Cardinal Parolin, the papacy leader Confavia, is also a great candidate

On the days of the death of Pope Francis, Cardinal Petro Parolin was everywhere.

Number 2 in the Vatican, he visited Francis in the hospital, then helped close the papal apartments after the death of the Pope. He welcomed the Cardinals, which he knew from all over the world to the funeral of the Pope, and spoke to former President Joseph R. Biden Junior, President Voludimir Zellinsky of Ukraine and former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi from Italy. And before the next Pope chose, he celebrated the outdoor mass of tens of thousands of believers in the steps of the Church of St. Peter.

It seems that everyone knows the Cardinal Perbin, the Vatican Foreign Minister, who will head the papal elections and who appeared as a prominent candidate in the national episode before many of the 130 Cardinals did not know each other.

“The only candidate that has been currently appeared with Mu’in’s insistence is Parolin,” said Andrea Ricardedi, the founder of the Santalgelu community, a Catholic group close to Francis. “It represents continuity,” added Mr. Ricardi, who is close to many of the Cardinals who are considered papal competitors. He said, “Virtue stands in the middle.”

Quiet, Italian with the famous mysterious packer face, Cardinal Parolin is very careful. But at the time of global turmoil, this is not necessarily excluded. Even his supporters are given that he lacks Caresma Francis and the global symbolism – but as a Vatican leader over the past decade, he has seen Francis.

Cardinal spoke about Cardinal Parolin as a person who can have a fixed and bureaucratic hand on the church’s wheel. In the seventy, he can appeal to the cruise who do not want to be stuck with the winner.

His critics on the left asks his previous comments about gay marriage, which he called “a defeat for humanity” and his lack of pastoral experience. On the right, his critics criticize the church’s efforts to make progress in China, which requires negotiations with Communist leaders.

But a few bishops who know him have strong feelings towards him in both cases. After the juveniles, and for some, dozens of divisional years may be during the reign of Francis, Pland, but the competent may be just what the Cardinate is looking for.

For example, for example, while Francis raised the inhumulation of the great powers that turned into the Mediterranean Sea into a cemetery, Cardinal Parolin said after a meeting with the right -wing Prime Minister in Italy, Georgia Meloni, that immigration was “a very complex issue.”

Some extracted similarities in 1939. With the high -end -endeavily tyranny and global order, these Cardino Eugenio Basili, the Vatican Foreign Minister, elected the envoy of Germany in the twenties of the twentieth century during the rise of the Nazis. Historians are still divided into whether, as Pius XII, has taken an excessive diplomatic approach.

Inside the Church, some liberal Catholics asked whether the measurable bureaucrats without a deep pastoral experience are what the Church needs to preserve the comprehensive Francis momentum.

Cardinal Parolin grew up in Xiafon, a small town in the northern Italian region of Venice known as a cradle from the Popes.

He grew up by his mother, a primary school teacher, after his father, who had a hardware store, died in a car accident when the boy was ten years old.

He entered high school in 14 years and was appointed in 25 years. But the Cardinal Paroline’s profession was not in the way of being a priest, or an innocent priest. He entered the papal ecclesiastical academy in Rome, which trains the priests to work in the diplomatic legion.

In the eighties of the last century, it was stationed in Nigeria during the military coups and civil war. Later, he worked in Mexico to restore diplomatic relations. In 1992, he returned to the Vatican, where he joined the strong secretariat of the state and served in the Italian office. Later, he became the headmaster of the Villa Nazareth School for promising students with bad backgrounds, which constitutes links for young people who will later join the elite of Italy.

But he also gained luggage on the way.

In 2002, during the reign of John Paul II, Cardinal Paroline became the second most important diplomat in the Vatican, with a focus on Vietnam, where he helped normalize relations, and on China, which represents in the church the great challenge in the next century.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI tried to reconcile with China, which required her bishops to be loyal to the country’s government instead of Rome. Cardinal Parolin, who was then chief of bishops, chose to lead the talks on the bishops in the churches approved by the state. The conversations stopped.

In 2009, Pordek Cardinal Parolin gave another difficult task, as the Vatican ambassador to Venezuela was, as the bishop was in a tense confrontation with the left government of Hugo Chavez.

The Cardinal’s charge in Venezuela was more political than the theologian, and he used a method that was later called “positive neutrality” to pressure the interests of the church without being directed alongside the government and the opposition.

The Venezuelan credit is credited with Cardinal Parolin-which speaks English, French and close to Spanish with a slight Italian situation-with tensions between the government and the church. His supporters said: This helped that his approach to diplomacy was deliberate and secret.

His diplomatic focus during the Francis era extended to the war in Ukraine and relations with Russia and the United States. But China was once again a major element in the agenda as Francis again tried to improve relationships.

Cardinal Parolin helped to conclude a leading deal in 2018, which reached the first official recognition of the Pope’s authority inside the church in China. Conservatives considered it a betrayal of Francis to recognize the bishops appointed by the Chinese government who were previously expelled. The conservatives argued with the participation of any authority in the church, creating dangerous conditions for millions of Chinese Catholics who were worshiping in the underground churches loyal to the Pope.

But Francis and Cardinal Parolin said it was worth it.

“The Church had a position, openness and dialogue in which we want to continue on both sides,” said Cardinal Parolin in 2023.

Perhaps the final mark of the Cardinal Paroline power is a clear effort to prevent it.

The right -wing Catholic publications stated in the days before the papal elections that it fainted during a public meeting of the group. The Vatican spokesman Matteo Brunei said the accident had never happened.

He said: “This is not true.”