By NCR Staff

United States

Avery Dulles, 82: a Jesuit theologian who has staunchly defended Pope John Paul II and his conservative teaching on morality. Since 1988, he has been a professor at Fordham University in New York City. He has worked to further Catholic dialogue with Lutherans and has written more than a score of books. His father, John Foster Dulles, was U.S. secretary of state during the Cold War. His uncle, Allen Welsh Dulles, was a CIA director in the 1950s.

Edward Egan, 68: named in May to lead the New York archdiocese, succeeding the late Cardinal John O’Connor. He has been an uncompromising defender of the Vatican’s ban on abortion and birth control. His many years in Rome give him good insider knowledge of the Vatican.

Theodore E. McCarrick, 70: installed as archbishop of Washington after nearly 15 years as head of the diocese of Newark, N.J. McCarrick has been an expert for U.S. bishops on international relations.

Latin America

Geraldo Majella Agnelo, 67: has been archbishop of São Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil, for two years.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 64: a Jesuit, has led the Buenos Aires archdiocese since 1998.

Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, 67: has led the Santiago, Chile, diocese since 1998. He was instrumental in exposing human rights abuses that occurred during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s rule.

Ignacio Antonio Velasco García, 72: archbishop of Caracas, Venezuela.

Cláudio Hummes, 66: has led the São Paulo archdiocese in Brazil’s largest city since 1998. A Franciscan who was edged out in 1999 in voting to elect the head of the Brazilian bishops’ conference, he is seen as a moderate who believes the church should concentrate on spiritual needs.

Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, 58: a rising personality in the Latin American church, he was appointed in 1993 head of the Tegucigalpa, Honduras, archdiocese.

Pedro Rubiano Sáenz, 68: has led the archdiocese of Bogotá in Columbia since 1994. Last year, he denounced demands by Colombian rebels to extort money in church parishes.

Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, 57: a member of Opus Dei. Before being assigned to Lima, Peru, he was assigned to the Peruvian city of Ayacucho, birthplace of the Shining Path, and in 1997 mediated between rebels and government in a hostage crisis after the attack on the Japanese ambassador’s residence.

Antonio José González Zummáraga, 75: archbishop of Quito, Ecuador.

Asia

Ivan Dias, 64: has led the Bombay, India, archdiocese since 1996. He had previously served in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, including a stint as ambassador to Albania.

Varkey Vithayathis, 73: leads the archdiocese of Emakulam-Angamaly, in India. The diocese follows the Syrian-Malabar rite, which reflects the belief that the Apostle Thomas came to India in the year 52 and established a church on the Malabar coast.

Africa

Bernard Agré, 74: has headed the archdiocese of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, since 1994.

Stephanos II Ghattas, 80: is patriarch of Alexandria, leader of the approximately 200,000 Catholic Copts in Egypt.

Europe

Audrys Juozas Backis, 64: leads the Vilnius archdiocese in Lithuania. He became a bishop in 1988.

Louis-Marie Bille, 62: leads the French bishops’ conference. He is archbishop of Lyon, France.

Desmond Connell, 74: is archbishop of his native Dublin, Ireland. He has been a bishop since 1988. He is also a member of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People.

Jean Honoré, 80: retired in 1997 as archbishop of Tours, France.

Francisco Alvarez Martínez, 75: has headed the Toledo, Spain, diocese since 1995.

Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 68: As archbishop of Westminster, he is spiritual leader to the 4.6 million Catholics in England and Wales. He replaced Cardinal Basil Hume, one of the most influential figures in British public life. Murphy-O’Connor has a track record of improving relations between Rome and the Church of England.

Severino Poletto, 67: son of Italian farmers, Poletto has led the archdiocese of Turin since June 1999. Known primarily as the custodian of the Shroud of Turin, within Italy he has been vocal in an ongoing debate about immigration. As a member of the Italian bishops’ conference, he has spoken out against the adoption of children by unmarried couples.

José Policarpo, 64: patriarch of Lisbon, Portugal. Last year, speaking of the Portuguese Inquisition, which tortured or burned at the stake tens of thousands of Jews, he said the Catholic church acknowledged its history was tarnished by those acts.

Leo Scheffczyk, 80: German theologian and a leading Catholic dogmatist, he has written dozens of publications since the 1950s.

Vatican

Agostino Cacciavillan, 74: has been a bishop in Italy since 1976, now president of the office that administers the Vatican’s vast array of property, buildings and other wealth.

Ignace Moussa I Daoud, 70: an Eastern-rite patriarch, born in Syria, he was a surprise nomination of the pope’s in November, when he was named to head a major Vatican office, the Congregation for Eastern Churches, a post previously held by cardinals of the Latin rite.

Zenon Grocholewski, 61: a Pole, leads the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, which carefully watches curriculum in seminaries, the training ground of priests in the church. He spent over 25 years working in the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature, the church’s highest court.

Walter Kasper, 67: was bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart until 1999, then went to the Vatican as a secretary of the pope’s Council for Christian Unity. He is considered to be a representative of the conservative wing of the church in Germany.

José Saraiva Martins, 68: a Portuguese native and Claretian, heads the Congregation for Sainthood Causes, a busy office at the Vatican under Pope John Paul II, who has beatified 195 people and canonized 166 since Martins’ appointment.

Jorge Maria Mejia, 78: has had a long career in the Vatican. He is currently head of the Vatican Library and Archives.

Mario Francesco Pompedda, 71: a former dean of the Vatican’s Sacred Rota, the tribunal that can grant marriage annulments, he is an Italian bishop who heads the Holy See’s Apostolic Signature.

Giovanni Battista Re, 67: appointed by the pope in September as prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, a powerful post. He is considered close to the pope through his work as undersecretary of state and is viewed by the Italian media as a possible candidate to succeed John Paul. Italian journalists speculate that Re was named a cardinal in pectore, or secretly, in 1998. The pope wished to show his esteem for Re but didn’t want a promotion that would remove him from a job sometimes described as being like a president’s chief of staff.

Sergio Sebastiani, 69: administrator of the Vatican’s prefecture for economic affairs, he helped negotiate with Italian authorities which construction projects such as tunnels and parking garages would be approved for Rome during the just-ended Holy Year.

Crescenzio Sepe, 57: an Italian monsignor with a businesslike attitude, he enjoyed a high profile as the Vatican’s man in charge of the just-ended Holy Year, which drew 25 million pilgrims to Rome.

François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuân, 72: president of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, dealing in such social and economic issues as Third World debt. The Vietnamese-born archbishop was jailed after communists took over Saigon in 1975, then sent to internment camps before being allowed to travel to Rome in 1988.

Roberto Tucci, 79: Jesuit, has earned the pope’s admiration as his advance man, helping organize trips abroad since 1982 by spending weeks or months on the road. He is director of Vatican Radio.

National Catholic Reporter, February 2, 2001

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