CAN YOU IMAGINE a Catholic Cardinal singing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’?
It’s easy if you try, though some conservative accounts online have been claiming that this alone should disqualify Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle from becoming the next pope.
A clip of Cardinal Tagle singing along to Imagine in 2019 has gone somewhat viral in Catholic corners of social media.
He is deemed to be “papabile” – the closest English translation is “pope-able”.
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“Shocking”, reads a post on X of Cardinal Tagle singing along to Imagine.
“A Betrayal of Catholic Teaching?,” it further asks.
It described the song as an “atheist anthem rejecting religion, heaven, and Christ’s Kingship”.
“Is this scandal or scandalous ignorance?”
While the lyrics to Lennon’s hit song do include lines such as “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try” and “nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too”, Cardinal Tagle in fact sang an amended and shortened version which omitted these lyrics.
It all appears to be part of a smear campaign among conservative Catholics online to undermine the prospects of Cardinal Tagle, sometimes referred to as the “Asian Francis”, of becoming pope.
Another clip shows Tagle, once a Mass had ended, dancing with a statue of Christ as a child.
“Please Lord… Not Tagle,” reads one post on X accompanying the video that has close to 2,000 likes.
“What an absolute disgrace… if I was a Filipino Catholic I would be absolutely embarrassed and ashamed of that man.”
Conclave rumour mill
But to what extent do such campaigns influence what will happen during the conclave?
More than you might think, perhaps.
Yesterday, sources claimed that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State under Francis and someone seen as a front-runner, had “suffered a sudden illness.”
It was claimed that he had elevated blood pressure and was attended to by a medical team that assisted him for an hour.
This afternoon, Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni was asked about this alleged incident by a reporter and “emphatically denied that it had occurred”.
Bruni also denied that doctors or nurses had intervened and said: “No, absolutely not.”
Meanwhile, people in the Philippines have been urged to tone down their support for the likes of their native Cardinal Tagle.
Both Tagle and fellow Filipino Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David have been the subject of popular videos and memes, such as this one of Filipino Cardinals arriving at the Vatican for Francis’s funeral to the tune of Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise.
Cardinal David has described such clips as “campaign videos” and has discouraged people from creating or sharing them.
“Even with good intentions, they risk turning a sacred discernment into a worldly spectacle,” he said.
He also warned that it may “inadvertently pressure or politicise the conscience of the electors and distract from the silence and prayer needed to truly hear the voice of the Spirit”.
And in an indirect reference to the hit film Conclave, he noted that while “films and series about the conclave may be interesting”, they are “fictional, deliberately sensationalised and far removed from the reverent and prayerful reality of the actual event”.
And speaking of “inadvertent political pressure”, it’s unlikely US president Donald Trump did any favours for the remote chances of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
When asked who he would like to see as pope, Trump said he’d like to do it.
But then in a reference to Cardinal Dolan, he added: “We have a Cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who’s very good, so we’ll see what happens.”
Senator Lindsay Graham urged people to “keep an open mind about this possibility” (it is not a possibility as Trump is not a baptised Catholic).
National Catholic Register also jokingly claimed that Trump would be ineligible because any candidate, according to Canon Law, “must be of sound mind”.
Trump has since posted an image of himself as pope to his Truth social media platform.