A Pope like Wojtyla. First black the outsider in the Sistine Chapel
VATICAN CITY
The Ghanaian Turkson, the Guinean Sarah, the South African Napier, the Congolese Monsengwo Pasinya. The African continent expresses four names credible. Africa however has more in conclave in the quality and quantity of eligible candidates to voters (only 11 compared to 60 in Europe and 33 in the Americas).
What Sarah is one of the ideal profiles for the papacy: it combines pastoral experience at home and in international Curia,” says Father Bernardo Cervellera, director of AsiaNews agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. Sarah was bishop in Africa, prisoner of war and is now in the Vatican capodicastero. Has taken the place of Etchegeray as “a man of the papal mission impossible in the diplomatic and humanitarian: from Lebanon to Southeast Asia. It is also estimated by Obama and chance to “outsiders”.
In short, a “black Wojtyla” that combine foreign curial and the White House just as it did in 1978 to the spiritual father of Solidarnosc. Two years ago at the Rimini Meeting conquered all for communication skills and charisma. No reservation of areas of the church hierarchy to the Church “young” the dark continent: it is feared that around cardinals acting clan and ethnic unclear situations.
Do not think so by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2004 told a German television: “We are ready for a black pope.” And during his travels called Africa “the spiritual lung of the world”. So hypothesis viable. Moreover, the election of a black Pope would not be a unique (at least so they pass on the tradition). Gelasius I, in fact, Pope from 492 to 496, was so “romanus natus.”
But, according to the Liber Pontificalis, was “natione afer.” And this is referred to as a native of Africa, specifically in Kabylia (Algeria). His skin was dark as coal. Now history may repeat itself. Even Africans of America cheering for a non-European, but not for Dolan or O’Malley. In the Bronx, a group of Catholics of Ghanaian origin prays that the conclave bait Turkson, their compatriot. “It would be very significant,” says Ursulu Essifie of the Church of St. Margaret Mary in Mont Hope, parish visited by the cardinal in 2005: “He is one who knows how to be with people.”
The numbers, says sociologist Massimo Introvigne (OSCE representative against discrimination of Christians) “play into” the Black Pope because “if the Church grows is about especially in Africa where Christians over Muslims.” A “caput nigrum” for the Church.
Malachi’s prophecy about popes lists 112 short phrases in Latin, which purport to describe all the popes from Celestine II (elected in 1143), until you come to a Pope yet to come, which is described in the prophecy as “Peter the Roman “, whose pontificate will end in the destruction of Rome and the Last Judgment.
According to the list the last Pope would arrive after the one called “de gloria olivae,” a Pope, the latter following the chronology should be Benedict XVI. But a prophecy has it that lost between Benedict XVI and the last pope, there is a penultimate: a “caput nigrum,” just a Pope with dark skin. Just Turkson to the Synod for Africa said: “There is no reason why the Church can not have one day a black Pope, after all, we have other notable cases (Kofi Annan, Barack Obama), and when a priest is ordered in the same package include its availability in the future to be a bishop and Pope maybe. “
The white smoke leaves no room for any possibility, even in an unexpected name (like that of a Pope of color). No one in ’78 predicted the arrival of John Paul II Eastern Europe. Now the surprise could come from the South.
