VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
John L. Allen Jr. | Dec. 17, 2013 NCR Today
ROME Pope Francis is celebrating his 77th birthday in relatively quiet fashion, which isn’t stopping others from marking the occasion — including, improbably enough, the pro-gay magazine The Advocate, which named him its Person of the Year.
In truth, however, Francis had already given himself a major birthday present 24 hours before by shaking up the membership of the Congregation for Bishops in order to lay the groundwork for a new generation of “Francis bishops.”
In the United States, attention was understandably focused on the nomination of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., and the effective removal of Cardinal Raymond Burke, president of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s supreme court. Putting in the moderate Wuerl and taking the strongly conservative Burke off couldn’t help but seem a signal of the kind of bishop Francis intends to elevate in the United States.
As pope, however, Francis is responsible not just for the 6 percent of the world’s Catholic population that lives in the United States, but the whole shooting match, 1.2 billion faithful all over the planet.
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