Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has revealed that Pope Francis asked
him to pass on his “warmest greetings” to the Queen just two days after
his election to the papacy.
In an exclusive interview in this week’s Catholic Herald, Cardinal
Murphy-O’Connor said the Argentine Pope was keen to “assert his respect
for the Queen” immediately after his election on March 13, six months
ago tomorrow.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said: “All the cardinals had a meeting with
him in the Hall of Benedictions, two days after his election. We all
went up one by one. He greeted me very warmly. He said something like:
‘It’s your fault. What have you done to me?’
“Just as I was leaving, he said: ‘Don’t forget: give the Queen my warmest greetings’.”
The cardinal said he then called the Queen’s secretary on his return
to the English College in Rome, and passed on Pope Francis’s good
wishes.
The cardinal continued: “It shows he was aware of that and wanted to
assert his respect for the Queen. Of course, he had been in favour of
the Malvinas and had prayed for those who had lost their lives. Fair
enough. But he’s quite clear that as Pope he’s not taking any sides.
“That was a really nice thing, to be able to pass on his greetings to the Queen.”
The cardinal also disclosed that he had spoken to the future Pope as
they left the Missa pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice, the final Mass before
the conclave began on March 12.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said: “We talked a little bit. I told him he
had my prayers and said, in Italian: ‘Be careful.’ I was hinting, and
he realised and said: ‘Si – capisco’ – yes, I understand. He was calm.
He was aware that he was probably going to be a candidate going in. Did I
know he was going to be Pope? No. There were other good candidates. But
I knew he would be one of the leading ones.”
The 81-year-old cardinal, who retired as Archbishop of Westminster in
2009, said Pope Francis’s decision to refer to himself as “Bishop of
Rome” in his first address had raised hopes for unity with the Orthodox.
He said: “It is said – and I can’t verify it – that the Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople came to the installation of Pope Francis
because of that, because here was one who was not saying immediately
‘I’m Pope. I’m over everybody’, just ‘I’m the Bishop of Rome’.
“The dialogue with the Orthodox has always been difficult because of
the position of the Pope. Now here you had a cardinal coming from
another part of the world which was never thought of 900 years ago when
the break with the Orthodox happened. So I think there could be closer
union with the Orthodox Church because of the manner of the man now the
Bishop of Rome.”