VATICAN CITY
Irish Times
Paddy Agnew in Rome
More than 150 cardinals meet this morning in the Vatican’s Synod Hall for arguably the most important Congregation of Cardinals since Vatican Council II in the 1960s.
With the shock waves prompted by the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI still crashing right across the 1.1 billion strong, universal Catholic Church, the cardinals begin the difficult task of identifying a successor.
While the conclave in the Sistine Chapel represents that spiritual moment when, with the intervention of the Holy Spirit, the cardinals elect the next pope, the business of identifying the church’s needs and consequently indicating suitable candidates starts in deadly earnest this morning. Put it another way: in the Sistine the cardinals vote, while at these “general congregations” they jaw-jaw.
By last Wednesday, there were already 144 cardinals in Rome, half of whom are from abroad so we know that the caucuses of “jaw-jaw” and exchange of ideas have already begun, particularly among the North Americans and Latin Americans. In a febrile Rome atmosphere where media interviews with cardinal electors outnumber interviews with AS Roma or Lazio footballers by two to one, many of the men who will elect the next pope have already indicated their thinking about this dramatic state of the union church moment.
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