Vatican City – This morning, Pope Leo XIV received in private audience Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The encounter draws attention to one of the most well-known and, at the same time, most controversial figures in the Catholic Church of recent decades. While Pope Francis maintained occasional meetings with Cardinal Raymond Burke, there had been no such audiences with Sarah in the Apostolic Palace. For this reason, today’s reception is significant: after many years, the Guinean prelate once again crossed the threshold of the papal residence.
An Ecclesial Journey of Weight and Meaning
Born in Guinea in 1945, Sarah’s life and ministry mirror the complexities of the African Church in the twentieth century. Ordained a priest in 1969, he was appointed Archbishop of Conakry at the young age of 34, inheriting a context marked by religious persecution and an autocratic regime determined to subjugate the Church to political power. His firm and independent voice earned him widespread respect.
In the years that followed, John Paul II called him to Rome, entrusting him with important curial assignments, culminating in his elevation to the cardinalate in 2010. In 2014, Pope Francis entrusted him with the leadership of the dicastery overseeing liturgy—perhaps without fully considering that Sarah came from contexts where faith is lived in simplicity but depth, and that his vision of liturgy diverged significantly from the Pope’s own outlook.
On February 20, 2021, Pope Francis accepted his resignation after nearly six years as prefect. Relations with the Pope were strained, even though Sarah continued to reside in Piazza della Città Leonina.
The Weight of Choices and Allegiances
Alongside this path, however, lies another side of his story: one that saw him progressively drawn into pseudo-traditionalist circles that, under the banner of defending the faith, ended up turning the Gospel into an ideological weapon. The episode surrounding the 2020 book From the Depths of Our Hearts, which also involved Benedict XVI, was emblematic. It was an editorial operation marked by ambiguity, where Sarah allowed himself to be instrumentalized by lay figures pursuing economic and ideological agendas, rather than maintaining clarity in his fidelity to the successor of Peter.
The Drama of a Certain Modus Agendi
Sarah’s case is not unique. It is part of a broader pattern among cardinals who, despite having rendered great service to the Church, have become symbols for ideological movements with little that is authentically Catholic about them. These are groups that often blend Gospel references with far more earthly, political, and economic interests.
It is the drama of elderly men who, instead of embracing freedom in the final season of their ecclesial life, allow themselves to be swallowed by networks that use them as banners. Were it not for his ties to Opus Dei, Sarah might well have fallen into the orbit of questionable figures operating around Via dell’Arco del Monte—leading to an even more negative deterioration in his relationship with Pope Francis.
A Necessary Perspective
The audience with Pope Leo XIV must be seen within the broader context of countless requests flooding the phones and inboxes of the Pope’s closest collaborators. There are those eager to be received, those eager to interpret his every move, and even those who go so far as to cut and paste lines from his latest interviews.
Leo XIV, however, has chosen another way: he listens to all. He does not allow himself to be carried along by pressures from those who would steer him toward their personal agendas. He takes note of everything but remains steady on his own course. The Pope is fully aware—and made this clear already in July, in his interview with Elise Ann Allen—that many who knock at his door hope to push him to distance himself from his predecessor. “There are meetings that boil down to rehashing the past. All true, to be clear: if you set aside personal resentments, what is said matches the facts. But that is not the point. One cannot expect the Pope to pass judgment on his predecessor: it would not be fitting. Leo XIV will make his choices, he will take positions through his acts, but one cannot imagine him saying: ‘From today, Eminence, you are my closest collaborator.’ Unthinkable. And this says much about a portion of the Sacred College that has lost the awareness of its role once carefully preserved by predecessors. They proclaim themselves defenders of tradition, yet fail to see that tradition is also safeguarded by refusing to be instrumentalized,” confides a cleric in the Belvedere courtyard as the cars slowly leave the palace.
Beyond the Surface
Events like today’s invite us to confront, with lucidity, the contradictions of an ecclesial season in which figures such as Cardinal Sarah—endowed with charisma and significant pastoral experience—risk becoming tools in the hands of those who conceive of faith as ideological militancy. The real challenge, now more than ever, is for the cardinals and pastors of the Church to step back from sectarian environments, so as to show the People of God the free and authentic face of the Gospel.
d.E.V.
Silere non possum