Mgr Vesco, Archbishop of Algiers: “As cardinal, I will remain free in my speech”

The Cross : How did you react when you learned of your appointment as cardinal?

Mgr Jean-Paul Vesco: I was totally taken aback, because I just couldn’t imagine it for a thousandth of a second. Honestly, I experienced it and I continue to experience it as a real mystery. I know that the Pope alone appoints cardinals. However, if I feel aligned with his vision of the Church, I am not at all one of his close friends! So I don’t have an obvious answer as to why he chose me.

I heard some say he chose me for my sensitivity “open”, but I understand that he was not aware of this when he chose me. Anyway, something struck me: in the jargon, it is said that the pope “creates” new cardinals. I liked this term “creation” because very quickly after this appointment, I felt a call to deeply renew myself.

A few days after your appointment, you said: “It is not a new French cardinal, it is a new Algerian cardinal who has been created. » What did you mean?

Mgr J.-P. V. : First of all, I think that, through my appointment, the Pope wanted to give a strong sign to this small Church of Algeria. Especially since he has a strong love and interest in Saint Charles de Foucauld, whom he canonized. But above all, I acquired Algerian nationality two years ago, I have been in Algeria for twenty years and I will undoubtedly die there. This Algerian nationality was an important gesture for this Church to truly be a Church of this country, a citizen, registered in the life of society. That the archbishop is Algerian changes everything, otherwise the Church could have continued to be perceived as a foreign institution.

You have taken a position on well-identified and not always consensual subjects in the Church, for example to defend the place of divorced and remarried people or that of women. Are you going to maintain your freedom of speech?

Mgr J.-P. V. : I wondered a lot about how this new responsibility could change or not my freedom of tone. A few things became apparent to me quite quickly: when we are named cardinal, we learn about it at the same time as everyone else, we are not informed beforehand. This makes me say that the Pope does not hope that we conform or change, but calls us as we are. I also think that being a cardinal is not being the voice of the Holy Father. Obviously I owe the Pope a loyalty, a love. But I also owe this loyalty to the universal Church. I will therefore remain free in my words and the subjects I wish to discuss.

My book on the divorced and remarried (1), I wrote out of love for the Church where if we do not call into question the dogma, the thought is and must remain alive. It was my duty as bishop to make this plea. But I am aware that the more we take positions that engage us, the more we must be able to hold them and explain them, with asceticism and work. Basically, I am confident, especially since I absolutely embrace the ecclesial sensitivity of Pope Francis, it is an enormous opportunity.

You say to yourself « Bergoglia (from François’ birth name, Jorge Bergoglio, Editor’s note) to the tips of my nails. What does this mean?

Mgr J.-P. V. : It is said that, as a future pope, Francis was spotted by his future peers during the congregations before the conclave, because he advocated for the Gospel at the heart of the Church. And that’s exactly what he does! Its simplicity is profound. One of the last times I saw him, he recalled that the only possibility for a person to be in a position of superiority over another is to extend his hand and lift them up. All this speaks to me in that this pope challenges all the images of power that we can have of the Church and that he also warns against the temptation of uniformity that there is in our institution.

Basically, he launched a real movement for the conversion of the Church, certainly sometimes with force and authority. But there is a desire to bring the world into the Church. “The Church is for all, all, all,” as he said at the WYD in Lisbon in 2023. We perceive his project of a close, simple and fraternal Church, attentive to the poor… I, who have been going to the Vatican since 2009, have seen a blatant change with more women and lay people in positions of responsibility in the Curia. And yet, the Church remains the Church. The institution has a deep need for otherness and diversity, and it is not because I am a cardinal that I will forbid myself from saying so. (Laughs).

Relations between France and Algeria are notoriously bad. Does the Church of Algeria have a role to play?

Mgr J.-P. V. : No, because the Church has no institutional link with France. Long assimilated to France by the Algerian authorities, we fought against this perception. Today, it is obvious: the Church in Algeria is not French, 99% of its members are not. It falls under the Holy See, not France.

On the other hand, on a personal level, as a Franco-Algerian, I suffer from this animosity between the two countries, while seeing an immense potential for brotherhood. Christian in a Muslim world, I am naturally in dialogue with Islam. I am personally working to bring the two countries closer together. But this fight is mine, not that of the Church.

My feeling is that France has not yet taken the measure of the colonial aftereffects. We must, as French people, humbly recognize a historical and collective responsibility, which has nothing to do with our personal responsibilities today.

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21 new cardinals for the Catholic Church

Sunday October 6, during the Angelus, Pope Francis announced the creation of 21 new cardinals, 10 of whom are members of religious orders (three Franciscans, two Dominicans, two missionaries of the Divine Word, one Redemptorist, one Scalabrinian and one Vincentian). They will be officially created cardinals during a consistory on Saturday December 7 at the Vatican.

The Vatican announced, on October 22, that the pope had accepted the request of the Indonesian bishop Mgr Paskalis Bruno Syukur not to be created cardinal. Francis replaced him by appointing Mgr Domenico Battaglia, archbishop of Naples. This is why there will be 21 future cardinals to receive the bar from the hands of the Pope in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Among them are notably the Franco-Algerian Mgr Jean-Paul Vesco, 62 years old, archbishop of Algiers, Mgr Dominique Mathieu, archbishop of Tehran-Isfahan (Iran), Timothy Radcliffe, Dominican, former master of the order of preachers, or Mgr Jaime Spengler , president of the Latin American Episcopal Council (Celam) and archbishop of Porto Alegre (Brazil).