The Man Who Was “Ante-Pope”
Before his death in 2012, Cardinal Carlo Martini eerily called himself an “ante-pope,” a “precursor and preparer for the Holy Father.”
Martini was the leading antagonist to Popes John Paul II and Benedict—a Jesuit famous for groaning that the Church was “200 years behind.” In Night Conversations with Cardinal Martini, he cringed at the “major damage” caused by Humanae Vitae. The Church spoke “too much” about the sixth commandment and sin. He said legal abortion was, ultimately, “positive.”
For Martini saw himself as a dreamer who kept us “open to the surprises of the Holy Spirit.” Hadn’t the prophet Joel said that your sons and daughters would prophesy and your old men would dream dreams? The old cardinal dreamed of young “prophets” who’d criticize the Church and a “strong middle generation” who’d effect “changes.”
Martini said that in “preparation” for the 2005 papal election, he and others discussed the “new answers” that the next pope would “have to give” on sexuality and Communion for adulterers. For Martini was the leader of the St. Gallen “mafia,” the anti-Ratzinger group that wanted a “much more modern” Church under Cardinal Bergoglio.
According to Austen Ivereigh’s The Great Reformer, Cardinal Bergoglio quoted Martini frequently and was introduced by him to the Gallen group after the two Jesuits reconnected in 2001. Cardinal Bergoglio placed second in the 2005 conclave, amidst a “dramatic struggle.” The group reportedly ceased meeting the following year, and Martini—long sick with Parkinson’s—died in 2012.
But in a fiery last interview published immediately after his death, the ante-pope burned with disdain.
