A "Papabile" Who Doesn't Know Italian?

Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille belongs to the anti-Catholic wing of the College of Cardinals and is therefore often quoted by the regime's media as a "papabile".

However, he does not speak Italian and may only understand it to a limited extent. Italian is the working language of the Vatican.

According to some reports, he has been working to improve his Italian. On 3 May he even gave a sermon in Italian at Santa Maria ai Monti in central Rome, his titular church.

Aveline knows how to sell himself and is a good preacher. When he is in Marseilles, he speaks with a pronounced southern French accent, which miraculously disappears when he is in Paris.

Picture: Jean-Marc Aveline © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk, CC BY-NC-ND, #newsDnukpixsmh