New Nominations at the ‘bishop-making Factory’

By Andrea Tornielli
Vatican Insider
January 13, 2012

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/the-vatican/detail/articolo/vescovi-obispos-bishops-nomine-appointments-citas-11560/

Bishops in St. Peter's Square

The new number two man in ‘bishop-making factory’, the Congregation for Bishops (the department that works together with the Pope to establish the new Catholic ruling class and that takes care of the nomination of new bishops for the Latin Church excluding mission territories), arrives from Brazil. The nomination of the new secretary of the Congregation for Bishops led by Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet has been announced. The nomination comes after the previous secretary, Manuel Monteiro de Castro from Portugal, was promoted to Grand Penitentiary on 5 January with his name featuring in the list of new Cardinals a few hours later. This time, the man chosen for the post of secretary, is the Apostolic Nuncio in Brazil, Lorenzo Baldisseri.



Baldisseri,71 years old, was born in Pisa on the 29 September 1940. A priest since 1963, he began working for the diplomatic service of the Holy See and became Apostolic Nuncio in 1992 when Pope John Paul II sent him to Haiti as his representative. There, Baldisseri directly witnessed the civil war. He was then moved to Paraguay in 1995, four years later he was appointed Nuncio in India and finally in 2002, almost ten years ago, he became the representative of the Holy See in the largest country of South America, Brazil.

Baldisseri has become yet another Italian bishop to arrive in Rome and take up a leading position in the Congregation that nominates new bishops. The recently appointed Cardinal Monteiro De Castro, who is 73 years old and was also formerly a member of the Papal diplomatic corps, was secretary for just two and half years. Baldisseri’s nomination makes this the second time a secretary is older than the Prefect (leader) of the Congregation; Cardinal Oullet is, in fact, 67 years old, four years younger than Baldisseri.

January is also a crucial month for the appointment of the new Patriarch of Venice, successor to Cardinal Angelo Scola who was moved to Milan last June by Pope Benedict XVI. After months of utter stillness, at the beginning of December the process of consultations among Cardinals and Bishops to decide the new pastor in Venice began. The Patriarch of Venice is one of three Patriarchs of the Latin Church (together with the Patriarchs of Lisbon and Jerusalem). The favourite candidates are believed to be the Bishop of La Spezia Francesco Moraglia originally from Genoa (supported by many Italian Cardinals) and the Archbishop of Udine Andrea Bruno Mazzocato originally from Treviso.

Other less prominent candidates are the Bishop of Terni Vincenzo Paglia and the Archbishop of Chieti Bruno Forte. There are also three outsiders, the Bishop of Trieste, Gianpaolo Crepaldi, the Bishop of Piacenza Gianni Ambrosio and St. Peter’s Archpriest Cardinal Angleo Comastri. In the unlikely event that this last candidate were to be sent to Venice, the position of Archpriest in the Vatican Basilica would become vacant and it might be taken on by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone who would then combine three offices, Secretary of State, Camerlengo and Archpriest- This happened before in the past with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli who later became Pius XII.

It seems that the nomination of the Patriarch of Venice will not follow the customary procedure and it will not be decided by the full Congregation for Bishops, but by a smaller group as it is often the case with Italian nominations.