Vatican Diary / the Pope Confirms His Lieutenant in Italy

The Chiesa
March 7, 2012

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350191?eng=y


He is Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco. Benedict XVI wants him to lead the bishops for five more years. And it is the only case in the world in which this appointment is made by the pope, in spite of the contrary opinion approved in a vote years ago by the episcopal conference

VATICAN CITY, March 7, 2012 – The announcement could be made as soon as today, exactly five years after the first appointment. Benedict XVI has decided to confirm for another five-year term Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the archbishop of Genoa, who turned 69 on January 14, as president of the Italian episcopal conference.

This means that when the Ligurian cardinal comes to the end of this new mandate, he will become the second-longest-serving president of the CEI. Surpassing Cardinal Antonio, who left office after 9 years and 7 months, and putting himself on the trail of the statistically unreachable Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who led the Italian episcopate for 16 years, from March 4, 1991 to March 7, 2007, when, having passed the age of 76, Benedict XVI accepted his resignation, appointing Bagnasco in his place.

Unlike what happens in almost all the episcopal conferences of the world, in Italy the presidency is not elective, but of pontifical appointment. And this because the pope is the bishop of Rome and the primate of Italy.

Apart from Italy, there are only two other cases in the world in which the bishops do not vote for their own president.

One of them is Belgium, where this role belongs to the archbishop of Malines-Bruxelles.

And the other is the conference of Latin bishops in the Arab countries, headed "ex officio" by the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.

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There was, however, a time when the idea was considered that the Italian Church might also elect its own president and its own secretary general. This latter office also, in fact, is not elective in Italy, the only case in the world.

It happened during the 23rd general assembly of the CEI held in Rome from May 7-11, 1983. In the course of the sessions to approve the new statutes of the CEI – which, among other things, would raise the duration of the mandate from three to five years – the bishops, "on orders from above," were invited to proceed with a "vote of consultation" on the appointment of the president and secretary general of the conference, "to be delivered to the Holy Father, leaving the decision to the pope."

The proposal that the president of the CEI be elected by the assembly obtained the following results: out of 226 eligible voters, 185 votes were cast; the "placet" were 145, the "non placet" 36; 4 ballots were left blank.

So an absolute majority of the bishops voted in favor of an elected president, although they fell just six short of the quorum of two thirds (in this case, 151 votes) required for changes to the statutes. A quorum that was instead exceeded for the election of the secretary general.

In any case, on October 25, 1984, during the 24th "extraordinary" general assembly held in Rome, then president Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, the archbishop of Turin (who led the CEI for more than six years), communicated that John Paul II wanted to reserve for himself the appointment of the president and secretary general of the episcopal conference, "pointing out how this practice constitutes a further sign of attention and benevolence toward the bishops and the CEI on the part of the Holy Father."

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So if the norm stipulates that it is the pope who selects the president of the CEI, it says nothing about the forms of consultation that precede this choice.

Nonetheless, in two cases the procedural dynamics adopted were officially made public.

The first case took place on October 1, 1969, when a terse statement in "L'Osservatore Romano" printed on the afternoon of that same day said that Paul VI had convened that morning "the cardinals of residential sees and the vice-president of the CEI" (editor's note: the only one at the time, now there are three) in order to "proceed with consultations on the appointment of the new president of the CEI, as a replacement for the late Cardinal Giovanni Urbani," who passed away on September 17 after having been confirmed for a three-year term the previous February.

So on October 3, 1969, Bologna archbishop Antonio Poma was appointed president, and after being confirmed for two more three-year terms on June 17, 1972 and May 21, 1975, was kept on by John Paul I and John Paul II until May 16, 1979, when he left office at the age of 69, the pope having appointed Ballestrero in his place.

And just two days after that appointment, addressing the assembly of the CEI meeting in Rome, John Paul II informed them that he had consulted with the presidents of the regional episcopal conferences and had selected the archbishop of Turin, "he having been the one indicated by the majority of the prelates consulted."

Ballestrero was confirmed for another three-year term on July 19, 1982, and left the post in 1985, at the age of 72. On July 1 of that year, in fact, John Paul II appointed as his successor the cardinal vicar of Rome, Ugo Poletti, who remained in office until the age of 77. On March 4, 1991, Ruini's presidency began (which, for the only time in the history of the CEI, came to him after five years as secretary general) and lasted until March 7, 2007. And on January 17, 1991, Ruini had already taken Poletti's place as pro-vicar of the diocese of Rome.

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As for the procedural steps that led to the papal decision to appoint Poletti, Ruini, and Bagnasco, nothing was said officially. Although plenty of journalistic reconstructions accompanied these steps. With the leaking of confidential documents, although not in the massive quantities seen in recent times.

So when on February 14, 2006, Ruini was confirmed at the head of the CEI with the formula "donec aliter provideatur," with a little lead time with respect to the date of March 6, the end of his third five-year presidential term, it was written that this haste was due to the effect in the media of the strange "primaries" conducted, complete with a confidential letter that ended up in the newspapers in the days before, by the nuncio to Italy at the time, Paolo Romeo (today the archbishop of Palermo and a cardinal), who in the name of the pope asked all of the resident Italian bishops to suggest by letter a name for the post-Ruini period.

The rumor went around that Ruini himself had been taken off guard by this initiative. And so had been Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, at the time the prefect of that congregation for bishops which supervises the individual episcopal conferences. It seems, in fact, that both of these cardinals were convinced that the pope was thinking about consulting not all of the Italian bishops, but only the presidents of the sixteen regional episcopal conferences, together with the three vice-presidents of the CEI.

Concerning how nuncio Romeo's survey was extended to all the resident bishops, however, two reconstructions were circulated. The more malicious attributed this extension to an initiative of the secretary of state at the time, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the nuncio's direct superior. Another reconstruction recounted that Sodano had convinced the pope to consult the entire Italian episcopate, in the name of greater collegiality. The fact is that nothing was done with it.

When in early 2007 the time came for the actual consultations for the new president, the talk in the media was about a contrast between Cardinal Ruini, who would have wanted as his successor a "strong" figure of the episcopate, like Venice cardinal Angelo Scola, and the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who instead would have preferred a more unassuming personality, like the archbishop of Taranto, and at the time one of the three vice-presidents of the CEI, Benigno Papa.

Benedict XVI did not choose either of the two (although he later wanted Scola for Milan), and instead opted for the archbishop of Genoa, Angelo Bagnasco, a churchman raised in Ruini's shadow but whom Bertone had gladly accepted as his successor in Genoa when he had been called back to Rome as secretary of state.

The appointment nonetheless took Bagnasco by surprise. When he was in Rome for his "ad limina" visit between January 29 and February 3, he was given no advance notice. But in mid-February, he canceled his commitments in his diocese because he had been called back to Rome for "important" communications. On March 7, 2007, he was officially appointed as president of the CEI for a first five-year term.

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An appointment that is now being redoubled by the pope without any particular hesitation. In fact, after Scola's move from Venice to Milan (a gigantic diocese that could not be overseen by someone who was also the president of the CEI), for various reasons there was no occupant of a cardinal diocese who could "contend" for the office.

But returning to Bagnasco's appointment in 2007, it is to be noted that this was accompanied by a letter from Cardinal Bertone dated March 25 in which the Vatican secretary of state claimed for his office the responsibility for relations with the world of Italian politics.

Bagnasco's reaction was one of diplomatic outrage. The president of the CEI repeatedly – for example, in his inaugural address of March 26, 2007, and then in "Corriere della Sera" of October 18, 2009, in an interview following the Boffo incident – invoked John Paul II's 1998 motu proprio "Apostolos Suos" to claim for the episcopal conference the responsibility for these kinds of relations. With the paradoxical result that a document designed by the Holy See to scale down the power of the episcopal conferences with respect to the authority of the individual bishop and of the universal Church was used by the president of a conference to assert his own autonomy of action with respect to the most important Vatican dicastery.

With regard to the responsibility for relations with the Italian political authorities, some conflict over prerogatives between the CEI and the Vatican secretariat of state is in certain respects inevitable. And it always has been.

Still memorable, for example, is the letter of August 22, 1963 from Paul VI to Cardinal Giuseppe Siri – also the archbishop of Genoa and president of the CEI from 1959 to 1964 – distributed under the seal of secrecy to all the member bishops of the plenary meeting of August 27-28 of that year.

In that letter, Paul VI affirmed that to the secretariat of state "remains entrusted the task of examining what the CEI should believe it correct to establish concerning matters of the presence and action of the Church in civil society, and to provide in this regard any opportune instructions."

The historian Paolo Gheda (in "Siri. La Chiesa, l'Italia," Marietti, 2009) interprets this letter as a dictate to "subordinate" the "public activity of a political nature" of the CEI headed by Siri to the "directives expressed by the secretariat of state."

Moreover, it should be recalled that in early 2001 – with the national political elections scheduled for May – then cardinal secretary of state Angelo Sodano began a series of consultations with Italian political leaders.

But he had time to listen only to Francesco Rutelli and Silvio Berlusconi. The initiative – it was written – was stopped in its tracks by the president of the CEI, Cardinal Ruini.