“Francisco is not going to go out to disqualify or call Ortega a dictator, nor is he going to go out and speak in full support of the people who are being victims of some situations in Nicaragua. His name says it, ‘pontiff’, the one who establishes bridges, who seeks points of dialogue and meeting ”, he explains to CONNECT the vaticanista Néstor Pongutá.
(PHOTO: VATICAN MEDIA/via REUTERS)
This expert also contributes an unknown gesture of Francisco towards Putin: “On one occasion he went himself to the Russian representation in the Vatican, where the ambassador had a red telephone that he just had to pick up and communicate with the Russian boss. He went to ring him there at the embassy, to tell him ‘let me speak to Vladimir Putin’. He has not ruled out, if necessary, going to Moscow or wherever he has to go ”to stop the war in Ukraine, says this Colombian expert.
Being a religious leader who represents the Catholics of the world, Pongutá points out that his Latin American origin “is a milestone that changes the Eurocentrism” of the Church. But he maintains that “what begins with Francis is a truly Catholic Church, that is to say universal, where the periphery and the center cannot compete, and one cannot exist without the other.”
Under this imprint, are there possibilities of a Latin American succeeding you? No one is certain, but they are not ruling it out either, because Bergoglio’s election opened a door that is now difficult to close. To preserve the power of the periphery, Pongutá recalls that the Pope appointed the Venezuelan Edgar Peña Parra to a key position: Substitute for the Secretary of State, a function of power in the Vatican organization chart at the level of apostolic nuncio.
