A Passion for Being Non-Committal

Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi

Function: Archbishop of Milano, Italy

Title: Cardinal Priest of Ss Ambrogio e Carlo

Birthdate: Mar 14, 1934	Country: Italy

Elevated: Feb 21, 1998	More information: www.catholic-hierarchy.org

Send a text about this cardinal »

View all articles about this cardinal »

A Passion for Being Non-Committal
Apr 04, 2005
Dionigi Tettamanzi, born in Milan (1934). Small in appearance, more like Sicilian or south Italian than light-skinned north Italian. Said to be an excellent moral theologian, one of Pope John Paul II's major areas of expertise.

(Society of Saint Pius X Africa) Moral theology is an intensely topical and controversial field now. All conventional moral teaching is being called into question and many points never before challenged are explicitly called into question. Systematic treatments of ethical questions are of great importance in order to help priests make judgments in the confessional.

Ordained in 1957, after teaching moral theology most of his life and writing books, he was made Archbishop of Ancona in 1991. Highly popular with other Italian bishops, he was elected President of the Italian Bishops' Conference quite a few years ago, and predictions that he would some day be elected pope began to be heard. When a lot of bishops really like and trust you, when they feel you are the kind of man they want to represent them to the world and act as a fair judge in their quarrels with other bishops, you seem to have the main qualities a pope will need.

As he was in the seminary with Giovanni Battista Re, and they seem to have stayed friends, it is thought that Re, as one of the two or three most powerful men in the next conclave, will back his old friend. Tettamanzi is criticized occasionally for weakness, caution, cowardice, a passion for being non-committal. When made a cardinal (1998), it appeared he was not confident, not very familiar with worldly people and their ways - certainly not at ease with the mob of well-wishers who suddenly found him important because he was a cardinal, nor the newspapers that said he might become pope.

36 READERS ONLINE

INDEX

back to the first page

printer-friendly

CARDINALS

in alphabetical order

ARTICLES