Columns
from issue no.12 - 2006

30Days in brief




Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez

Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez

Sacred College/1
The eightieth birthday of Medina Estévez

On 23 December the Chilean Cardinal Jorge Arthur Medina Estévez, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments was eighty. On 19 April 2005 it was Medina Estévez himself, in the role of cardinal proto-deacon, who publicly announced the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the pontifical throne. At the end of 2006 then the Sacred College was made up of 186 cardinals of whom 112 are electors.


Sacred College/ 2
The resignation of the cardinal of Toronto accepted

On 16 December the resignation as archbishop of Toronto of Cardinal Aloysius Matthew Ambrozic, who was 75 in January 2005, was accepted. Sixty year-old Thomas Christopher Collins, archbishop of Edmonton since 1999, was nominated new archbishop of Toronto.


Italy
Romeo archbishop of Palermo, Chenis bishop of Civitavecchia

On 19 December the Nuncio to Italy Paul Romeo was nominated Metropolitan Archbishop of Palermo, in place of Cardinal Salvatore De Georgi, who was 75 in September 2005. Romeo, originally from Acireale, who will be 69 next February, was a pupil of the Almo Capranica College and was ordained priest in 1961. In 1967 he entered the diplomatic service of the Holy See and served in the nunciatures of the Philippines, in Belgium-Luxemburg, in Venezuela, in Rwanda and in Burundi, and, from 1976, in the Secretariat of State. In 1983 he was promoted archbishop and nuncio to Haiti. In 1990 he was nominated nuncio to Colombia and in 1999 was transferred as nuncio to Canada. From 2001 he was nuncio to Italy and to the Republic of San Marino.
On 21 December the 53 year-old Salesian Charles Chenis, originally from Turin, was nominated bishop of Civitavecchia-Tarquinia in place of Girolamo Grillo who was 75 in August 2005. Chenis, a priest since 1984, was lecturer at the Pontifical Salesian University from 1984 to 1995, when he was nominated secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church.


USA
Gerald Ford and the war in Iraq

«The Iraqi conflict was a serious mistake. I would not have gone to war». This repudiation of the operations of the American administration came from an unexpected quarter, the former US president Gerald Ford, in an interview given in July 2004 to Bob Woodward, deputy editor of the Washington Post and author, with Carl Bernstein, of the investigation that led to the launching of the Watergate scandal. The interview given by the former US president was published, at his explicit request, after his death on December 27. In the interview, Ford says that he understands, «but only in theory», the idea of the current US president, George W. Bush, according to which «the United States has the duty to liberate peoples», but «in practice we can’t run around the world like mad svages if not directly for reasons of national security: our number one obligation». Passages of the Ford interview appeared in an article in the Corriere della Sera of December 29. In commenting on the news, the Milan daily’s reporter noted that the current president of the United States has frequently named Ford as «inspirer and teacher».


Diplomacy
Diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Montenegro

On 16 December the Holy See and the Republic of Montenegro established diplomatic relations. On 19 June 2006 the Holy See had already officially recognized the new Balkan State created after the referendum of the preceding 21 May, when the majority of the population voted for separation from Serbia.


Italiano Español Français Deutsch Português