Top contenders for Pope: Parolin and Tagle emerge

Papal contender Parolin is a soft-spoken, longtime Vatican diplomat

If the Catholic cardinals entering the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis are looking for a steady administrator to run the Church and bring some calm after three consecutive papacies that were at times tempestuous, they may look no further than Pietro Parolin.

On nearly every media shortlist of papal contenders, Parolin has been the Vatican's secretary of state for the last 12 years, effectively the number two position in the Church. He is also the Vatican's top diplomat.

The two roles mean Parolin - a 70-year-old from a small town in Italy's deeply Catholic northern Veneto region - is perhaps the candidate best known to the 133 cardinal electors who entered the Sistine Chapel for the start of the secret conclave on Wednesday.

Cardinals who have visited Rome from around the world on Church business have met him, and he has visited most of their countries. Two cardinals from two African countries, for example, probably know Parolin just as well or even better than they know each other.

Under Francis, who died on April 21, the number of occasions all the world's cardinals could meet altogether in Rome was limited. "We have to get to know each other" has been a common refrain to reporters from otherwise tight-lipped cardinals entering and leaving pre-conclave meetings known as "General Congregations".

Parolin is seen as a quiet diplomat who is pragmatic more than conservative or progressive. He occasionally had to quietly put out fires caused by the late pope's remarks.

Francis, an Argentine who was the first pope from the Americas, gave media interviews and sometimes spoke off the cuff in public.

"He (Parolin) knows how to take a punch for the number one and for the institution," said one cleric currently based abroad who has worked with him and has known him for many years, who asked not to be identified because of the secretive nature of the conclave.

One such recent occasion was when the late Pope suggested last year that Israel's military campaign in Gaza might amount to genocide. Parolin agreed to meet with the then-Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, Raphael Schutz, who told him that Israel wanted the pope to say more about Israel's right to defend itself.

When Francis said Ukraine should have the "courage of the white flag" to end the war there, the comment drew widespread criticism from allies of Kyiv but was hailed by Russia. Parolin quietly told diplomats that the pope meant negotiations, not surrender.

CAREER FOCUSED ON DIPLOMACY

Parolin entered the minor seminary when he was 14 and was ordained in 1980. He has spent nearly all of his career in Vatican diplomacy, in Rome and around the world. He has never headed a Catholic diocese, which would have given him more pastoral experience.

But those who know him say this is not a deficit because, in running an organisation as complex as the Vatican's central administration and representing the pope around the world, he has had many contacts with many members of the faithful.

"He travelled to many places and dealt with all categories of people in diverse regional, cultural and linguistic environments. He knows the universal Church," the overseas cleric said.

Some conservative-leaning cardinals in the US and Asia have expressed disagreement with Parolin because he is the main architect of a secret 2018 Vatican agreement with China.

They call the deal, which gives Chinese authorities some say in who will serve as Catholic bishops, a sell-out to the Communist Party. Supporters say it is better than no dialogue at all between the Church and China and that even Pope Benedict, known as more conservative than Francis, favoured it.

Another criticism is that under Parolin's watch, the Secretariat of State lost some $140 million in a botched investment in a London property.

The deal led to a Vatican corruption trial in which Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was one of Parolin's top deputies, was convicted of embezzlement and fraud.

Parolin testified at the trial but was not among those accused. Becciu denies wrongdoing and is appealing the verdict.

Parolin's personality is definitely not as charismatic as that of Francis, but some cardinals may see that as a plus.

"Parolin is like Clark Kent without the Superman part - mild-mannered, industrious, respected, but not flashy," said one person, a layman, who knows him well, referring to the famous comic book character with two personalities.

Cardinals could pick Filipino Tagle, 'Asian Francis', as next pope

Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is sometimes called the "Asian Francis" because of his infectious smile, easy laugh, and spontaneity with words.

Like the late Argentine pope, he hails from a country far from the Catholic Church's traditional power base of Europe and came to Rome with an outsider's view.

Some who have put Tagle on unofficial short lists for the next pope say he would be a shoo-in to succeed Francis if cardinal electors who enter the secret conclave on Wednesday are looking for as close a similarity as possible in order to assertively continue Francis' progressive streak.

If Tagle were elected, it would also likely signal to the world's 1.4 billion Catholics that the cardinals want to go forward with Francis' vision of generally opening up the Church to the modern world by not choosing a man who might roll back some of the late pope's reforms.

It would also mean his fellow cardinals had shrugged off question marks over his management abilities.

"He would represent a continuity of what Pope Francis has been doing," said Rev. Emmanuel Alfonso, a former student of Tagle's who has known him for decades. "He's really like Pope Francis in terms of his love for the poor, his approachability and so on."

Tagle, the former archbishop of Manila, would be the first pope from what is now considered Asia, although in the early Church some popes hailed from what is now called the Middle East, technically part of Asia.

Tagle, who looks younger than his 67 years and likes to be called by his diminutive nickname "Chito", has headed the Vatican's Dicastery for Evangelisation, effectively the Church's missionary arm, for the past five years. That position gave him enormous influence over national churches in developing countries.

As archbishop of Manila, and before as bishop of the Philippine city of Imus, Tagle gained pastoral experience in running dioceses in Asia's largest Catholic country. By bringing him to the Vatican in 2020, Francis gave him one more notch in experience seen as helpful to papal candidates.

Tagle's move to Rome brought criticism from then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who oversaw a bloody "war on drugs" that killed thousands of Filipinos during his 2016-2022 administration.

Duterte said Tagle had been removed from Manila for meddling in national politics.

The Philippine Catholic bishops' conference denied those accusations forcefully. Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, a conference official made a cardinal in 2024, called Duterte's claim "unbelievably ludicrous".

Many cardinals already know Tagle personally, and many may see an attraction in having a pope from Asia, viewed by Church leaders as an important region of growth for the faith. Young people feel comfortable with him.

When Tagle hosted Francis for a visit to the Philippines in 2014, the visit drew the largest crowds in the history of papal travel, including a Mass that attracted up to 7 million people.

DOCTRINAL BACKGROUND

Tagle, who speaks Italian, English, and Spanish as well as his native Tagalog, now has five years of experience with the Vatican's arcane bureaucracy, although some cardinals may think even that is not enough to run the global Church.

One possible weakness in Tagle's candidacy is that he was involved in a management scandal three years ago.

In 2022, Francis removed him from a second job as titular head of a Vatican-based confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social services organisations working in more than 200 countries.

Francis fired the entire leadership of the group, called Caritas Internationalis, following allegations of bullying by top management.

Tagle's role, akin to a chancellor of the organisation, was mostly symbolic and ceremonial. He was not directly involved in the day-to-day running and was generally admired by staffers.

Unlike Francis, Tagle enjoys a global reputation as a theologian, which could help him gain votes from moderate cardinals concerned by some of Francis' off-the-cuff utterances, which led to what some called confusion about Church teachings.

In the 1990s, he served on the Vatican's International Theological Commission under German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was known as a strict adherent to traditional doctrine and would later become Pope Benedict XVI.

Rev. Joseph Komonchak, Tagle's professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., said the cardinal was one of his best students in 45 years of teaching.

"Not the least of Chito's virtues was the joy that he radiated on everyone who encountered him," said Komonchak. "He had a fine sense of humour, which endeared him to his fellow students."

Rev. Robert Reyes, a seminary classmate who has known Tagle for more than 50 years, said Tagle has an ability to connect with people and a simple style of living. When he first became a bishop in 2001, he didn't own a car.

"He preferred to take rides, to hitch a ride with someone driving to a place that perhaps both of them were going to," said Reyes.

While 67 is the sunset age in many organisations, it is considered young in the Vatican, because few cardinals want a very long pontificate.

Reuters