Benedict XVI to name
Cardinal Ouellet to Bishops?
NEWS ALERT: In an article today, Andrea Tornielli says that
"unless there are improbable, but always possible. last-minute surprises", the Holy Father will soon name Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Montreal to head the Congregation for Bishops.
The news comes after a flurry of reports in recent days that Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, who was all but definitively named by news reports to be the next Prefect of Bishops, ultimately declined the position citing health reasons.
But most news reports claim it is because objections had been raised to his involvement in cases of sexual abuse that had been previously investigated and for which he was cleared.
Damian Thompson summarized the developments regarding Pell this way:
Cardinal Pell is the victim
of a smear campaign designed
to stop him from reforming
the world's bishops
June 16th, 2010
I write this with some urgency. For the last week, Catholic sources have been insisting that Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, will not take up his appointment as Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. Two reasons are given – one connected to his health, the other to utterly false sex abuse allegations he faced years ago.
I now have good reason to believe that Cardinal Pell – a man of towering presence and intellect, utterly faithful to Pope Benedict’s vision for renewing the Church – is the victim of a smear campaign endorsed by certain bishops, especially Italian ones, who are desperate to stop Pell cleaning up what are in effect the “rotten boroughs” of their dioceses. We must pray that the Holy Father ignores the campaign.
Reason number one: Pell is “in poor health”. True, he has a pacemaker. Otherwise, he’s is reasonably good shape – certainly well enough to take up his position. He’s healthier than many of his elderly critics, sitting in their dioceses doing absolutely nothing that might disturb their sleepy lifestyle.
Reason number two: Cardinal Pell is tainted by sex abuse allegations. This is garbage.
The Age newspaper in Australia carries this very revealing report:
Cardinal George Pell, whose promotion to a top Vatican job was expected this month, has been dropped from consideration because of former abuse allegations against him, according to informed sources in Rome.
Cardinal Pell stood down as Archbishop of Sydney in 2002 after he was accused of abusing a teenager at a church camp in the 1960s, but an independent investigation by a retired non-Catholic judge cleared him.
Vatican watchers now say important officials have worked to undermine Cardinal Pell as the next head of the Congregation of Bishops, partly from concerns over negative publicity about the abuse allegations and partly for internal political reasons, including the desire for an Italian to take the job.
But these officials aren’t really concerned about “negative publicity” over allegations that turned out to be lies: they are exploiting those lies to protect themselves.
My question: why should this campaign of black propaganda succeed? Not since the election of Benedict XVI has an appointment so horrified the smug, lazy, liberal establishment in the Vatican and the dioceses.
That’s because Cardinal Pell has detailed knowledge of the situation not only in Italy, where many bishops do about as much to earn their positions as British MPs did before the Reform Act of 1832, but also in Latin America and Asia.
Cardinal Pell’s message to the bishops woud be: “Sorry, gentlemen, but this is not a job for life. You must exhibit evangelical dynamism and obedience to the Holy Father – and, if you don’t, then there are holy priests ready to take your place.” Hence this foul campaign.
If Tornielli's report materializes, then it is not that the 'foul campaign' has succeeded, but that Cardinal Pell himself saw how it could be counter-productive for the Church and for him if he took the job. Cardinal Ouellet enjoys the same excellent stature that Pell has, apparently without any 'abuse' baggage, true or false, and although he apparently has French ancestry, as a Canadian, he is just as familiar as Pell with the affairs of the Anglo-Saxon ecclesial community. Question: Will possible involvement, no matter how marginal, in any sex abuse case, now become an exclusion criterion for choosing Curial officials?
Another Curial rumor reported today is that the Sostituto, or Deputy Secretary of Satte for General Affairs, Mons. Fernando Filoni, is being pushed by certain quarters to be named to head the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, whose prefect, Indian Cardinal Ivan Dias, has long been rumored to be in poor health and set to resign. (Rumors started more than a year ago, but Cardinal Dias is still in place. I hope he remains there as long as possible!)
Filoni is often named as among those Vatican insiders whose agenda is different from the Pope's, but no one has explained why Benedict XVI himself recalled him from his Apostolic Nuncio duty in the Philippines (he was Nuncio to Saddam Hussein's Iraq before that) to take the number-2 post at the Secretariat of State. He was named before Cardinal Bertone took over as Secretary of State when Mons. Leonardo Sandri, who had been Sosituto for 8 years under John Paul II, was named Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches.
The other bishop in the news that I failed to post about yesterday is Mons. Walter Mixa, former Bishop of Augsburg, who has now publicly claimed that pressure from his fellow bishops forced him to resign, and says he intends to present his case to the Pope himself when he meets him at the Vatican next month.
Mixa was accused of having sexually abused one of the altar boys who worked for him in the 1970s, but the supposed accuser immediately came out and denied the report, saying that Mixa had been a good and proper pastor. Likewise, the German police investigating the case decided that it was unfounded and dropped all charges.
However, Mixa was earlier accused of physically beating children when he was a priest, and of using parish funds to buy some items for a personal art collection. He first denied the physical abuse, and then admitted it. When the sexual abuse charge first surfaced, other German bishops immediately asked for his resignation. He did, though he denied the sex abuse charge, and the Pope accepted his resignation.
Fr. Lombardi said yesterday it was unlikely the Pope would reconsider the resignation.
While one must be thankful that Mixa appears clear of the single sex-abuse case that has emerged against him so far (and may there be no more!), he could not have expected to stay on as Bishop of Augsburg, having lied so blatantly about the physical abuse charges at first, and having admitted using church funds to indulge a personal hobby! It goes directly to a question of personal character, as much as guilt for sexual abuse does.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/06/2010 21:10]