{"id":3406,"date":"2007-10-17T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/the-pope-makes-a-statement-23-statements-actually.html"},"modified":"2007-10-17T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-17T11:00:00","slug":"the-pope-makes-a-statement-23-statements-actually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/the-pope-makes-a-statement-23-statements-actually.html","title":{"rendered":"The pope makes a statement. 23 statements, actually."},"content":{"rendered":"

The perspicacious John Allen at the National Catholic Reporter has perhaps the best analysis of the pope’s picks<\/a> for the new cardinals: <\/p>\n

Whenever a pope names new members to the church\u2019s most exclusive club, he inevitably makes a statement \u2013 about his own priorities, about where the church is going, and ultimately about the sort of men in line to take over when he\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n

So, what statements did Pope Benedict XVI make this morning by naming 23 new cardinals, including 18 under the age of 80 and hence eligible to vote for the next pope?<\/p>\n

At least seven come to mind:<\/p>\n

\u2022 He recognized the shifting center of the Catholic population in the United States from the East Coast to the Southwest;
\u2022 He signaled the importance of the American church by giving the country two new cardinals, although the U.S. is already over-represented in the College of Cardinals relative to its Catholic population;
\u2022 He did not redistribute cardinals to the global South, where two-thirds of Catholics now live, but instead slightly bolstered the over-representation of Europeans;
\u2022 He kept the percentage of Vatican officials among electors roughly the same at 25 percent;
\u2022 He indicated his sympathy for Iraq by naming the Chaldean patriarch a cardinal;
\u2022 He confirmed his concern for the intellectual life of the church by giving honorary red hats to two former rectors of flagship pontifical universities in Rome;
\u2022 He introduced at least two new candidates to become the first pope from the global South: Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, India, and John Njue of Nairobi, Kenya.<\/p>\n

Benedict XVI named Archbishop Daniel DiNardo of Glaveston-Houston to the College of Cardinals rather than the man widely presumed to be next in line among the Americans, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. That choice undoubtedly reflects the shifting demographics of American Catholicism, away from its traditional centers on the East Coast and towards the Southwest. According to estimates from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, almost 40 percent of Catholics in the United States today are Hispanic, overwhelmingly concentrated in the \u201cSun Belt\u201d states of the South and Southwest. <\/p>\n

That, however, is not the only level of significance to the selection. DiNardo worked in the Vatican\u2019s Congregation for Bishops from 1984 to 1990, where he served under Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, at the time the congregation\u2019s secretary. Rigali is widely seen as the preeminent \u201ckingmaker\u201d among American prelates; when he was recently appointed as a member of the Vatican\u2019s Congregation for Bishops, one of his brother American cardinals said on background that the move \u201crendered official what has been unofficial,\u201d meaning that Rigali is the American heavyweight best positioned to influence bishops\u2019 appointments in the United States. The choice of DiNardo will likely bolster that impression.<\/p>\n

Benedict\u2019s decision to name two new American cardinals can also be read as a further sign of the importance he attaches to the church here, given that the United States will now have 17 cardinals, including 13 electors, the second-largest number in both categories after the Italians. The United States has more cardinals than Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines combined, the other three largest Catholic countries on earth, despite the fact that those three nations contain 315 million Catholics to the roughly 70 million in the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s much more at the link, including more details about the new cardinals from Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The perspicacious John Allen at the National Catholic Reporter has perhaps the best analysis of the pope’s picks for the new cardinals: Whenever a pope names new members to the church\u2019s most exclusive club, he inevitably makes a statement \u2013 about his own priorities, about where the church is going, and ultimately about the sort…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-pope-and-bishops"],"yoast_head":"\nThe pope makes a statement. 23 statements, actually. - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/the-pope-makes-a-statement-23-statements-actually.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The pope makes a statement. 23 statements, actually. - 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}