Francis is a typical liberal. They’re vindictive, petty and love to settle (real or imagined) scores. One point the author made that I have noticed myself is that Bergoglio’s court is like the Vatican II geezers’ club.
Many of the people around him are actually already retired (over 80) and are people who finally think they have a shot at getting the power they felt was denied them under the two recent popes. We’ll leave aside the fact that they should actually have been removed by the two preceding popes, one of whom actually appointed many of them, after they had destroyed their own archdioceses, left them with no vocations and hardly any practicing Catholics.
That doesn’t seem to matter to Pope Francis because their ideological purity is beyond dispute. So he’s kicking out younger people and moving the oldsters back into power, even if they can’t officially hold it because they’re too old - in that case, he lets them pick the worst of a slightly younger crop to replace them (as bishops or whatever).
I go to Spain a lot and Spaniards are much more cynical about this, because people in Catholic countries (basically, Italy, Spain and France) have been watching Popes for millennia and are not the quasi-ultramontanists that a lot of Americans and other English speaking people are.
As for the Germans, they were Christianized late, and it’s always been a little touch and go with them, because they felt that they should have the power. This seems to be a German affliction.
Kasper is having his moment of glory, and one of the things he wants is for the German bishops (with no parishioners but lots of mandatory financial support) to basically be able to ignore Rome and do whatever they want. And I think they’ve finally found the foolish Pope who will let them do so, because they’re leftists and so is he.
Old hippies...it’s all peace and love as long as they get their way...otherwise, burn that mother down.