Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Apostolic Chamber, announced on Monday the death of Pope Francis de la Casa Santa Marta in the city of the Vatican.
Pool / Getty of Vatican
hide
tilting legend
Pool / Getty of Vatican
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who announced the death of Pope Francis Monday morning, is now the Vatican actor leader until a new pope is elected.
There is a name for the person with this work: Camerlengo.
According to Britannica, Cardinal Camerlengo in Roman Catholicism is a key dignitary of the Vatican which is personally appointed by the Pope and responsible for “a specific series of functions at the crucial moment of the transition of a pope to his successor”.
These tasks include the verification of the Pope’s death, destroying it the symbolic fishery ring of the deceased pope and the preparation of the conclave, the process by which a new pope is elected.
Farrell, a naturalized American citizen of Dublin, naturalized, occupied a series of posts in the Vatican before Pope Francis called him from Camerlengo in 2019. This is what you have to know about him.
He has spent much of his career in the United States
Farrell, 77, was born in September 1947 in Dublin, and after completing his secondary studies, he then attended the University of Salamanca in Spain and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
He was ordered a priest on December 24, 1978 and began his career as a aumnier at the University of Monterrey in Mexico. He moved to the United States to join the Archdiocese of Washington in 1984, according to his biography of the Vatican.
Farrell has held a series of positions in several parishes in the region, including the director of the Spanish Catholic Center, active executive director of Catholic charity and secretary for financial affairs.
Pope John Paul II appointed Farrell as auxiliary bishop of Washington in 2001. He was a co-general moderator until 2007, when he was appointed bishop of Dallas.
He quickly got up in the ranks of the Vatican
In 2016, Pope Francis appointed Farrell as the prefect of the new Dicastery for laity, family and life.
“My administrative assistant came and said:” The pope is on the phone, and I wanted to say: “Yes, yes” “, said Farrell at a press conference at the time, according to the local affiliate of NBC.” Finally, she put the pope, and he told me that he would like that I would go to Rome because Dallas needed a much better bishop than me. ”
The Pope appointed Farrell a cardinal later the same year and continued to raise him to positions in the Vatican.
He was appointed Camerlengo in 2019, appointed chairman of the commission for confidential issues in 2020 and appointed president of the Supreme Court of the State of the Vatican City from January 2024.
He has resisted controversies over the years
Farrell was close to the scandal – and the scandalous characters – during his career.
In particular, from 2002 to 2006, he worked and lived with Theodore McCarrick, an formerly powerful Catholic cardinal who was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined that he had attacked adults and children.
After these allegations were revealed in 2018, Farrell publicly said that he had known nothing or suspected nothing of McCarrick’s behavior.
Still in 2018, Farrell was criticized for having pretended to be a group called Voices of Fais Faith to hold its fourth annual event of women’s day inside the Vatican.
Some people, including members of the group, thought that reason was that many of the potential speakers – including the former Irish president Mary Mcalese – openly supported homosexual marriage, among other questions.
Asked about the controversy at an unrelated event for weeks later, Farrell did not have in detail on the reason for his decision.
“Having been informed later that I did Sponsor this event and having been told later what the event was, it was not appropriate for me to continue to sponsor such an event, “he said, according to the newspaper Lacroix International. “Obviously, when I remove the sponsorship of the event, it could not be inside the Vatican.”
Farrell publicly said that even if the church cannot bless the same -sex unions, that no one should be excluded from “pastoral care and the love of the Church”.
Could Farrell be the next pope?
Farrell’s position as Camerlengo does not intrinsically disqualify it or does not do so for the Pope’s position.
THE Times Note that only two Camerlengos were elected Pope before: Gioacchino Pecci, like Pope Leo XIII in 1878, and Eugenio Pacelli, like Pope Pius XII in 1939.
There has never been a Pope of Ireland or the United States
