Passing the Keys: Modern Cardinals, Conclaves and the Election of the Next Pope - Hardcover

Burkle-Young, Francis A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568331304 ISBN 13: 9781568331300

Publisher: Madison Books, 1999

Synopsis

Burkle-Young describes the principle candidates in the early negotiations for the conclave that will elect the next Pope and chronicles John Paul II's most likely successors.

About this title

Review:

In Passing the Keys, Francis A. Burkle-Young raises the curtain on the secrets governing the election of modern popes. From the book's first sentence, the author's biases are clear: "Papal elections are human, not divine, events." That said, Burkle-Young provides an overview of papal elections beginning with Leo XIII in 1878--the first to take place after Italy's unification and the abolition of the States of the Church. This election begins the Church's integration into the new social, political, and economic realities of the modern world. Keys then considers how the addition of non-Italian cardinals and other contentious Church issues have affected the conclaves, leading up to the election of John Paul II in 1978. Finally, Burkle-Young speculates on the identity of the next pope, and on the matter of how John Paul II's new rules for the conduction of conclaves, as well as his positions on issues such as contraception and the ordination of women, will extend his future influence. Burkle-Young, a media consultant on Vatican politics, provides a sober and modest analysis of all of these issues. Keys successfully avoids polemics, instead offering respectful criticism of a process whose exclusivity has defied most commentators from even attempting to describe. --Michael Joseph Gross

About the Author:

Francis A. Burkle-Young has been a consultant for Time and Newsweek on the workings of the Vatican. He is the author of The Life and Times of Cardinal Innocenzo Ciocchi del Monte. He lives in Kensington, Maryland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Madison Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1568331304
• ISBN 13: 9781568331300
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560