See preceding page for earlier posts today, 1/16/11.
Another sign of a strong Papacy:
Benedict XVI names a Protestant
to head the Vatican's Science Academy
by Luigi Accattoli
Translated from
January 16, 2011
Pope Benedict has named a Protestant - the Swiss Werner Arber, a Nobel Prize laureate in medicine - to head the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. It is a bit of news that augurs well for the health of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, whom this and other decisions in recent weeks show to be in no way intimidated nor closed in on himself as those who are prejudiced would persist in depicting him.
Without in any way encroaching on the great shadow cast by Papa Wojtyla, whose beatification in record time Benedict announced day before yesterday, and without bringing up complex questions like the umprecedented new financial measures he promulgated on December 30 - though both are important markers of progress - we can also cite two other recent actions this Pope has taken in the ecumenical field, which allow us to give the right context to the novelty of having a Protestant president for a pontifical academy.
On the first day of the year. Benedict announced his convocation of a third inter-religious day of prayer in Assisi next October on the 25th anniversary of the first event, and yesterday he instituted the first Personal Ordinariate to accommodate Anglicans who are joining the Catholic Church, and naming as the first Ordinary - equivalent in rank to a diocesan bishop - a married ex-Anglican bishop, now a Catholic priest.
Getting back to the Calvinist president of the Academy of Sciences, in order to understand this unprecedented decision, we must recall the conviction often expressed by Cardinal Ratzinger that "even outside the Catholic Church, there are many true Christians, and many who are truly Christian".
But there is a more specific reason, focused on the fact that the new Academy president is a physician: Cardinal Ratzinger also maintained on important occasions that Christians of every denomination "must atrive to render common witness on the great moral questions".
Papa Ratzinger is confident that in Werner Arber, a Reformed Evangelical, he has an ally for this 'common witness' in the increasingly contested field of bioethics.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2011 05:57]