VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Although speculation about who’s in line for top Vatican jobs is a favorite indoor sport in Catholicism, usually to be taken with a grain of salt, you can sometimes tell a rumor is serious when pot shots start falling on the would-be nominee.
By that standard, Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg, Germany, has to be considered a hot tip for the next prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s powerful doctrine office currently headed by American Cardinal William Levada.
Levada will turn 76 in June, and it’s long been rumored that Müller, 64, is a top candidate to take over. This week, traditionalist Catholics in Italy began circulating e-mails suggesting that Müller, a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and a lifelong friend of Pope Benedict XVI, is not a man of “secure doctrine.”
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