Italy Cardinal Held Powerful Vatican Post
Apr 13, 2005
Usually it's the cardinal who calls on the pope. But Giovanni Battista Re was so close to John Paul II that the late pontiff once interrupted an Alpine vacation to fly to the Italian cardinal's hometown.
VATICAN CITY (AP, April 11, 2005) - The 71-year-old Re, whose last name means ``king'' in Italian, ranks high on lists of strong contenders to become the next pope.
He has served for years in some of the Vatican's most powerful offices, including one grappling with the clergy sexual abuse scandals. Even if Re isn't chosen as pontiff, his views could sway the outcome.
The Rev. Thomas Reese, a priest and Vatican expert who is editor of the Jesuit magazine America, recently called Re “a possible kingmaker.”
But the extraordinary access Re enjoyed near the top of the Vatican's power pyramid might be viewed as a liability by some princes of the Church, who have just witnessed an incredible outpouring of emotion in Rome as millions bid farewell their beloved John Paul.
John Paul reached out to his flock whenever he could - from informal Sunday visits to working-class parishes in Rome to jubilant rallies with adoring youths in stadiums around the world. Re, in contrast, has a reputation for churning out paperwork from his offices; in evenings, he can sometimes be seen hobnobbing with VIPs at Rome high-society events.
Re was born in 1934 in the province of Brescia, the same northern area which was home to Paul VI, who was also named Giovanni Battista.
Re's hometown, Borno, is nestled in the foothills of the Alps, and John Paul II flew there by helicopter from his mountain vacation retreat in Lorenzago in July 1998 to spend the day.
At the time Re was an archbishop, serving as the Holy See's undersecretary of state. The visit to Borno came as the Vatican was navigating the tricky passages toward setting up a historic 1999 papal pilgrimage to Romania - the first by a pope to that Orthodox country in modern times.
One shortcoming in his possible candidacy for the papacy is Re's lack of pastoral experience. Made a bishop in 1987, he worked for years largely behind the scenes in the secretary of state's office in the Apostolic Palace, a post that allowed him to draw close to the pope.
Twin appointments by John Paul on the same day in 2000 dramatically raised Re's profile.
In the more high-profile post, Re became head of the Congregation for Bishops. In that capacity he advised John Paul about selections to head dioceses worldwide to help shepherd the Church's 1.1 billion flock.
But Re also inherited some of the fallout over the Church's failure to move swiftly against bishops accused of protecting priests - in the United States and elsewhere - accused of sexual abuse. The Church's handling of the scandals was a major blot on John Paul's papacy in the eyes of those who accused Rome of inaction.
Re was part of the team of top Vatican officials who huddled with U.S. cardinals when the Americans came to Rome in April 2002 to meet with the pope about the sex abuse scandal. Six months later, it was Re who signed a Vatican demand that U.S. bishops revamp their get-tough policy on sexual abusers in the priesthood.
Last year, Re reportedly spoke with the Austrian bishop who was in charge of a seminary where a huge cache of child pornography was found, advising him to resign. The bishop later did step down.
Since 2000, Re has also served as president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, a traditionally Roman Catholic area which has been losing faithful to evangelical Protestant sects.
In a break from his bureaucratic image, Re led a procession of some 2,000 Indian Catholics through the streets of a Mexican town and danced Mayan dances as the Vatican sought to assure villagers that the Church is aware of their poverty.
Throughout his career, Re was extremely protective of John Paul. Although he was the first top Vatican official to publicly acknowledge that John Paul had Parkinson's disease, Re repeatedly tried to be upbeat about the pope's chances for recovery while other cardinals openly were talking about the possibility of resignation. Such talk, said Re, was “bad taste.”
Italy Cardinal Held Powerful Vatican Post