33 minutes ago
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Europe - AP |
Posted on 04/03/2005 10:19:56 AM PDT by pittsburgh gop guy
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33 minutes ago
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By BRIAN MURPHY, AP Religion Writer
VATICAN CITY - Roman Catholics and others began to speak out Sunday about their hopes — and expectations — for a new pope, as the intense guessing game began over who would succeed John Paul II in leading the Church.
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Only one thing is certain: The cardinals must decide whether to follow John Paul II with another non-Italian or hand the papacy back to its traditional caretakers.
Cardinal Bernard Panafieu, one of five French prelates with a papal vote, said Sunday he was hoping for someone "who dynamizes the people — God's people — as John Paul II did. At the same time, a man who has an international sense, of the opening of Catholicism to the world. An open man and at the same time, a man faithful to the great traditions of the Church."
The Polish-born John Paul was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and brought a new vitality to the Vatican, challenging parochial attitudes throughout the church. One view — echoed from outside Roman Catholicism by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu — holds that the papal electors will want to maintain the spirit by recognizing the Roman Catholic influence outside Europe in Latin America and Africa.
"We hope that perhaps the cardinals when they meet will follow the first non-Italian pope by electing the first African pope," Tutu said Sunday from Cape Town, South Africa.
Another theory suggests that the Italians will press to reclaim the papacy after John Paul's 26-year reign — the third-longest in history.
There is no clear favorite when the 117 cardinals begin their secret conclave later this month.
But names often mentioned as "papabile" — the Italian word for possible papal candidates — include Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Vatican-based Nigerian, and Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes.
Arinze, 72, converted to Roman Catholicism as a child and shares some of John Paul's conservative views on contraception and family issues. But he brings a unique element: representing a nation shared between Muslims and Christians at the time when interfaith relations assume growing urgency. If elected, he would be the first black pope of modern times.
Hummes, 70, is archbishop of Sao Paolo, Brazil, and urges more attention to fighting poverty and the effects of a globalized economies. His supporters note that Brazil's role as a Latin American political and economic heavyweight could help the Vatican counter the popularity of emerging evangelical churches in the region.
Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodiguez Maradiaga of Honduras, the 62-year-old archbishop of Tegucigalpa, is also mentioned as a possible candidate. But he could be too much of a break for Vatican conservatives. He has studied clinical psychology and has a dynamic, outspoken style.
Among Italians, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the archbishop of Milan, is a moderate with natural pastoral abilities and an easy style that appeals to the young. But Tettamanzi, 71, is not considered widely traveled and some critics believe he could impose too strong an Italian outlook.
Other Italians widely mentioned as possible candidates include: Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, 63, who is relatively young and brings a cosmopolitan flair from his city, a historic cultural crossroads; and Giovanni Battista Re, 71, who has served as president of the Vatican commission for Latin America since 2001.
Within Europe, several cardinals are seen as possible rising stars, potentially able to win support in the way Karol Wojtyla, then archbishop of Krakow, Poland, did in the 1978 conclave that elevated him to pope. They include: Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the 69-year-old archbishop of Vienna, Austria, who is multilingual and has diplomatic flair, and Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, 71, who is well known in political and diplomatic circles.
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, another French elector, said Sunday he hoped for a powerful figure to follow John Paul.
"When you see his face, and when you hear him speak, you should have the impression like that made by the arrival of John Paul II in October 1978: 'Wow, here you can see Christ come among us,'" Barbarin said in an interview with radio network France Inter.
Europe has the biggest bloc with 58 papal electors — cardinals under 80 years old. Italy alone has 20.
Latin America has 21 and Africa brings 11. The United States also has 11 cardinals and could sway the voting if they remain united. An American pope, however, is considered a virtual impossibility because of the Vatican would avoid any such a deep and complicated association with the world's sole superpower.
Any other forecast would find itself on shaky ground.
One only has to recall that after two days and eight rounds of voting 26 years ago, the name of Karol Wojtyla — never mentioned as a serious candidate — was announced to the crowd in St. Peter's Square. Many there were baffled.
Related story: James Hitchcock column May 27
Cardinal Francis Arinze's commencement address at Georgetown University May 17, ruffled feathers of some faculty members and sparked a protest, according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution May 22.
A protest letter signed by about 70 faculty members was delivered Wednesday, May 21, to Jane McAuliffe, dean of arts and sciences at the Jesuit university, who had invited Cardinal Arinze to address the school's commencement. (The Nigerian prelate, head of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, is an acknowledged expert on Christian-Muslim relations, and a popular speaker among Catholics in the United States.)
Cardinal Arinze told the graduates that happiness is found not in the pursuit of material wealth or pleasures of the flesh, but by fervently adhering to religious beliefs, and spoke of the importance of family to the Catholic Church.
"In many parts of the world, the family is under siege", the cardinal said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by the university. "It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce."
Theresa Sanders, a "post-modernist" professor of theology at the university, protested by leaving the stage while Arinze was speaking. E-mails on a subscription list used by many of the university's gay and lesbian students indicated that some students also walked out.
"These things are exactly what he's paid to say", Ed Ingebretsen, a professor of American Studies, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but "it's a graduation; why he decided to do the pro-family thing no one seems to know". Ingebretsen, and former Jesuit priest who left the order and the Catholic Church to join the "American Catholic Church" in 2000, said he posted an apology on the e-mail subscription list "on behalf of Catholics" for Cardinal Arinze's "insensitive remarks". The prelate's comments were "un-Christian", Ingebretsen said.
A professor at Georgetown since 1986, Ingebretsen in 1995 offered a course called "Unspeakable Lives: Gay and Lesbian Narratives", endorsed by the English department. In an article on a "gay" web site (www.whosoever.org), Ingebretsen writes, "In the American Catholic Church I bless single-sex unions with church sanction".
Tommaso Astarita, a professor of history, called the cardinal's message "wildly inappropriate" for a commencement ceremony. "I personally was rather offended by it", said Astarita, who is one of the professors circulating the protest letter. "I thought it was divisive and inappropriate".
A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Washington, Susan Gibbs, defended the cardinal: "His message was certainly consistent with Catholic teaching, which seems appropriate since this is a Catholic university. Hopefully new graduates will be inspired by [Cardinal Arinze's] reminder that happiness does come through God", the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Another "gay" advocacy web site (365Gay.com) prominently featured the protest on Thursday, May 22; and reported that Dean McAuliffe issued an e-mail saying she was "surprised" at the speech, and is setting aside time in her office Friday to allow people to express their reactions. McAuliffe reportedly said, "I'm sure that Cardinal Arinze did not intend to hurt any of his audience, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen".
The Sydney Morning Herald also reported on the Georgetown faculty protest: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/22/1053585647833.html
Francis Cardinal Arinze:
ARISE, REJOICE, GOD IS CALLING YOU
God be praised for this major event today in the life of Georgetown University. Nearly a thousand young people are graduating. To you, dear young friends, I say: Allow serious religion to lead you to lasting joy. Happy parents and friends surround their loved ones. With them I say: Let us thank God for the gift of the family. The Company of Jesus, the Jesuits, initiated and nourish this University. With them I rejoice at the patrimony of Saint Ignatius and especially that the Catholic Church is God's gift to the world. To all I say: Arise, rejoice, God is calling you.
1. Serious Religion leads to lasting Joy.
My dear graduands, at this turning point in your lives, it is helpful to keep to essentials. One of them is to locate in what happiness consists. Everyone wants to be happy. Every human being desires lasting joy.
True happiness does not consist in the accumulation of goods: money, cars, houses. Nor is it to be found in pleasure seeking: eating, drinking, sex. And humans do not attain lasting joy by power grabbing, dominating others, or heaping up public acclaim. These three things, good in themselves when properly sought, were not able to confer on Solomon, perfect happiness. And they will not be able to confer it on anyone else! (cf Eccles 1:2-3; II King 11:1-8; Mt 20:24-28; I Jn 2:15-16).
Happiness is attained by achieving the purpose of our earthly existence. God made me to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. Saint Augustine found this out in his later age after making many mistakes in his youth. He then cried out to God: "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you" (St Aug. Conf. I, 1). My religion guides and helps me towards this. My Catholic faith puts me in contact with Jesus Christ who is the way, the truth and the life (cf Jn 14:6). God's grace helps me to live on earth in such a way as to attain the purpose of my earthly existence.
My dear graduands, allow your religion to give your life its essential and major orientation. In our lives, religion is not something marginal, peripheral, additional, optional. My Catholic faith gives meaning and a sense of direction to my life. It gives it unity. Without it my life would be like an agglomeration of scattered mosaics. It is my religion, for example, that inspires my profession, that teaches me that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving (cf Acts 20:35), that helps me to appreciate that to reach the height of my growth potential, I must learn to give of myself to others as I practice my profession as lawyer, doctor, air hostess, congress member or priest (Vatican II: Gaudium et Spes, 24).
Allow your religion to give life, joy, generosity and a sense of solidarity to your professional and social engagements. In a world of religious plurality, you will of course learn to cooperate with people of other religious convictions. True religion teaches not exclusion, rivalry, tension, conflict or violence, but rather openness, esteem, respect and harmony. At the same time you should keep intact your religious identity, your distinction as a witness of Jesus Christ.
2. Thank God for the Gift of the Family.
As I see joy and just pride reflected on the faces of the parents and friends of these graduands, I think of God's goodness in giving the gift of the family to humanity.
It is God himself who willed that a man and a woman should come to establish a permanent bond in marriage. Marriage gives rise to the family. In this fundamental cell of society, love grows. There the exercise of sexuality has its correct locus. There human maturity is nurtured. There new life utters its first cry and later smiles at the parents. There the child is first introduced to religion. Is it any wonder that the Second Vatican Council called the family "the church of the home" (cf. Lumen Gentium, 11)?
In many parts of the world, the family is under siege. It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce.
But the family has friends too. It is nourished and lubricated by mutual love, strengthened by sacrifice and healed by forgiveness and reconciliation. The family is blessed with new life, kept united by family prayer and given a model in the Holy Family of Nazareth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Christian families are moreover blessed by the Church in the name of Christ and fed by the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. It was beautiful that at the beatification of Mr. and Mrs. Luigi and Maria Beltrame-Quattrocchi in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City on October 21, 2001, three of their children were present.
May God bless all the families here present and grant our graduands who will one day set up their own families his light, guidance, strength, peace and love.
3. The Patrimony of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
We rejoice with the Jesuit Community that set up and keeps up Georgetown University. In the patrimony of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, love of the Church is prominent. It is a joy, an honor and a responsibility to belong to the one, holy catholic and apostolic Church. This Mystical Body of Christ, this largest of all religious families that ever existed, is the divinely set-up family for all peoples, languages and cultures. This Church has produced Saints from every state of life, men and women who, open to God's grace, have become signs of hope. But this same Church also has sinners in her fold. Far from discouraging and rejecting them, the Church offers them hope, wholesome Gospel teaching, saving sacraments and the invitation to abandon the food of pigs, make a U-turn and return to the refreshing joy of their Father's house, like the prodigal son (cf Lk 15: 14-24).
This Church has inherited from Christ, the Apostles and her living tradition, a non-negotiable body of doctrine on faith and morals. The tenets of the Catholic faith do not change according to the play of market forces, majority votes or opinion polls. "Jesus Christ is the same today as He was yesterday and as He will be for ever" (Heb 13:8). This is the Church that Saint Ignatius invites all his spiritual children to love and cherish. This is the Church to which we have the joy to belong.
My dear graduands, parents and the Jesuit Community of Georgetown, arise, rejoice, because God is calling us. And may God's light, peace, grace and blessing descend on you and remain with you always.
FRANCIS CARDINAL ARINZE May 17, 2003
Selecting him would make heretical liberal/secular humanists in the American Catholic church, and liberals everyone, bust a corpuscle in their collective brains! They'd have to form their own split off, ordain their abortion supporters as priests, marry gays in ceremonies, further euthansia, slander and blaspheme Christ, whatever makes their clocks tick!
Nothing to disagree with here, he sounds like he'd be a good pope.
Another theory suggests that the Italians will press to reclaim the papacy after John Paul's 26-year reign — the third-longest in history.
Who cares what a backslidden Catholic thinks? I'm a Protestant; do I get a vote?
If Cardinal Arinze is elected, will he get the Clarence Thomas treatment from the American media? The one thing they hate worse than a conservative is a non-white conservative.
-Eric
Cardinal Arinze would make an AWESOME Pope, I agree!
(However, following the rule-of-alternation, I'd have to guess another Italian. An elderly one, but an Italian... for now.)
"If elected, he would be the first black pope of modern times."
Who was/were the black pope/popes of ancient times? I've never known of him/them.
I like Arinze too.
It's a 'given'. Yes.
St. Victor I, St. Miltiades and Pope St. Gelasius I
(189-199 CE) A North African, Victor was the fifteenth pope. He is buried near the body of the apostle Peter, the first pope, in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. His feast day is July 28th.
Pope Saint Miliades 1 (311-314 CE) Not much is known of Miliades, who was born in Africa but died in Rome. He is buried on the famous Appian Way. His feast day is December 10th.
Pope Saint Gelasius 1 (492-496 CE) Born in Rome of African parents, Gelasius was a member of the Roman clergy from youth. Reportedly the most active of African popes, working to exile the Manicheans and pagans, and is author of a famous letter to the Byzantine emperor, Anastasias. His feast day is November 21st.
The above is from a very good article:
Will an African Pope Lead Catholics Again?
First published: November 18, 2003
and more:
African Popes - 
THE NATIONAL BLACK CATHOLIC CONGRESS
There were three African Popes who came from the region of North Africa. Although there are no authentic portraits of these popes, there are drawings and references in the Catholic Encyclopedia as to their being of African background. The names of the Three African Popes are: Victor (183-203 A.D.), Gelasius (492-496 A.D.), and Mechiades or Militiades (311-314 A.D.). All are saints.
Pope Saint Victor 1
Saint Victor was born in Africa and bore a Latin name as most African did at that time. Saint Victor was the fifteenth pope and a native of black Africa. He served from 186 A.D. until 197 A.D. He served during the reign of Emperor Septimus Severus, also African, who had led Roman legions in Britain. Some of the known contributions of Victor were his reaffirming the holy feast of Easter to be held on Sunday as Pius has done. As a matter of fact, he called Theophilous, Bishop of Alexandria, on the carpet for not doing this. He also condemned and excommunicated Theodore of Byzantium because of the denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ. He added acolytes to the attendance of the clergy. He was crowned with martyrdom. He was pope for ten years, two months and ten days. He was buried near the body of the apostle Peter, the first pope in Vatican. Some reports relate that St. Victor died in 198 A.D. of natural causes. Other accounts stated he suffered martyrdom under Servus. He is buried in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City near the "Convessio."
Pope Saint Victor 1 feast day is July 28th.
Pope Saint Gelasius 1
Saint Gelasius was born in Rome of African parents and was a member of the Roman clergy from youth. Of the three African popes, Gelasius seems to have been the busiest. He occupied the holy papacy four years, eight months and eighteen days from 492 A.D. until 496 A.D. Gelasius followed up Militades' work with the Manicheans. He exiled them from Rome and burned their books before the doors of the basilica of the holy Mary. He delivered the city of Rome from the peril of famine. He was a writer of strong letters to people of all rank and classes. He denounced Lupercailia, a fertility rite celebration. He asked them sternly why the gods they worshipped had not provided calm seas so the grain ships could have reached Rome in time for the winter. He wrote to Femina, a wealthy woman of rank, and asked her to have the lands of St. Peter, taken by the barbarians and the Romans, be returned to the church. The lands were needed for the poor who were flocking to Rome. His theory on the relations between the Church and the state are explained in the Gelasian Letter to the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius. He was known for his austerity of life and liberality to the poor.
There is today in the library of the church at Rome a 28 chapter document on church administration and discipline. Pope Saint Gelasius 1 feast day is November 21st.
Pope Saint Miliades 1
Saint Miltiades was one of the Church's Black Popes. Militades occupied the papacy from 311 to 314 A.D. serving four years, seven months and eight days. Militiades decreed that none of the faithful should fast on Sunday or on the fifth day of the week ...because this was the custom of the pagans. He also found residing in Rome a Persian based religion call Manichaenism. He furthered decreed that consecrated offerings should be sent throughout the churches from the pope's consecration. This was call leaven. It was Militiades who led the church to final victory over the Roman Empire. Militiades was buried on the famous Appain Way.
Pope Saint Militiades feast day is December 10th.
the last African Pope was Gelasius, who died around 500 AD, if I recall correctly. I also am hoping very much for Arinze to become the next pope. He visited Notre Dame 6 years ago when I was a freshman there and I was very impressed. Like John Paul, Arinze radiates holiness, wisdom, charisma, and an ability to reach out to young people.
Another Italian pope would be very disappointing, I think. The faith is practically dead in Italy (and most of Europe) the future of the Church is not there anymore, but rather in the US, Latin America, and Africa. The papacy should reflect this.
Gelasius I is characterized as natione Afer (an African by nation) but also as Romanus natus (Roman born).
Pope St. Melchiades may be Mel Martinez's patron saint.
Focusing on skin color and geography as a way to select a church leader is utterly mindless and absurd.
Where is the discussion about how reliably orthodox their beliefs are?
If it were to be Arinze, which I pray for - but don't expect, here is a list of folks that would go nuts:
the libs in the world media
racists
Muslim leaders
Democrat leaders
He would be great for the Church. But yep, I think the Europeans will go with another European.
Thanks for your informative reply!
The Jesuits are sooo bad. Georgetown is lost.
I don't think the portrait of Pope Victor I is a contemporary likeness...not many 2nd-century paintings have the English word "saint" on them.
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