AUSTRIA
Vatican Insider

The Archbishop of Salzburg, Alois Kothgasser, is in a hurry to retire

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

Kothgasser is 75 and in a hurry to retire. He has asked permission to pope Benedict XVI who has already met with him about a potential successor. Mgr. Manfred Scheuer’s allure as a candidate for this See grows. He is 57 years old and bishop of Innsbruck, he is also negotiating with the Austrian rebel priests to avoid a schism. Mgr. Manfred Scheuer is playing a pivotal match for the Austrian Catholic Church and has shown a certain amount of openness towards some of the requests of the “disobedient” clergy. In his opinion the seven points of the ‘Appeal to Disobedience’, promoted by the priests who support the “Pfarrer-initiative”, should be viewed individually and not as a package: for example, since there is “real need” for change on the…