclave and set in place procedures to prepare for it, including closing the Sistine Chapel to visitors and getting the Vatican hotel cleared out and debugged, lest anyone try to listen in on the secret conversations of the cardinals.
However, a date may not have been agreed upon yesterday because the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, has said the date would not be finalized until all cardinals have arrived in Rome.
The first day of discussion was again rocked by revelations of scandal, with Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien admitting that he had engaged in sexual misconduct not befitting a priest, archbishop or cardinal. O’Brien last week resigned as archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and said he would not participate in the conclave after four men came forward with allegations that he had acted inappropriately with them — the first time a cardinal has stayed away from a conclave because of a personal scandal.
Separately, the Vatican is still reeling from the fallout of the scandal over leaked papal documents and the investigation by three cardinals into who was behind it.
Italian news reports have been rife with unsourced reports about the contents of the cardinals’ dossier. Even if the reports are false, as the Vatican maintains, the leaks themselves confirmed a fairly high level of dysfunction within the Vatican bureaucracy, with intrigues, turf battles and allegations of corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the highest levels of the church hierarchy.
In one of his last audiences before resigning, Benedict met with the three cardinals who prepared the report and decided that their dossier would remain secret.
However, he gave them the go-ahead to answer cardinals’ questions about its contents.
Another topic facing the cardinals is the reason they are in Rome the first place: Benedict’s resignation and its implications.
His decision to end 600 years of tradition and retire rather than stay on the job until death has completely altered the concept of the papacy, and cardinals have not shied from weighing in about the implications for the next pope.
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has died of pneumonia at the age of 48 while on a trip to Japan, where she contracted influenza during the Lunar New Year holiday, her sister confirmed today through an agent. "Our whole family came to Japan for a trip, and my dearest and most kindhearted sister Barbie Hsu died of influenza-induced pneumonia and unfortunately left us," Hsu's sister and talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) said. "I was grateful to be her sister in this life and that we got to care for and spend time with each other. I will always be grateful to
REMINDER: Of the 6.78 million doses of flu vaccine Taiwan purchased for this flu season, about 200,000 are still available, an official said, following Big S’ death As news broke of the death of Taiwanese actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), also known as Big S (大S), from severe flu complications, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and doctors yesterday urged people at high risk to get vaccinated and be alert to signs of severe illness. Hsu’s family yesterday confirmed that the actress died on a family holiday in Japan due to pneumonia during the Lunar New Year holiday. CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) told an impromptu news conference that hospital visits for flu-like illnesses from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 reached 162,352 — the highest
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
COMBINING FORCES: The 66th Marine Brigade would support the 202nd Military Police Command in its defense of Taipei against ‘decapitation strikes,’ a source said The Marine Corps has deployed more than 100 soldiers and officers of the 66th Marine Brigade to Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) as part of an effort to bolster defenses around the capital, a source with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. Two weeks ago, a military source said that the Ministry of National Defense ordered the Marine Corps to increase soldier deployments in the Taipei area. The 66th Marine Brigade has been tasked with protecting key areas in Taipei, with the 202nd Military Police Command also continuing to defend the capital. That came after a 2017 decision by the ministry to station