ROME – Though it’s likely apocryphal, the story goes that during British rule of India, colonial officials became concerned about poisonous cobras in the city of Delhi and decided to offer a bounty for every dead snake. Enterprising locals, naturally, began to breed cobras in order to collect the reward. When the British discovered the ruse and withdrew the offer, breeders set their now-worthless cobras free, thereby making the problem significantly worse.
The so-called “Cobra Effect” is a classic illustration of what’s come to be known as the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” Quite often, actions designed to accomplish one outcome actually generate a cascade of other effects, most of which the actor never envisioned or desired.
Right now, Pope Francis may feel trapped in his own version of the “Cobra Effect” vis-à-vis the Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans on the blessing of persons in same-sex unions.
One principal consequence of the controversy surrounding the document, ironically enough, would appear to be to have given conservative critics of the pope a chance to kick the tires on possible candidates in a future conclave, meaning contenders who might steer the church in a different direction.
Right now, perhaps no one’s stock as a papabile, or candidate to become pope, has risen as much during the furor over Fiducia as Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who also serves as the elected leader of the African bishops as president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM).
A recent headline in the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, atop a piece by veteran Vatican correspondent Franca Giansoldati, says it all: “The profile of Cardinal Ambongo advances among the future papabili: He led the African blockade of the blessing of gay couples.”
The reference is to the fact that the 64-year-old Ambongo was the prime mover in a Jan. 11 statement from SECAM which declared Fiducia Supplicans a dead letter on the continent. African prelates, it said, “do not consider it appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual unions or same-sex couples because, in our context, this would cause confusion and would be in direct contradiction to the cultural ethos of African communities.”
