Posted on 03/30/2005 12:58:14 PM PST by Coleus
It began in 1991 with a hopeful invitation asking a cardinal in Rome to bless a church library in Newark.
Fourteen years later, St. Mary's Parish of Newark Abbey enjoys a special friendship with Cardinal Francis Arinze, who over the years has become one of the Vatican's most visible leaders and is often mentioned as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II.
Arinze, a Nigerian of high rank at the Vatican for 20 years, has since visited Newark Abbey and St. Mary's, which has a large West African membership, about half a dozen times. His latest visit concludes today as world attention is again focused on the health of the pope.
"We pretty much treat him with great deference and reverence, but he's very much at home when he's (here)," said the Rev. Melvin Valvano, abbott at Newark Abbey, who while in Rome in December 1991 asked Arinze if he would visit Newark to bless the church's library in early 1992.
"I was received as warmly and graciously as I could be," Valvano said of that first meeting. "My impression was of a very humble man, and that has not changed over the past 13 years."
In an interview yesterday at Newark Abbey, Arinze recalled how he had come to Newark in 1992 to offer encouragement to a parish that has many Nigerians and Ghanaians as well as to bless the library.
"Many (at St. Mary's in Newark) were in the actual diocese where I was," he said, referring to his tenure as archbishop of Onitsha, Nigeria, from 1967 to 1984. Under his stewardship, the Catholic population in Nigeria grew dramatically.
Some of the members of the Newark church knew Arinze in Nigeria during those years. Vincent Okpala, who moved to Newark three years ago, is one of them.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Who are other possible successors
I think it could be any cardinal under 80 yrs. old.
Years ago, the rules were lax where I think that any baptized male could have been named pope.
"But in one paragraph of a brief speech, Cardinal Arinze noted also that the family has enemies and that the phenomena of abortion, contraception, infanticide, euthanasia, pornography, homosexuality, sodomy, fornication, adultery, irregular unions and divorce undermine its sacredness. At that, Georgetown's roof caved in."
The nerve of him to talk about God's Natural and Moral Law at a Catholic University :^)
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