2025 conclave: Cardinal de Guatemala says there is an atmosphere of trust and great responsibility to choose the Pope

Cardinal Guatemalteco Álvaro Ramazzini, one of the 133 cardinals who will be in the conclave since tomorrow Wednesday, said that among the voters “there is an atmosphere of trust” and a sense of a “great responsibility” to choose the new Pope.

“For being for me the first time, because I am entering a very unknown world and so far the experience that I have had has been very positive, that is, a good cordial atmosphere, of fraternity and although we do not know each other well, I do not know many of the cardinals, however there is an atmosphere of trust,” said the 77 -year -old cardinal, in an interview in Rome with Ewtn, a company to which ACI press belongs.

“And above all I perceive that there is a sense of a great responsibility in what we have to do as cardinals,” he said.

When asked if he has a profile of the new Pope, the purple commented: “No, I have not really thought about it, I have not thought about it because I think that in the course of the conclave, because undoubtedly the Holy Spirit will illuminate my head and move my thoughts.”

As for himself there is polarization or “sides” among the cardinals, the cardinal was very clear: “No.

The Cardinal of Guatemala and Pope Francis

The Cardinal highlighted “the path of continuity” of the last popes, from San Pablo VI to San Juan Pablo II, to later reach Francisco, whom he met in 2007, in the V General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean in Appeared (Brazil), where each represented their respective Episcopal Conference: Guatemalan and Argentina.

Ramazzini stressed that Francisco “was not the guy like San Juan Paul II, outgoing, always communicative, I had not known it, neither in an appearance nor on an occasion that I also visited Argentina, but quite the opposite: quite quiet, silent, but then I had the big surprise that he really changed.”

The bishop of Huehuetenango spoke about Francisco and the doctrine, and stressed that “the Pope always remained in faithfulness to the tradition of the Church. He made some couple of decisions that perhaps were the ones that were what They were dismantled A little to the general population, such as having put two women here within the Roman curia. That was something that for many was like scandalous. ”

The cardinal also referred to the Fiducia Suplicans state objectivity of what happens. ”

“I believe that those who criticized the Pope for that attitude – I am referring to that theme of the blessing – had not read his document when he talks about marriage, about family, about sexuality and then there are always those risks of being misunderstood,” he added.

Migration, poverty and young people

On migration, one of Pope Francis’s greatest concerns, Cardinal Ramazzini indicated that “the fundamental issue will continue to be poverty, because if there was no poverty in our countries there would be no migration. I myself come from a family that had to migrate to the United States, my mother and my brothers for the situation of poverty in which we lived.”

The cardinal also denounced drug trafficking in Latin America and the “neoliberalism that continues to cause more and more poverty” in the region. “And of course, we cannot deny the negative influence in many cases that the United States’s economic policy has towards us.”

Finally and in relation to youth, the purple stressed that “it will be very necessary to continue with the way of being of Pope Francis, which was a way of being very direct and very close to the young.