UNITED STATES
CBS News
An American priest and Catholic Church historian said Tuesday the 115 cardinals tasked with picking the next pope want a man who has both keen evangelical and managerial skills. In short, Father Thomas Reese said, they need “Jesus Christ with an MBA.”
Reese managed in those five words to sum up the challenge facing the so-called princes of the Catholic Church, the cardinals, who have already begun wrestling with the various, and widely disparate, qualifications required in a pontiff to replace Pope Benedict XVI.
In spite of the Church’s best efforts to move past the child sex abuse scandal, victims of that abuse are still demanding justice. The next pope will need to be someone who can shift the presiding narrative of the Church away from apologies (without appearing insensitive to the victims) and back to the preferred topic and goal of growing congregations.
“What we really need is somebody who can communicate the gospel in a way that is understandable and attractive to people in the 21st century,” said Reese. “That is what we are supposed to be about, the message of Jesus and that is an attractive message but it can get all buried in our churchiness.”
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