NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By Mark Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Archbishop Joseph W. Tobin was upending the apple cart, and he was making no apologies for it.
It was 2010, and Tobin was a new archbishop hand-picked by Pope Benedict XVI to serve as secretary of the Vatican congregation overseeing religious orders.
In that role, he had inherited an investigation into U.S. nuns, criticized by conservative theologians as too secular and too quick to steer away from established church orthodoxy. The investigation, Vatican observers said, was meant to send a message to the American sisters to fall in line with Rome.
And then Tobin did the unthinkable. He sided with the nuns, angering his superiors and making his Vatican assignment a short-lived one. Two years into a five-year term, he was reassigned to the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
“As a result of that dispute, he made a lot of enemies, and he was basically chased out of Rome and given Indianapolis just as a way to exile him,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, author of the book “Inside the Vatican” and a senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter.
Six years later — and three years into a new papacy — Tobin is about to become a cardinal and was named Monday as the new leader of the Archdiocese of Newark, a dizzying reversal for the 64-year-old Detroit native.
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