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His mishandling abuse cases were known to Vatican watchers well ahead of time and probably the reason he didn’t make many lists of papabile. You’re suddenly hearing about them because he suddenly became pope.
Apparently well known to the Vatican which investigated them and found nothing there. As to "Vatican watchers", I wish my fellow conservatives would stop looking for "the smoke of Satan, he's a liberal! he'll ban the Latin Mass for good and all! he'll force us all to allow married women priests and excommunicate us and burn us at the stake!" every time anyone who is not Archbishop Lefebvre is in the news. Some of them seem to yearn to be persecuted, as though the challenges of living the faith in the modern world were not enough. No, I'm not just cosplaying the old rites as part of a miniscule element of the universal Church, I'm so important that the College of Cardinals needs to oppress me specifically by who they elect as the new pope!
Do you think I liked the sweeping changes that threw the baby out with the bathwater? Do I approve of the lack of catechesis which means the vast majority of modern Catholics are more ignorant than the unchurched of their own faith? Was I happy with everything Francis did?
No, but he was the pope. And now Leo XIV is the pope, and I am not going to waste time and energy hoping for a "ah yes, the lavender mafia, he's secretly a flaming gay being blackmailed by them to cover up abuse scandals" Real True Truth revelation to blacken his name (particularly when one of those scandals seem to be heterosexual not homosexual).
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