CANADA
Huffington Post
By Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press
MONTREAL – Word that a Canadian cardinal is a presumed contender to succeed Pope Benedict XVI has been met with a mixed response in his own Quebec backyard.
Advocates for victims of sexual abuse by priests and even some members of the clergy aren’t quite in Marc Cardinal Ouellet’s cheering section.
While the idea of a global icon emerging from here has stirred the local imagination, that excitement is tempered by the fact that Ouellet’s once-religious home province has become intensely secular and even anti-clerical.
Rev. Raymond Gravel suggested Tuesday that for the Roman Catholic church to stem its decline in Quebec, and elsewhere in the world, it should avoid making another theologian or university professor its next pontiff. Ouellet is both — a theologian and a longtime professor.
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