Though a front-runner to become the next pope, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle could face an uphill struggle, and will need to show he is more than an “Asian Francis” to succeed. In fact, too close an association may be undermining him already. There are three critical factors which could undermine Tagle as papabile: other candidates supplanting him, criticism of his domestic record, and a failure to speak out more openly on China.
For starters, Tagle faces a major challenge from clerics such as Singaporean Cardinal William Goh who possesses many of Tagle’s advantages - being both Anglophone and from Asia, and therefore able to reach a global audience while being more representative of a less European Catholic community - but is perhaps better able to reach across the aisle to conservatives.
