| New Vatican appointments: Slight shift to
center
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome
In what amounts to a shuffle of senior cabinet officials, Pope
John Paul II has appointed a theological conservative whose primary language is
English to the church’s top liturgical post, and put two
moderate-to-liberal prelates in line to join the college of cardinals.
In terms of potential impact on the next papal election, the Oct.
1 appointments seem to confirm the front-runner status of two longtime
favorites, but also to shift the balance of power slightly in favor of a more
wide-open race.
Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Nigerian who has served as the
pope’s top officer for interreligious dialogue since 1984, was tapped to
head the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
He replaces Chilean Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez.
Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, an Englishman and since 1991
Arinze’s chief Vatican aide, will succeed him at the Pontifical Council
for Interreligious Dialogue. Archbishop Renato Martino, an Italian who has been
the Holy See’s delegate to the United Nations since 1986, will return to
Rome to lead the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
The Apostolic Patrimony of the Holy See, the office responsible
for Vatican finances, gets a new head in Archbishop Attilio Nicora, a longtime
force in the Italian bishops’ conference on issues of finance and
church/state relations. It was Nicora who oversaw the 1984 revision of the
concordat, or basic agreement, between Italy and the Vatican.
The pope also upgraded one of his closest former aides, Cardinal
Giovanni Battista Re, to the status of “cardinal-bishop,” the highest
of the three grades within the rank of cardinal. Re remains head of the
Congregation for Bishops.
Both Arinze, 69, and Re, 68, have long figured prominently among
the papabili, or cardinals mentioned as candidates to be the next pope,
and their new appointments amount to further signs of papal favor.
Although Arinze does not have an extensive background in liturgy,
he taught the subject in Nigeria for two years in the early 1960s at the Enugu
seminary. In 2001, he published a collection of meditations on the Mass called
The Holy Eucharist published by Our Sunday Visitor.
Sources close to Arinze say he stresses preparation in liturgical
practice, and patience in reform. “The work of an enthusiast done
overnight does not last,” he once said.
During Medina’s term the Congregation for Divine Worship
became controversial, above all in the English-speaking world, by insisting on
greater uniformity in liturgical practice, based on Roman models, and by
asserting control over agencies and processes previously run by bishops and
bishops’ conferences. The struggle over the International Commission on
English in the Liturgy is the best-known example.
Sources who know Arinze, widely seen as a theological
traditionalist, do not expect him to bring significant changes in philosophy.
His African background, however, may make him slightly more sympathetic to the
case for “inculturation,” or allowing worship to be influenced by the
customs of the surrounding culture.
One early test may be whether Arinze extends Medina’s
policies to other language groups. Sources told NCR that French-speaking
bishops recently received a request from Medina to retranslate liturgical texts
in light of the May 2001 Vatican instruction Liturgiam Authenticam,
which demanded a much more literal approach to the Latin originals. Liturgists
will be watching to see if Arinze pushes the question or allows it to drop.
Both Fitzgerald, 65, and Martino, who turns 70 Nov. 23, are seen
as theological moderates and social progressives. If both men become cardinals,
a traditional rank for Vatican officials who occupy the posts they now hold,
they would bolster the small center-left wing in the College of Cardinals. Its
leading figures now include two Germans, Cardinals Walter Kasper and Karl
Lehmann, recently retired Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, and American
Cardinal Roger Mahony.
Fitzgerald is a member of the Missionaries of Africa. He was
widely mentioned a year ago as a candidate to succeed Cardinal Basil Hume at
Westminster, a job that eventually fell to Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.
Nicora, 65, known as an able administrator, is conservative
theologically. As bishop of Verona in 1996, he instructed his clergy not to
cooperate with efforts of the “We Are Church” group to collect
signatures on a petition supporting measures such as women priests, recognition
of homosexual marriages and the repeal of mandatory clerical celibacy.
National Catholic Reporter, October 11,
2002
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