This year, Catholic conservatives are ready for Pope Francis

Pope Francis’s three-week Synod on the Family began on Sunday. Most of the 279 ‘Synod Fathers’ are senior bishops, many of them cardinals. They have no authority to change any aspect of Catholic teaching or pastoral practice. They are discussing the ‘hot button’ issues of communion for the divorced and remarried and the spiritual care of gay Catholics — but, once the meeting is over, power will rest entirely in the hands of the Pope.

Conservative Catholics aren’t happy. Last year, at a preparatory ‘extraordinary’ synod, officials hand-picked by Francis announced in the middle of the proceedings that the Fathers favoured a more relaxed approach to gay relationships and second marriages. Senior cardinals exploded with rage, because most Fathers favoured no such thing. The liberal synod organisers — Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the synod, and Archbishop Bruno Forte, its ‘special secretary’ — were forced to drop their claims. The whole thing was a car crash and obviously their fault.