Wednesday, April 13, 2005
OVER AT SPERO WEBLOG
is a blog titled "While we are all speculating on the next Pope" which offers a candidate I bet no one has heard of:
One of our journalists today reminded me of a story run by CNS back in about 2002/2003 about a group of Argentine bishops on their ad limina to Rome. We looked it up. During their audience with John Paul II they thanked him for making an Argentine bishop a cardinal. One of them said to the Holy Father that the new Cardinal would make a worthy successor to John Paul II. The Pope deadpanned "My successor has not yet been appointed a cardinal."
The next, and last, consistory was in 2003. 30 prelates were appointed Cardinals. Try looking at Cardinal Telesphore Placidus Toppo of the archdiocese of Ranchi in India. He is a tribal, a member of a group who are at the bottom of the social scale in India and historically the object of institutionalised prejudice from all levels of society.
This cardinal believes in bishops living with the poor, wearing clericals in public even in hostile territory, the importance of seminarians being schooled in chastity. Wouldn't he make a dazzling follow-up to a Polish Pope? Would all the American bishops resign?
