Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday named a Canadian theologian to head the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for Bishops, which vets bishops and sets the tone for the church hierarchy worldwide.It was the most significant personnel change since the sex abuse scandal that began roiling the Catholic church this spring.
Cardinal Marc Ouellet, 66, the Archbishop of Quebec and leader of the Canadian church, replaces an Italian, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 76, who has directed the congregation since 2000 and passed the retirement age of 75.
“The head of the Congregation of Bishops is a very important nomination, it determines the ruling class of the Catholic Church for the next twenty years,” said Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican expert with the Italian daily Il Giornale.
The appointment is particularly important in light of the abuse scandal, which has called into question the actions of bishops around the world, whom victims have accused of covering up abuse or not acting swiftly to discipline priests who have abused minors.
At least one Canadian abuse victims’ group has criticized Cardinal Ouellet (pronounced WULL-ay) for not apologizing for abuse.
But he has faced nothing near the torrent of criticism against Cardinal Bernard Law, who stepped down as archbishop of Boston following the abuse scandals there in 2002 but still serves on the Congregation for Bishops.
Vatican experts consider Cardinal Ouellet on the list of “papabili” cardinals who could one day become pope.
Fluent in several languages, including the Vatican’s lingua franca of Italian, Cardinal Ouellet has experience operating within the Vatican hierarchy as a former secretary for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and member of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
He and has written in the past for Communio, a scholarly journal co-founded by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict, after the Second Vatican Council, and he is seen as a traditionalist on doctrine and liturgy, very much in line with the pope’s thinking.
In 2007, Cardinal Ouellet won plaudits for an open letter in which he recognized that “certain Catholic environments” before 1960 had “privileged anti-Semitism, racism, indifference toward indigenous people and discrimination against women and homosexuals.”
On Wednesday the pope also named Archbishop Rino Fisichella of Italy as head of the Pontifical Commission for Promotion of the New Evangelization, a new office Benedict has created to promote Christian faith in Europe and other countries where it is flagging, an undertaking at the heart of his papacy.
SIC: TNYT