Posted on 02/08/2005 9:22:30 AM PST by Destro
February 07, 2005
Eye on Eurasia: A Siberian Pope?
Eye on Eurasia: A Siberian Pope?
By Paul Goble
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Tartu, Estonia, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- At the height of the Cold War, Morris West published a novel titled "The Shoes of the Fisherman," which tells how a Russian Catholic priest long imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag concentration camp system becomes by a strange twist of fate the pope of Rome and helps the world's major powers to overcome their divisions.
Five years later, that book became the basis for a popular motion picture of the same name starring Anthony Quinn. And now, 40 years later, at least one Russian journalist is suggesting that life might come to imitate art and that after the death of John Paul II, "the next Pope might come from Siberia."
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
I was kinda rooting for Arinze.
Oh, and the Pope in Morris West's novel was Byzantine Rite, not Latin. He probably would have had to have been the Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Lvov, though I don't think the novel said as much. I'm not aware of any other Cardinalatial Sees in the former USSR.
Like I said above: This is just speculation by a Russian journalist - repeated on the Washington Times. Probably points to Russian paranoia about the West more so than actual reality (and I should add thanks to your post, without knowledge of how these things work).
I agree with your post. However, you are not taking into account possible/probable existance of Cardinals "in pectore" - elevated to the Cardinalate secretly - whose status is unknown to all but the Pope and one or two trusted imtimates.
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