Dolan for New York Westminster Next, Ruth Gledhill, The Times, February 23, 2009

Dolan for New York - Westminster Next

By Ruth Gledhill
The Times
February 23, 2009

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/02/dolan-for-new-york-westminster-next.html

A trinity of priests praying for a miracle? These three priests clutching the Turin Shroud are none other than the three favourites for Westminster, Archbishops Vincent Nichols and Peter Smith, and Bishop Malcolm McMahon, from Birmingham, Cardiff and Nottingham.

As countless others besides myself predicted he would, Pope Benedict XVI has today named Timothy Dolan, 59, as successor to the retiring Edward Egan in the high-profile Archdiocese of New York. Read on for what veteran Vatican commentator John Allen has to say about Dolan. Lots more about him at Aufer A Nobis.

See Archbishop Dolan addressing the press in New York this morning. ht American Papist.

Westminster will be next.

Which one of the three will the Shroud favour? Sadly, perhaps, none, as the shroud pictured here is a replica, albeit one of just six in the world, currently on display at an exhibition in Birmingham. Read the full report at Times online faith by the spokesman for the Newman Cause, Peter Jennings.

HT to the Catholic Herald's Luke Coppen via Twitter for link to John Allen's take on the Dolan appointment. Allen writes: 'While Pope Benedict XVI’s appointment of Archbishop Timothy Dolan to New York hardly marks a dramatic break with key picks under recent popes, it may confirm an intriguing pattern-within-a-pattern under Benedict when it comes to the most important jobs in the United States.

'In a sound-bite, one might call it a choice for “the center-right with a human face.”

'In essence, that means leaders who are basically conservative in both their politics and their theology, but also upbeat, pastoral figures given to dialogue. It’s a pattern with across-the-board consequences for both the substance and the style of American Catholicism, and one that could carry particularly interesting implications for relations between church and state in the Age of Obama.'

Damian, btw, thinks Vin will definitely get Westminster. I suspect he is right, on balance, but it is fun to throw a few more names in the hat. I know for a cert that Longley is being talked about seriously in Rome.

Here's another, closer up.