Editorial by Br. Alexis Bugnolo, Editor of FromRome.info

During the sede vacante of the Apostolic See, following the death of every true pope, we are won’t to be offered the opinions of many persons, inside and outside of the Church regarding who is a likely candidate to be elected as the next pope.

While no single man can save the Church or destroy Her, since God the Holy Spirit cares for Her and Christ Jesus defends and governs Her, a single man can do great good or great evil. Pope Francis is a prime example of the latter.

But as to whom the Cardinals elect, it is from history shown, that practical questions play a much stronger role than ideological ones, after the death of a Pope who has financially ruined the Apostolic See, which if the Main Stream Media has told you, is one the verge of if not already in a de facto insolvency, or bankruptcy.

Thus, the Cardinals, most of whom were bishops who governed and managed dioceses, are going to have on their mind the necessity of electing someone who can save the Vatican financially.

As I have opined before, this will require not only personal characteristics, but also a background which enables the collaboration of Catholics all over the world with such a man, because when it comes to fundraising and financial reforms, the problem is more in public relations than in investments, since the Church lives by the offerings of Her faithful.

Thus, we can exclude all those possible candidates who participated in Pope Francis’ financial ruin of the Vatican, because, even if they know how to fix the problem, no one outside the Vatican will believe they have the moral integrity to do it. And that is an essential qualification for office, when it comes to asking big donors to open up their purses. This is even more true now that USAID has been cut-off.

For this reason, we can also strike off the list of possible candidates, the men whom the Cardinals will likely see as incapable of garnering support from the entire Catholic world: and this includes all the ideological fellow travelers of Pope Francis, whom true Catholics the world-over find to be detestable hypocrites, and not men of God.

This second group to be excluded does not include only those in the Vatican, but many of the Cardinals named in nearly every news article by the Main Stream Media as “leading” or “possible” candidates.

Third, the candidate has to be from a country where the faithful are financially capable and willing to back his reforms. This means a candidate has to share the values of that nation’s major donors.

From this we can exclude all the possible candidates from Italy and all nations which are not in the G7, in my opinion. We can also exclude all the candidates from those nations in the G7 which are liberal and want the moral degradation promoted by the Globalists.

Likewise, I think the intelligence agencies in the West will be giving strong signals to the Cardinals not to elect someone who is in the BRICS orbit, simply because the geopolitical strategies of NATO and the European Union would consider such a candidate as too great of a threat to their national interests.

Finally, the next Pope will not garner confidence if he has been a known applauder of Pope Francis, because all such men will be considered suspect by faithful Catholics and faithful Clergy the world over.

I will end my prognostication here. You can be sure, therefore, we are not going to get a new Pope From Asia, Africa or South America, simply because these nations are too poor and their cardinals do not have the contacts necessary to financially support a reform at the Vatican.

And the biggest problem at the Vatican is the financial problem. But seeing that there are Catholic organizations like the Knights of Columbus, which has an investment portfolio of 85 Billion U.S. Dollars, who will have their lobbyists at Rome, in these weeks, I tend to think a candidate who espouses their family and conservative values will be elected, even though it appears nearly impossible that such a man be the next pope, due to the numbers of men appointed by Pope Francis. And I base this prognostication on the fact that, all the Cardinals, no matter what their theological positions and their political allegiances, want the Vatican City State to remain in existence, a thing it cannot do without money and popularity among the Faithful world-wide, but especially in the affluent West.

As to the age of the man to be elected, since the College of Cardinals is very divided, I think it is even more certain, that the next Pope will be very old and in bad health, because only such a man could garner support from all the Cardinals, whatever their and his theological positions be, because he will not be expected to live long.

And this is how I see the dynamics going if we are only to consider the primary leading candidates. (See below for my update).

If you would like to speculate on your own, see the complete list of living Cardinals by name here, and by age, here, and for other lists of the same, see here.

However, note that I did not say that the next pope will be a Cardinal, because the Cardinals can elect a non-cardinal. He just has to be male, a Catholic, and not under ecclesiastical censures, currently unmarried, by law, and never divorced or living in public sin out of common sense. That excludes very many men, but also it excludes Archbishop Viganò, who was excommunicated by Pope Francis “Dicastery” (Greek for “tribunal”) for the Doctrine of the Faith.

As for the report (see below) that Pope Francis spent his pontificate trying to fix the financial problems he inherited from Pope Benedict XVI: that is a total lie. There never was an major financial problem, until Francis and his motley crew of crooks and moral degenerates put their hands on it and robbed and squandered 10 years of Peter Pence’ collection saved frugally by Pope Benedict XVI.

UPDATE of May 6th:  THE VOTING DYNAMICS FOR ALTERNATIVE CANDIDATES

If the Cardinals cannot agree on their favored candidates, what is likely to happen, is what we saw happen in the second conclave in 1978, that an alternative who is appealing to both sides is chosen. In this case, it will have to be someone who would be certainly backed by the Knights of Columbus and the Papal Foundation, yet garner support of all the Cardinals who are conservatives and from the Third World. This dynamic would not be bound by the strictures of my above analysis.

So if Cardinal Sarah is too much disliked by the Bergoglians, then if he endorses someone of this kind of alternative, those supporting him would move their votes over to that man. It is said, also, for example, that a conservative group of Latin American Cardinals would support Cardinal Ambongo of the Congo, Archbishop of Kinshasa, but having no Curial experience he would be seen as someone unable to navigate the corridors of the Vatican. In any case, if he endorses someone else, the votes going to him would likely transfer.

The only Cardinal in the Third World, whom I know of, who is more European and Conservative than all the Europeans and Americans is Cardinal Ranjith of Sri Lanka. And as such he would certainly be endorsed by Cardinal Sarah and Cardinal Ambongo, who would shift their supporters to him. And as a man who was drummed out of the Roman Curia by European liberals for being faithful to the Faith and Tradition, he would be a dramatic rallying point for those Cardinals from outside of Europe who want a less Eurocentric and liberal papacy. Also Cardinals Eijk, Erdo, Burke and Mueller would certainly support him and move their supporters’ votes over to him. Whether that way he could be the focal point of 89 votes, only God knows as of today. But if elected, I think Cardinal Ranjith will either take the name Pius XIII, because in his whole life he has exemplified a spirit of piety and is pretty darn fed up, after being driven out of the Vatican Curia, with the revolution of the Aggiornamento.

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The Book on the Trinity, every faithful Catholic priest would love as his next present

This is Br. Bugnolo's English Translation, of Saint Bonaventure's encylopedic book of theology on the Trinity: With this book, your priest will always have something intelligent and awesomely inspiring to preach to you about God the Father, God the Son & God the Holy Spirit!

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This fund was started by Ordo Militaris Catholicus, an international relief organization founded by Br. Bugnolo and AJ Baalman. Click the image for more information.

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