I thought it was just the Australian (principally Sydney) media who revelled in the constant rumours of a Vatican appointment for our beloved (or hated) George Cardinal Pell. But it seems from this John Allen piece in the US National Catholic Reporter (Australia’s Pell tops the chart as a rumor magnet), that rumours about George are not only ubiquitous and perennial, but also universal. The rumour about his being a candidate for the top job in the Congregation for Bishops in fact was started (according to Allen) by the Italian press, not the Sydney Morning Herald.
Read the article and have a smile.
Wow – and here i thought this was actually more than a rumor…
guess you just have to wait until these things are announced officially.
I am grateful for the leadership Cardinal Pell is giving us, but can I ask him to stop talking about climate change? He writes a weekly column in the Sunday Telegraph in Sydney, and of the 6 columns this year, 4 have been about climate change:
http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/people/archbishop/stc/
Enough already!!! There are plenty of other things to talk about. I think he is trying to point out that many environmentalists have their own dogmas, but I think it is inappropriate for him to get involved in a populist debate about scientific details.
I am sceptical about the extent of climate change, but in my opinion, his columns have been poorly argued.
However, my main point is that this concentration on climate change is becoming a rather strange obsession.
Well rumours abound in the media and Allen is good at judging from his vantage in Rome, when there now occasionaklly.
But, I venture these ecclesiastical rumours, in the light of the recent health scare of +GP in Rome :
1. Pell to remain in Sydney till retirement age (Christmas Eve sermon was one of the most uninspiring ones I have ever heard from a priest, let alone a cardinal)
2.+Fisher to be future arch of Sydney after a time at Parramatta
3.+Mark Benedict Coleridge (with solid biblical and Rome pedigree) to be moved to Rome, senior position by 2015 and subsequently created cardinal.
You read it here first Feb 2010 !
It’ll have to be early in 2015 – End of the World due that year. :)