My other favorite choices, though, and where my heart really lies is with the Italian cardinals, Scola, Bagnasco and Ravasi. I would be in ethnocentric ecstasy with any of them!
But others seem to think we need someone from South America and we have the perfect candidate for my ethnocentric demands in a cardinal from Argentina who is born of Italian parents, His Excellency, Leonardo Cardinal SANDRI. How delicious! And wearing an Eastern Rite/Orthodox stole no less:
Born on 18 November 1943 in Buenos Aires to an immigrant Italian family, he studied at the Metropolitan Seminary of Buenos Aires and the Theological Faculty of Buenos Aires, before studying in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University (doctorate in canon law) and at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy (diplomacy).
He was ordained for the archdiocese of Buenos Aires on 2 December 1967 by (then) Archbishop Juan Carlos Aramburu. He later became Cardinal Aramburu's personal secretary before returning to Rome to continue his studies and entering into the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 1974.
As a junior diplomat, he served in the nunciatures in Madagascar and Mauritius, in the Secretariat of State in Rome, and in the nunciature of the United States of America. He returned to Rome in 1992 to take the position of Assessor of the Secretariat of State for general affairs.
He was consecrated a bishop on 11 October 1997 by Angelo Cardinal Sodano in St Peter's Basilica, with the titual see of Cittanova, and was named Papal Nuncio in Venezuala. He later became Papal Nuncio to Mexico in 2000 and was named Sostituto for General Affairs in the Secretariat of State on 16 September 2000.
It was Monsignor Sandri who read the messages of Pope John Paul II when the Holy Father became too ill to read them himself; and it was Monsignor Sandri who announced the Supreme Pontiff's death to the world in St Peter's Square on 2 April 2005.
He was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for Oriential Churches on 9 June 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI, and made a Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI at the Consistory of 24 November 2007.
He speaks Spanish, Italian, French, English and German.
As well, as Prefect for the Congregation for Oriental Churches, i.e. Eastern Rite Churches, he would certainly continue Pope Benedict's desire that the Church of the East and the Church of the West be reunited, that the Great Schism would be healed.
As well, a Cardinal that has an affinity for Eastern Rite Liturgies would continue the same type of ethos that Pope Benedict has brought to the Ordinary Form of the Mass and I would think that Cardinal Sandri would also be sympathetic to the 1962 Roman Missal as its "cultural development" is more closely aligned to the cultural developments in the Eastern Rite liturgies. There is a similar ethos in other words, lacking in the Ordinary Form as celebrated today in most places.
On top of that my grandfather whose heritage is Corsica, where Napoleon was from, and a French island off the coast of Livorno, Italy, where my grandfather's family eventually ended up (I had no idea that I had French in me until two years ago)worked for many years in Argentina although I don't know if that was before or after his marriage to my grandmother, who was taller than her Napoleon-like husband. Unfortunately for my beloved deceased mother, she took after her father in the height category rather than her taller mother.
Of course I don't want to besmirch the sexual morality of my grandfather since I don't know his disposition while he worked in Argentina, but who knows, I could have relatives there! Of course there is no way to know. I could even be related somehow to Cardinal Sandri, who knows but God!
But, when I think about my Italian, Canadian and French ancestry, it makes it all the more fascinating that Cardinal Ouellet might fit my ethnocentric demands in his two nationalities, FRENCH-Canadian, not to mention being a Sulpician! That is delicious too.
But what about my Confederate States of America heritage having grown up in Georgia? Who would fit that ancestry of mine but also have Italian roots that would make him all the more a papal candidate for me? Let me see, could it be:
Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Daniel Nicholas Cardinal DiNardo:
33 comments:
Cardinal Dinardo was born in Ohio, grew up in Pittsburgh, worked in Rome, and was named bishop of Sioux City. His heritage is Yankee, the poor thing.......
Two points:
1) Honestly Father, you're starting to sound like the most important thing the Cardinals should consider is ethnicity and that mandatory DNA testing be required in the conclave.
2) Having merely lived in the south doesn't exactly make one the "product" of the Confederate States of America, and, frankly WHY would anyone WANT to claim such a shameful thing as a boast?
U.S. Grant said it best:
"That cause, was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people every fought."
It is high time that the Papacy return to the Italians. We forget that whilst the Papacy is the seat of the universal Church it is also the seat of the diocese of Rome. I understand that a Cardinal Vicar runs the diocese proper, but it has been 35 years since an Italian has had the See, so it makes sense that an Italian diocese should have an Italian in charge.
If you disagree, how upset would the average American be if he were to get a bishop from Latvia or Belarus or Poland? I think that they would be up in arms speaking about how the bishop is out of touch. The same applies to the Archdiocese of Rome. It's easy logic.
As for who is Pope, the old addage holds true, "He who goes in as Pope, comes out as Cardinal." I would not venture to guess who it will be. I have who I would like and there are none from the New World, but that amounts to a hill of beans.
Do all of these Cardinals speak Latin as well? As Pope for International gatherings I would think it is a must...You mention French, English, Italian, Spanish, and German....What about Latin, the language of the Church?
I still think the next pope will at least have to speak Latin. We are the Latin Rite after all. Which cardinals are fluent in Latin?
I won't try to predict who will be elected pope, but I will predict what papal names each of the front runners will take:
Cardinal Bagnasco - Gregory XVII (in honor of his mentor, Cardinal Siri, who reportedly chose that name when he was allegedly elected pope in 1958 only to be forced to decline due to threats made by the USSR, allowing the liberal candidate, Cardinal Roncalli, to be elected).
Cardinal Ouelette - Innocent XIV
Cardinal Turkson - Victor IV
Cardinal Pell - Pius XIII
Cardinal Scola - Clement XV
Cardinal Llovera - Leo XIV
Cardinal Sandri - Leo XIV
Cardinal Ravasi - Clement XV
Cardinal Ranjith - Pius XIII
Cardinal Tagle - Innocent XIV
Cardinal Burke - either Leo XIV or Pius XIII
Cardinal Dolan - either Cletus II or Mark II
The priests I have known who have worked in the Vatican report that the common languages used in day-to-day life and work are Italian, English, and some French.
I suspect many of the cardinals have the ability to read and understand Latin, but it is not used in daily communication or conversations among them.
The Vatican has Latinists - people who are frighteningly good at that language - who are responsible for drafting documents or translating them into Latin as needed. (Interestingly, when the Catechism of the Catholic Church was being drafted, the choice to begin with Latin and then translate it into useful languages failed. French was the original language used; then it was translated into Latin, then into various vernaculars.)
Traci - the "conspiracy" to oust Siri in favor of Roncalli is a fantasy.
Myself being half Sicilian and from you neighbor to the east I vote for someone Sicilian! Dont know of any though? From the Sicilians I am related to and have been around, they make the absolute best Catholics. I sometimes compare Sicily to the southern U.S. It seems to be more religious than other parts of Italy, much like the south is more religious than other places in the U.S.
We're on both ends of the Italian spectrum Fr. McD!
Dear Andy:
If the Church is truly the UNIVERSAL Church, ethnicity and nationality should play no role in determining who should be pope. I think Father is having a bit of fun with all of his "ethnocentric demands", but need I remind you that the first Bishop of Rome was a Jew from Palestine?
As regards getting a bishop from Latvia, Belarus or Poland, I would be all too happy to accept a bishop from any such region, so long as he was orthodox. As I seem to remember, the last Bishop of Savannah was from Ireland and I didn't hear too many complaints about that.
"The Vatican has Latinists - people who are frighteningly good at that language - who are responsible for drafting documents or translating them into Latin as needed."
Durior est oratio tua lingua dedit. Syntaxi linguae Germanicae linguae longe facilius possint quam. Galli super usu latine sed nihil facile intelligere omnia ad politicam et circa Ioannes Paulus Christophorus Card. Schonborn. Neuter vult Latina usi sunt. Cum vero Sancta Mater Ecclesia editionem typicam victoria fuit Latine editum. Ut terror Gallici. Linguam latinam est non difficillima lingua, Pater Kavanaugh.
Tracy and Pater Ignotus:
As I have heard--and it is only a rumor--Siri was threatened by schism upon his election in 1958 by a bloc of Cardinals with Masonic affiliation.
Now Pater Ignotus, before you denounce this as a "fantasy", I would prefer the more tempered term "rumor" or even "legend". Since it is unverifiable, it may or may not be true.
I know it's easy to dismiss conspiracy theories as lunacy, but think about it: The entire Church is based on a conspiracy theory. The Devil wants to destroy our souls and ruin God's kingdom and we are pawns in his battle against the Almighty. Have we forgotten that there really IS something supernatural about our faith?
Yes I am having great fun with my ethnocentric demand including the "rebel" one!
Woolery, you need to read a little bit about the War Between the States and the historical period leading up to it. What is truly shameful is for someone to be ignorant enough to believe all the revisionist garbage written about the Confederacy and the South. If the Souith is such a terrible place, why are so many Yankees moving here and bringing their disgusting urban/secular values with them?
Andy - Latin may not be a "difficillima lingua," but it is certainly unnecessary. And if you want me to understand you, write in English.
Joe - It is a fantasy - as fantastic as the claim that Paul VI was kidnapped and replaced by a look-alike, as fantastic as the assertion that "Six Protestant Ministers" were responsible for the Mass of Paul VI, as fantastic as belief that Jesuits and Knights of Columbus swear a blood-oath to kill Protestants.
And THEN you add to it the Masonic rumor . . . Did you see that photo of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sharing a Masonic Handshake......?
Gene:
I didn't say the South was a terrible place. I said the legacy of slavery was shameful. And as far as the "yankee" thing goes, if you went to a foreign country and they found out that you were from America, they wouldn't ask you which region you came from, and they wouldn't care if you were from the South. They'd just call you by the name that they love to call Americans: "Yankee". And assuming that everyone who isn't from the south is a "disgusting urban secularist" is just as bigoted as someone from New York calling southerners "unwashed rednecks." Let's take it easy with the stereotypes.
Now as far as why so many are moving to the south, let me say three words: Cheap real estate.
Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy (unrevised): "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
For every slave and slave-owning family, the South was a terrible place.
Andy - AARGH!! Ending a sentence
with 'quam' ??!! And "Linguam Latinam est ..." Did no-one ever tell you that the verb 'to be (esse)' takes a complement in the nominative case, as indeed does English?
Pater Ignotus
Your recent comments have been very much to the point, and although I suspect we might have our differences, there is nothing that can't be resolved over a pint in the pub. I'm no Latinist, although as the sacred language of the Church for over a millennium and a half, and which in Gregorian Chant has formed her liturgy, it is hardly "unnecessary" to use your epithet.
I don't normally blog in Latin, but in the light of "Whatever goes around, comes around" it seems to be quite elegantly latinized as "Quodcumque circuit, circumvenit".
Oremus pro invicem.
Woolery, where did I say that everyone who isn't from the South is a "disgusting urban secularist?" I must have missed that.
It is more than cheap real estate. These people have voted for policies that have turned the large urban centers into un-liveable ghettos with high taxes and oppressive governments. They move to the "sun belt" to get away from it, then continue voting for people like Obama, Cuomo, Bloomberg, and the Daley types who want to turn the South into the same thing. There are, of course, exceptions, but stereotypes are stereotypes because they are based upon accurate, anecdotal generalizations.
Fun post Fr.! Also, you know, there is a rumor that you are clairvoyant. tee hee
To me, being both a white southerner and a Roman Catholic in the south can be a dichotomy, of sorts. I consider myself to be very much formed by, and part, of the larger southern white rural culture. At the same time, I am very much part of a religious minority (2-3%?) in Georgia.
I thank God for my Catholic religion but sometimes I am, admittedly, a little jealous of my Baptist and Methodist neighbors when I attend a Catholic parish dinner and the ladies (many of whom are not southern) don't seem to understand the importance of mixing the sugar with the hot steeped tea BEFORE adding the cold water for iced tea. Adding sugar to cold iced tea just doesn't work! I also thank God for my former Southern Baptist mother and for my wife, of the same background!
John,
I was speaking in vulgar Latin. I can assure you that they spoke in this manner. As it is, when we learn Latin, we don't learn the language as it was spoken, but rather we learn it formally. Since Fr. McDonald does not stand on formality, I don't either.
However, thank you for noticing that my usage was colloquial and not formal. It was intended.
Fr. Kavanaugh, Latin is necessary. It is up to the Church to determine that, not you. The Church has determined that it is necessary. I suppose you don't listen to the Pope either, when he speaks in Latin and just dismiss it? I know that I am not Pope, but I do share in the royal priesthood of Christ and as such, when I speak to you in the language of the Church, I would appreciate a proper response and not simply dismissal; from one priest to another.
Andy, the Latin of the Vulgate is not Ciceronian, but it is grammatical. Kindly explain why you imagine that the verb 'to be' has ever had an object in the accusative case - it doesn't in modern languages. I would also like you to give me an example of the preposition 'super' being followed by a noun in the ablative case.
You can't excuse solecisms by stating, without any evidence, that "this is the way that people spoke at the time". Your Latin sounds as if it has been generated by Google. Believe me, it doesn't work.
...or perhaps I did it on purpose...look at to whom I was addressing.
Just sayin'....
I will be more precise next time.
"I said the legacy of slavery was shameful." Chuck, be careful with those aspersions. I was raised in the North, but live in the South. I have known many northerners who treat blacks very badly, to this day. And I have encountered very little of that in the South.
Slavery, which so many are quick to paint as a unique problem of the South, is nothing of the sort. It has been practiced in all cultures, against all cultures, at one time or another. And it is also Biblical.
Mindless slurs against the South are no better than mindless slurs against an ethnic group.
And as to bringing our "urban/secular values" with us, Gene, kindly bite your tongue. Many of us have some south without doing any such thing. In fact, we generally come, in part, for the continuing (if rather fainter than in the past) commitment to states' rights.
Andy - I don't listen to the Pope when he speaks in any language other than English because I can't understand him in any other language. Same goes for you.
Bill - Slavery is not "biblical" if, by that, you mean approved, allowed, preferred, encouraged, or acceptable to God.
Adultery, like slavery, is reported in the Bible, but so are murder, fraud, theft, deception, etc.
And I still contend that a legacy of slavery is shameful, whether it was from the south, Ancient Rome, Babylon or anywhere else. Yes, yes, yes, I've heard all the circuitous arguments that the Civil War was about states' rights and the like, but the fact is the "right" that the southern states wanted to keep most dearly was the right to own slaves and secession came upon the election of a president committed to ending slavery.
I suppose one could say that incest is biblical too, since it's mentioned in the Bible, but that doesn't make it right. It wouldn't matter how many cultures have practiced slavery, it is still a shameful practice and a good deal of blood was shed in this country to end it once and for all. And we still live with the effects of it in our inner cities and elsewhere where racial tensions continue to simmer.
I think we need to remember that one of the reasons we fought the Crusades was because Muslims were enslaving Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. And papal condemnations against enslaving Africans go back as far as 1435 when Pope Eugene IV condemned the treatment of natives in the Canary Islands.
If these "slurs" are mindless, please correct me. If any of this information is false, please correct me, I promise to take no offense.
I am not from the South either and the whole "urban secular values" things is a false argument anyway. If anything the general population of the South is about as moral or amoral as anywhere else. The only difference here is a facade of respectability and pretended conservatism. Drug use is rampant here as is illegitimacy. We are a fallen race and we all have a missionary duty to work to change the culture whether we live in Dogpatch or Detroit.
PI, I meant only that slavery is reported in the Bible; to wail and gnash teeth over American slavery as unique is to be, at best, disingenuous. That is not a defense, but a matter of recognizing reality, without which rational discussion is not possible.
Bill - I don't think anyone thinks that American slavery was unique.
My biggest fear is history will repeat itself. John XXIII had a short pontificate, but set the stage for some great things in the Church: he promulgated the 1962 Missal and called the Vatican II council to discuss how the Church can deal with, and re-convert, the modern world. Then he died, leaving Paul VI to stay the course and build on the foundation he set. But what happened? Paul VI screwed everything up. Vatican II became more of the Church submitting to the modern world, rather than finding ways to have the world submit to God. The 1962 Missal, after less than a decade, was thrown out in favor of Bugnini's Catholic-protestant hybrid Novus Ordo. Vocations dropped off at an alarming rate. The sex abuse scandal and cover-up went into full force.
My fear is Benedict XVI is setting the foundation for great things, just like John XXIII, but we're going to end up with another giant screw up like Paul VI. God help us please in the election of the new Pope.
@Dan Z: the likely "screw up" Paul VI types would be Bertone, Turkson, Schonborn, any of the Latin American cardinals who embrace "liberation theology", and any African cardinal who embraces condom use to combat aids.
The Cardinals I am praying for who may be elected next pope are Bagnasco, Ranjith, Piancenza, Llovera, and Pell. Lord God, if it be according to Your Holy Will, and beneficial to Your Church, may one of these men be elected pope.
Ouellet and Scola would be status quo. Not a disaster, but not great, either.
Obviously, Burke and Dolan are fantasy candidates, as an American will not be elected.
One name I haven't heard mentioned much is Dziwisz. As John Paul II's personal secretary for over 20 years, he is the dark horse candidate, and could be the second Polish pope. If anyone were to be John Paul III, it would be Dziwisz.
Maybe an American WILL get elected. "Peter the Roman" could signify a pope from the "new Roman Empire" or the world's lone superpower: America. If that's the case, I don't see Dolan or O'Malley getting the nod. Of course, Mahony is probably still convinced that HE will be elected pope. No, if it was an American, the likely candidate would be Burke.
Of course, this is all speculation. God already knows who the winning candidate is.
Yes, God already knows who is the winner, so to speak, but it is fun speculating. I'll be happy with whomever the Almighty Father chooses even if it is someone I would not have chosen.
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