A Clear Vision for Pope

By Ann Rodgers
Philly.com
March 3, 2013

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20130303_Cardinals_prepare_for_task.html

Pope Benedict XVI delivered his last blessing on Thursday from the window of his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, after arriving from the Vatican. Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to resign, capping a tearful day of farewells that included an extraordinary pledge of obedience to his successor.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl says he must renew Catholic faith.

ROME - Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., hasn't decided whom he will vote for in the papal election, but he has a clear vision of the kind of man the church needs. He must exude holiness and have a gift for making the Catholic faith compelling to those who have rejected what they know of it, he said Saturday.

When the new pope is introduced, "He needs to step out onto that balcony and he needs to say, 'Christ is with us. We need to listen to him. He has the answers to the questions of the human heart. He shows us a better way to live than the secular world can offer.' "

Wuerl, 72, who was bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, spoke at St. Peter in Chains, his titular church in Rome. Historically the cardinals were the priests of Rome, so the pope assigns each of them a church here.

The minor basilica, which houses Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses, is an ancient one. A parish existed on the site near the Coliseum from the second century, and the foundations of the present building are from the fifth century.

Its greatest relic is the chains said to have bound St. Peter before his miraculous deliverance from prison in Jerusalem and before his crucifixion in Rome.

Legend says that the fifth-century Roman Empress Eudoxia received the Jerusalem chain from her mother, a Byzantine empress who had received it from the patriarch of Jerusalem. The Roman chain had always been in the keeping of the popes, and when Eudoxia presented the Jerusalem chain to Pope Leo the Great, the two chains miraculously fused together.

Wuerl, who had known and worked with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger long before he became Pope Benedict XVI, was thrilled and profoundly moved when Pope Benedict assigned him to St. Peter in Chains.

On Saturday, he held a private Mass for his seminarians in the apse of the basilica. In place of the usual prayer for the pope was a prayer for the Holy Spirit to be poured out on the cardinals who will elect the next one.

After the Mass he spoke briefly to the seminarians about the "very, very unique moment" they were in of a sede vacante - vacant papal throne - following the first abdication in six centuries. It's a reminder, he said, that the papacy isn't a person but an office that survives and unifies the church no matter the strengths or frailties of the men elected to it. Each of them carries on the ministry of Peter.

This is the first time that Wuerl will vote in a papal election, but not his first conclave. In 1978, as an aide to the ailing Cardinal John Wright, he attended the conclave that elected Pope John Paul II.

Since then he has shown such skill in governing the church - he mandated zero tolerance on sex abuse of minors 14 years before it became national policy - that those who dream of an American pope sometimes invoke his name.

Wuerl emphatically dismissed such speculation, but his primary concern is to elect a pope who will embody and implement the new evangelization that Pope Benedict called for.

As the cardinals prepare to begin formal pre-conclave discussions Monday, there has been much talk of the need for a pope who will clean up a Vatican administration plagued by incompetence, scandal and abuse of power.

Problems began under Pope John Paul II, and many had expected major reform from Pope Benedict, who as a cardinal reportedly did battle with some of the more egregious offenders. But he was elected at age 78 after attempting at least twice to retire, and administrative problems escalated during his tenure.

While those concerns are important, they shouldn't be the direct responsibility of the pope, said Wuerl, who worked in the curia - Vatican administration - for a decade in the 1970s.

"There will always be the work of administration, and many people are saying it's time for a strong administrator. I don't think I would necessarily put that as my first reason for choosing someone," he said.

"A good, evangelizing pope can always pick someone to oversee the curia. He can pick someone with administrative skills."