"Vice's" Vicar?
Jan 14, 2008
While appointments of new heads for the
English-speaking world's two most prominent sees edge their way toward B16's desk, an assignment closer to home currently stands at the top of the pontiff's personnel pecking order.
Whispers in the Loggia, Monday, January 14, 2008
"Vice's" Vicar?
While appointments of new heads for the
English-speaking world's two most prominent sees edge
their way toward B16's desk, an assignment closer to
home currently stands at the top of the pontiff's
personnel pecking order.
And, per usual, the "Vice-Pope" is reported to be all
over it.
A well-placed leak slipped into the Italian press over
the weekend relayed that the Secretary of State
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has "invented" the
appointment of Cardinal Agostino Vallini (right), the
current "chief justice" of the church, to succeed
Cardinal Camillo Ruini as papal vicar for Rome, the de
facto shepherd of the Pope's diocese.
In a selection stakes dominated by such Italian church
A-listers as Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice and the
Urb's high-flying auxiliary Bishop Rino Fisichella,
the rollout of the near-invisible Vallini, 67, prefect
of the Apostolic Signatura -- the church's top
tribunal -- would seem somewhat unusual on its face.
Then again, as Il Riformista's Paolo Rodari wrote on
Saturday, replacing the all-prominent Ruini --
arguably the most influential Italian churchman of the
last generation -- with a much quieter choice would
fit "perfectly" into the Cardinal-Secretary's master
plan to "direct," from the church's side, "the conduct
of relations with the political world": exactly the
role which, by force of personality, Ruini has held
unchallenged since taking over as Rome's vicar in
1990. The cardinal turns 77 next month.
In airing the backstory, Rodari notes that "things
could change" before an appointment is formally
announced. That's always the case with Vatican moves,
of course, but given the players and their history,
it's especially true on this one.
Not long after Bertone's arrival on the scene in late
2006, Benedict's Vicar and "Vice" (both shown above in
a 2007 meeting with Italian President Giorgio
Napolitano and Premier Romano Prodi) memorably clashed
over the future arrangement of the Italian hierarchy's
top tier.
Seeking to deconstruct Ruini's media and policy empire
-- which he had built up through his twin posts as
vicar for Rome and president of the Italian episcopal
conference, the CEI -- Bertone pushed for the
appointment of a low-ranking archbishop hidden away in
Southern Italy to the latter office. (Given the Pope's
role as primate of Italy, the head of its episcopal
conference is chosen by papal appointment.)
Protesting his confrere's aim to "publicly disown" his
presidency and "decapitate" the CEI, a stunned Ruini
persuaded Benedict to halt the plan. In the end, the
appointment went to Bertone's successor in Genoa,
Angelo Bagnasco, who was deemed an acceptable balance
of Ruini's drive for a prominent successor with
Bertone's priority for a nominee stationed far from
the TV studios and political salons of Rome. Bagnasco
became a cardinal at the November consistory.
According to Rodari, the "exclusion" of Fisichella and
the CEI secretary Bishop Giuseppe Betori -- a Ruini
disciple -- from the shortlist leaves a terna composed
of three cardinals: Vallini, Scola and Angelo
Comastri, the archpriest of St Peter's and papal vicar
for Vatican City.
A former seminary rector, auxiliary bishop and
vicar-general of Naples, Vallini was born on the
outskirts of Rome. The publicity-shy prelate returned
to his native province in 1999 as bishop of Albano,
the largest of the city's suburban dioceses, and was
named to head the Signatura in 2004. Benedict made him
a cardinal at his first consistory in 2006. Of the 120
cardinal-electors who would select a new bishop of
Rome in a hypothetical conclave, Vallini is the
group's closest thing to a native of the Pope's
diocese.
Discussions on the appointment are so far advanced
that, according to the leftist daily, the Signatura's
top post is already foreseen passing to the tribunal's
current #2, Bishop Velasio DePaolis, a 72 year-old
Scalabrinian.
Benedict received Ruini, Vallini and DePaolis in
private audiences on Friday.
"Vice's" Vicar?