Despite the late Pope Francis' decision to elevate many of his supporters to the Catholic Church's College of Cardinals, Father Frank Pavone told Newsmax on Tuesday that he thinks the church will move in a different direction when it selects the next pontiff.
"I think that enough of these cardinals recognize the problems that have happened, that we will not get another Pope Francis," Pavone said on "The Chris Salcedo Show." "We won't get another John Paul II, either. I believe that we'll be somewhere in the middle. I believe that there will be a course correction. I think some of that is just human nature and the nature of the pendulum swinging politically in the church as it does in civic politics.
"I think there will be an improvement," he said. "There has to be. There's got to be clarification of the confusion Francis has caused. There's got to be healing in the church. What about those who are devotees of the Latin Mass? There's got to be restoration. People like me who have been victims of his weaponization. I think that, of course, there needs to be."
Francis, who died Easter Monday at 88, frequently clashed with the Catholic Church's more conservative wing over his progressive stance on migrants, climate change, and the role of LGBTQ people and women. The church's first Latin American pope died of stroke and irreversible heart failure, according to the Vatican death certificate. He will be laid to rest Saturday after lying in state at St. Peter's Basilica for three days, beginning Wednesday.
Pavone, who was defrocked by Francis in 2022 for unspecified "blasphemous communications on social media," said "although things like standing up for the poor and talking about accompanying the suffering and reaching out to the marginalized and emphasizing God's mercy are key elements of church teaching that we always want to emphasize, this was a Pope, unfortunately, who left a legacy of confusion.
"Right from the beginning, people were calling me and many other Catholic leaders when the Pope would say something that didn't sound right, didn't sound like a historic Catholic teaching, and they would say, 'Well, what does he mean? What does he mean by that?' And I would say, 'I don't know what he means, but I know what the faith means,'" Pavone said. "And that's the main thing, right? I mean, if anything, his death reminds us Popes come and go, but the true head of the church, Jesus Christ, remains forever, and he does not change. And that's where we've got to keep our focus."
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