FALL RIVER (MA)
Herald News
By Brian Fraga
Herald News Staff Reporter
The speculation in Rome this week has Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the current archbishop of Boston and former bishop of the Diocese of Fall River, as a possible leading candidate to be the next pope.
O’Malley’s profile as a reformer on clergy sex abuse and his reputation as a humble Franciscan Friar uninterested in the Vatican’s political intrigues appear to be generating conversations that he could be an ideal replacement for Pope Benedict XVI, who will retire Feb. 28, veteran Vatican journalist John L. Allen Jr. wrote Tuesday in the National Catholic Reporter.
At least six Italian newspapers have recently mentioned O’Malley’s name in handicapping the field of potential new popes. The Italian Journalistic Agency credited O’Malley with “restoring credibility to the church” after the “escape” to Rome by his disgraced predecessor in Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law.
O’Malley, 68, who headed the Fall River Diocese from 1992 to 2002, has brushed off speculation that he could be a “papabile” — Italian for men who could be pope — and added that he was not interested in the papacy during a press conference last week in Boston.
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