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Two more cardinals and an archbishop have offered their agreement with the German Cardinal Walter Kasper that the Church should offer Holy Communion to Catholics in “irregular” marital situations. U.S. Vaticanist John Allen, writing on Crux, quoted Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, the office that interprets Church law, saying that in cases of “urgency and necessity” Catholics who have divorced and civilly remarried, should be readmitted to Communion. Coccopalmerio gave the “hard case” example of a woman civilly married to a man who had been abandoned by his wife and who cares...

After Verona: How to “Restore Full Citizenship to the Christian Faith”Pope Ratzinger and his vicar, Ruini, see in Italy “a rather favorable terrain” for the public rebirth of Christianity in Europe and the world, too. But many do not accept their view. And the archbishop of Milan, Tettamanzi, has placed himself at the head of the opposition by Sandro MagisterROMA, October 26, 2006 – After the five-day conference in Verona, the uniqueness of the Italian Church will be the highly envied object of study in the episcopal sees of Europe and America, especially where Christianity is most in decline. From...

Moscow, Oct. 03 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi (bio - news) of Milan has agreed to make a church in that city available for use by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Interfax news service reports. Cardinal Tettamanzi, who is in Moscow this week for visits with Orthodox leaders, made the announcement during a meeting with Patriarch Alexei II. The Italian cardinal said that the parish church of St. Anthony, in downtown Milan, will be offered for occasional use by the Russian Orthodox community there, until a parish church is turned over permanently to the Orthodox.

CARDINAL WHO WARNED OF 'ANTICHRIST' RISES IN BETTING ODDS Though Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi is the odds-on favorite to be the next pope, global betting parlors are reporting an influx of bets on Cardinal Giacomo Biffi. "From what I can see here, there's been a lot of wagers on Biffi," Mani Sanders of Pinnacle Sports, an online gambling service based on the resort island in the Netherlands Antilles, told the Providence Journal. Cardinal Biffi, emeritus bishop of the archdiocese of Bologna, was recently listed as a 125-to-1 long shot to succeed John Paul II. But does Pinnacle know something we don't?...

Oddsmakers have Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi of Milan, a favorite of John Paul II, as favorite to succeed the late pontiff. Some say the charming moral theologian is campaigning too hard. Serinelli GETTY Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi kisses the hand of Pope John Paul II. Lepri AP Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi of Milan is the odds-on favorite of every bookmaker taking wagers on the next Pope. He would just hate that. A moral theologian who looks like Pope John XXIII and thinks like Pope John Paul II, Tettamanzi has fulminated against gambling, which he says is immoral because it enslaves people. "Man...

Throughout his steadily rising church career, Milan Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi has had a knack of being in the right place at the right time. The outcome of the secret conclave of cardinals to elect the next pope will tell if that pattern still holds for Tettamanzi, the favorite of many of those who think the papacy will return to the Italians after the 26-year tenure of a Polish pope broke their 455-year hold on the papacy. A 71-year-old theologian whom John Paul II often consulted, Tettamanzi is a moderate, but his staunch defense of the pope's teaching against abortion and...

NPR.org, April 2, 2005 · "Tip O'Neill was correct," says Father Tom Reese, editor in chief of America, the Catholic weekly magazine. "All politics is local... even in the Catholic Church." Reese suggests that instead of focusing on the possible papal candidates as a bookie would look at horses in the starting gate, try to think about the election from the point of view of the electors, the cardinals who cast the votes. "Each cardinal is thinking, how will this candidate go over in my diocese?" Reese says. "If you're from the Third World, you're concerned with people who are...

<p>Sickness is not preventing John Paul II from fighting out his last battle. But in the meantime, maneuvers over his succession are underway.</p> <p>In short, two or three Italian candidates might enter the conclave and jockey for leadership, as happened between Giuseppe Siri and Giovanni Benelli in the memorable head-to-head of the second conclave of 1978, the one from which a new man, Wojtyla, finally emerged.</p>