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| Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is greeted by Pope Francis at the end of a consistory inside the St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014. Benedict XVI has joined Pope Francis in a ceremony creating the cardinals who will elect their successor in an unprecedented blending of papacies past, present and future. |
VATICAN CITY
(AP) -- In an unprecedented blending of papacies past, present and
future, retired Pope Benedict XVI joined Pope Francis at a ceremony
Saturday to formally install new cardinals who will one day elect their
successor.
It was the first time Benedict and
Francis have appeared together at a public liturgical ceremony since
Benedict retired a year ago, becoming the first pope to step down in
more than 600 years. It may signal that after a year of staying "hidden
from the world," Benedict may occasionally be reintegrated into the
public life of the church.
Benedict entered
St. Peter's Basilica discreetly from a side entrance surrounded by a
small entourage and was greeted with applause and tears from the stunned
people in the pews. He smiled, waved and seemed genuinely happy to be
there, taking his seat in the front row, off to the side, alongside the
red-draped cardinals.
"We are grateful for
your presence here among us," newly minted Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the
Vatican secretary of state, told Benedict in his introductory remarks.
Francis
warmly greeted his predecessor at the start and end of the service,
clasping him by his shoulders and embracing him. Benedict removed his
white skullcap in a show of respect as Francis approached.
But
in a sign that Benedict still commands the honor and respect owed a
pope, each of the 19 new cardinals - after receiving his red hat from
Francis at the altar - went directly to Benedict's seat to greet him
before then exchanging a sign of peace with the other cardinals.
They had, however, already pledged their fidelity to Francis in an oath of obedience.
Saturday's
surprise event was the latest in the evolving reality for the church of
having two popes living side-by-side in the Vatican. Over the summer,
Francis and Benedict appeared together in the Vatican gardens for a
ceremony to unveil a statue. But Saturday's event was something else
entirely, a liturgical service inside St. Peter's Basilica marking one
of the most important things a pope can do: create new cardinals.
Benedict
had no formal role whatsoever in the ceremony, but his presence could
signal a new phase in his cloistered retirement that began with his Feb.
28, 2013, resignation. Chances are increasing that Benedict might also
appear at the April 27 canonization of his predecessor, John Paul II,
and Pope John XXIII.
The Rev. Robert Wister, a
professor of church history at Seton Hall University, stressed that
while it was a unique moment, Benedict was certainly present for the
ceremony at Francis' invitation and that Francis was the only actual
pope in the basilica elevating cardinals.
He
said he didn't think Benedict would gradually return to any major
ceremonial role in the church, both because his 86 years make it
increasingly difficult for him to get through long services and because
doing so would be "highly problematic, given that some cardinals and
Curialists (Vatican bureaucrats) yearn for a return to the `good old
days.'"
Nevertheless, Wister said he thought
it was likely Benedict would attend the April canonizations, when two
living popes would be honoring two dead ones.
Benedict's
decision to appear at the consistory could also be seen as a blessing
of sorts for the 19 men Francis had chosen to join the College of
Cardinals, the elite group of churchmen whose primary job is to elect a
pope.
Francis' choices largely reflected his
view that the church must minister to the peripheries and be a place of
welcome and mercy, not a closed institution of rules. In addition to a
few Vatican bureaucrats, he named like-minded cardinals from some of the
poorest places on Earth, Haiti, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast among
them.
In his remarks, Francis told the new
cardinals that the church needs their courage, prayer and compassion
"especially at this time of pain and suffering for so many countries
throughout the world."
"The church needs us also to be peacemakers, building peace by our works, our hopes and our prayers," he said.
Two
of the new cardinals hail from Africa, two from Asia and six from
Francis' native Latin America, which is home to nearly half the world's
Catholics but is grossly underrepresented in the church's hierarchy.
There's
Cardinal Chibly Langlois, who isn't even an archbishop but rather the
55-year-old bishop of Les Cayes and now Haiti's first-ever cardinal.
The
archbishop of Managua, Nicaragua, Leopoldo Jose Brenes Solorzano, is an
old friend who worked alongside the former Cardinal Jorge Mario
Bergoglio in preparing the seminal document of the pope's vision of a
missionary church - the so-called Aparecida Document produced by the
2007 summit of Latin American bishops.
Cardinal
Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, archbishop of Seoul, South Korea, has serious
Catholic chops: His ancestors were among the lay people who brought
Christianity to the Korean peninsula in the 19th century, and his
great-great grandfather and his wife were executed as part of the Joseon
Dynasty's persecution of Christians, the Asian Catholic news agency
UCANews reported. Of the six children in his immediate family, three
became priests.
Though he hails from Burkina
Faso, Cardinal Philippe Nakellentuba Ouedraogo sounded an awful lot like
the Argentine Francis in his 2013 Christmas homily. He denounced the
"inequality, injustice, poverty and misery" of today's society where
employers exploit their workers and the powerful few have most of the
money while the poor masses suffer.
One
cardinal sat out the ceremony even as he made history by living to see
it: Cardinal Loris Francesco Capovilla, aged 98, became the oldest
member of the College of Cardinals, but due to his age couldn't make the
trip from northern Italy. His was a sentimental choice for Francis: For
over a decade, Capovilla was the private secretary to Pope John XXIII,
whom Francis will make a saint alongside Pope John Paul II in a sign of
his admiration for the pope who convened the Second Vatican Council.
Capovilla,
and the emeritus archbishops of Pamplona, Spain and Castries, St. Lucia
are all over age 80 and thus ineligible to vote in a conclave to elect
Francis' successor.
