Damian Thompson

6 days ago | dailymail.co.uk | Damian Thompson

The election of Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, is a stunning surprise – and not just because he is the first American to become the successor of St Peter. Catholic traditionalists were confident that, after the radical turbulence of Pope Francis’s 12-year-reign, cardinals wanted a move away from a progressive, even secular, focus on social justice and climate change. It looks as if they will be disappointed.

1 week ago | spectator.com.au | Damian Thompson

The 133 cardinal electors who will process into the Sistine Chapel tomorrow are feeling battered and confused by the prospect of choosing a new pope in a ruthless digital age. Many of them show it in the faces, flinching at the sight of the press. The cardinal-electors must elect a man of shining moral integrity.

1 week ago | spectator.co.uk | Damian Thompson

The 133 cardinal electors who will process into the Sistine Chapel tomorrow are feeling battered and confused by the prospect of choosing a new pope in a ruthless digital age. Many of them show it in the faces, flinching at the sight of the press. But the journalists are struggling, too. For centuries, the interregnum between a pope’s death and the vote has been a season of mud-slinging – an opportunity for supporters of various cardinals to kick their rivals.

1 week ago | dailymail.co.uk | Damian Thompson

When the world's cardinals met in Rome last Monday for the first of their crucial pre-conclave discussions, they raised 'the issue of clerical abuse', according to a Vatican spokesman. The cardinals are forbidden to reveal anything that was said. But behind closed doors, the preparations for the conclave – which starts on Wednesday – are already mired in scandal.

2 weeks ago | thespectator.com | Damian Thompson

At 9.47 a.m. on Easter Monday we heard the words “con profondo dolore” from a cardinal standing in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta. Two hours earlier, Pope Francis “è tornato alla casa del Padre” – “had returned to the house of the Father”. Most people won’t have noticed a curious detail: the cardinal was speaking Italian with a pronounced Irish brogue. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the papal ‘Camerlengo’, was born in a Dublin suburb.