On a flight back from World Youth Day 2019, Pope Francis casually asked Cardinal Kevin Farrell to take on a role steeped in Vatican tradition: camerlengo.
This position, also known as chamberlain, involves managing the Holy See during the sensitive period between papacies and orchestrating the conclave to elect the next pope.
Cardinal Farrell, then relatively new to Rome after being summoned from Dallas, Texas to lead the Vatican's laity office, accepted the role with a humorous condition: that the Pope preach at his funeral. The stipulation reflected Cardinal Farrell's hope that he would predecease Francis, thereby avoiding the weighty responsibilities of the camerlengo.
Underlying the jest was a deeper sentiment. Cardinal Farrell not only felt the burden of the position but also expressed a personal desire not to outlive a pope he deeply admired.
He credited Francis with initiating a crucial shift in the Catholic Church, moving away from defensive culture wars towards a more inclusive, Gospel-centered approach.
"We were defending ourselves always: Self-preservation was the theme of the church," Cardinal Farrell observed, contrasting this with Pope Francis's emphasis on "welcome and accompaniment".
This shift, in Cardinal Farrell's view, marked a vital renewal for the Church, redirecting its focus towards its core values.
The camerlengo’s role
With Francis' death, though, Cardinal Farrell is in the spotlight, albeit only until a new pope is elected.
Cardinal Farrell on Monday morning announced the death from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta hotel where Francis lived and died. In a short statement read live on Vatican television, he said Francis' “entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his church”.
According to tradition, the camerlengo certifies the pope’s death, seals the papal apartment and breaks the pope’s fisherman’s ring, as a symbol of a vacancy at the Holy See. He leads the procession accompanying the coffin into St. Peter’s Basilica and presides over the burial.
The camerlengo also gets written reports from Vatican offices about their current assets; a copy of the current and projected budget for the Holy See; and any other information from the Vatican’s economic ministry that would be useful for cardinals and the future pope.
He and the dean of the College of Cardinals, Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then play key roles organising the meetings of cardinals preceding the conclave.
Cardinal Farrell, a no-nonsense Irish-born American, said the financial duties are far more important than the ceremonial ones and the ones for which he is more qualified.
He already heads top Vatican committees on finances, investments and confidential matters, as well as its supreme court, making him particularly well-suited to deliver a financial prospectus to the new pope.
From Ireland to the US
The man Francis chose to bridge his papacy was born in Dublin on September 2, 1947. He entered the Legionaries of Christ religious order in 1966 and was ordained a priest for the Mexican-based order in 1978. He left six years later (long before revelations that its founder was a paedophile who sexually abused his young seminarians) and became a diocesan priest in the Washington Archdiocese.
He worked in a series of parishes but also took on increasing charge of the books in the archdiocese. He has a keen mind for finances but says he never finished his MBA. He became auxiliary bishop of Washington in 2001 and served under the ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick before being made bishop of Dallas in 2007.
Cardinal Farrell has said repeatedly that during his years in Washington, he never heard the rumours that McCarrick had behaved inappropriately with seminarians, sleeping with them in his bed while he was a bishop in New Jersey. McCarrick, who died earlier this month, was defrocked after a Vatican investigation in 2019 found he sexually abused children as well as adults.
Cardinal Farrell said he was happy and “very comfortable” as bishop in Dallas when his secretary came to him in May 2016 to tell him the pope was on the phone.
“And I said ‘the pope’s not on the phone. Popes don’t use telephones,’” Cardinal Farrell said, assuming another bishop was playing a prank. “And so I picked up the phone. I was about to tell him where to go,” when all of a sudden the voice on the line said quietly in Spanish: “Soy Francisco” (“This is Francis”).
The two had never met, but Francis knew Cardinal Farrell spoke Spanish fluently, given his years in the Mexican-based Legion.
A Vatican assignment
Francis also knew that Cardinal Farrell had made it a policy in both Washington and Dallas to put qualified lay experts, rather than priests, in positions of authority in running the dioceses.
Cardinal Farrell said Francis asked him to do the same with the Holy See’s laity office, which the pontiff wanted to rebuild by merging it with the Vatican’s family and life departments and serve as a model of lay-led governance of church management.
“I was trying to come up with every reason why I should not do it. And he said, ‘Well, you think about it for three days and I’ll call you back,’” Cardinal Farrell recalled. “Three days later, at the same time, I get a telephone call and then I gave him all my reasons that I had formulated. And he said, ‘Well, why don’t you come on over and talk to me?’
“Well, that was the end.”
He moved to Rome in October 2016 to head the laity office. Within hours of his arrival, Francis announced that he would be made a cardinal.
It was a sign, later confirmed with his nomination as camerlengo, that Francis fully intended to entrust him with some of the most important responsibilities of the church, including after he was gone.
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