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April 1, 2005
President’s Statement

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 1, 2005


President’s Statement on Catholic Church and Justin Rigali

President George W. Bush today announced that he has directed the head of the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to recommend that the Sacred College of Cardinals elect his Eminence Cardinal Justin Rigali as the next Pope.


President Bush, left, meets with his Eminence Justin Cardinal Rigali, right, Archbishop of Philadelphia, during their meeting at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church Rectory on October 21, 2004 in Downingtown, Penn.

"Justin Rigali is a proven leader and experienced diplomat, who will guide the Catholic Church effectively and honorably during a critical time in history – both for the Church and the developing nations it supports. He has devoted his career to advancing the cause of freedom. He is a person of compassion who believes deeply that lifting people out of poverty is critical to achieving that goal. With his significant experience in government, including as a former Secretary of State of the Vatican, and as an academic, Justin has a deep understanding of developmental issues and ethic and political reform. He has the skills and the track record to build successfully on the leadership and substantial contributions of outgoing Pope Karol Wojtyla," stated President Bush.

Cardinal Rigali is currently the 8th Archbishop of Philadelphia, managing one of the largest U.S. diocese with over 1.5 million voters. Prior to that function Archbishop Rigali was installed as 7th Archbishop of St. Louis. He served as Secretary of the College of Cardinals and was likewise a member of the Permanent Interdicasterial Commission of the Holy See and served as a consultant to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He attained the Doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

His Eminence has been widely lauded for his October 2004 statement "The Gravest of All Issues" about the Catholic participation in the political process. His statement broke new ground by showing the extend of the common ethic denominators of the Catholic Church and President Bush’s agenda. The Cardinal is a member of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, as well as the Vox Clara Committee of the same Congregation. He is also a member of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See.

###


Links:
The Gravest of All Issues
Cardinal Rigali and the Election
Archdiocese of Philadelphia
Press Release

Posted by b on April 1, 2005 at 15:06 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Posted in another thread by CP – another Bush appointment:
from PopBitch today:
The world of the trophy hunter
Matthew J Hogan has just been appointed by the
Bush Government as director of the Fish and
Wildlife Service. Interestingly, Hogan was the
lobbyist for Safari Club International – an elite
club of exotic animal trophy hunters, as well
as a keen exotic hunter himself.
SCI has 40,000 members, and promotes global
competitive trophy hunting, with Grand Slam
and Inner Circle competitions. These include
Africa Big Five (leopard, elephant, lion, rhino,
buffalo), North American Twenty Nine (one of
each species of bear, bison, sheep, moose,
caribou, and deer), Big Cats of the World and
Antlered Game of the Americas. To complete all
29 awards, a hunter must kill 322 separate
species. Enough to populate a large zoo.
(FYI: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is the
agency charged with granting or denying such
trophy import permits.)
Matt Hogan named Acting Director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Posted by: b | Apr 1 2005 15:13 utc | 1

Can you put the RBN trademark, please, otherwise I get really worried, as it is otherwise impossible to tell if it is truth or fiction?!

Posted by: Jérôme | Apr 1 2005 15:17 utc | 2

Article brought up by DM in the other thread:
Papal candidate gives pro-Zionist talk

A cardinal considered a candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II delivered a strong message in favor of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land on Wednesday night, rejecting the claim that European Christians’ support for the State of Israel is based on Holocaust guilt and saying that all Christians should affirm Zionism as a biblical imperative for the Jewish people.
Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, part of a visiting Austrian delegation, made the remarks in an address at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the topic of “God’s chosen land.”
(…)
A cardinal considered a candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II delivered a strong message in favor of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land on Wednesday night, rejecting the claim that European Christians’ support for the State of Israel is based on Holocaust guilt and saying that all Christians should affirm Zionism as a biblical imperative for the Jewish people.
Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, part of a visiting Austrian delegation, made the remarks in an address at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the topic of “God’s chosen land.”

Posted by: Jérôme | Apr 1 2005 15:35 utc | 3

Jerome, truth is stranger than fiction and every day is April Fools.

Posted by: beq | Apr 1 2005 15:48 utc | 4

beq – now that you bring up the date, I am really confused!!!
I usually have that problem when seated for a fancy lunch or dinner, being left handed. I never know which glass (or even worse, bread plate) to take because (i) I spontaneously would use my left hand (ii) I know that usually things are made for the right-handed and (iii) I have learnt to not trust my spontaneous instincts, including after having thought about it. Then I get really confused and wait for one of my neighbors to put me out of my misery…
So, without “RBN” but on April 1 means that it is actually true… And now that doubts are sown, is the J-Post article I quote also an April’s fool story? Are Jews allowed to do these? Don’t they go to hell directly for that?

Posted by: Jérôme | Apr 1 2005 16:08 utc | 5

Jérôme: I think this guy just lost any chance of being elected. It’s not as if every little bit of anti-semitism disappeared suddenly from the Catholic church.
Not to mention that the guy must be severely braindead. There are Christians in the area, and they’re the local Arabs that are on the receiving end of the IDF stick. If he wants to sink as low as the US self-claimed “Christians”, he’s welcome to it. But then, reading how he was “pained” that WWII brought such a “catastrophe” to his own family, I’m convinced the guy is a fruitcake.
Why am I not surprised that this kind of drivel is published in the Jerusalem Post?

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Apr 1 2005 16:11 utc | 6

bush pushing this asshole for the papacy reminds me somehow of the chinese nominating their own dalai lama. i guess they share a certain predilection for small children
re. schoenborn, his characterization of himself as being the son of czech refugees is misleading to say it politely. the schoenborns are one of the old families from the nobility of the austro-hungarian empire, which sadly never became extinct (i mean both the family and the empire).
the same goes for him being a zionist. to characterize schoenborn as a zionist would be to oversimplify the relationship between the european nobility and jewry. let it be said that a rather significant part of this so-called “nobility” think of themselves as being direct successors of king david of biblical fame.
to wander around in vienna can be very instructive if one pays a bit of attention to the symbols sculpted into the older buildings here.

Posted by: name | Apr 1 2005 17:02 utc | 7

Bush’s real plan was to push this man for Pope, but there where some technicals to overcome.

Posted by: b | Apr 1 2005 17:21 utc | 8

thinking about this a bit more thoroughly, is this the local version of aprils fool ?

Posted by: name | Apr 1 2005 19:03 utc | 9

I can’t help but think of all those high ranking cardinals who’ve flown in from around the world, ostensibly to “pray for the recovery” of the current Pope, but really to lobby the electors. Well, maybe I’m just jaded.
Can we have a moratorium on media deathwatches? (pun intended) It’s really crass and disturbing to the subject, his/her family, and to a public that should be focusing on issues that matter to them and that they can do something about.

Posted by: kat | Apr 1 2005 19:45 utc | 10

I’m just going to have to stop reading on the internets today. Oy. Bizarro world is just too confusing, even on a good day.

Posted by: Vicki | Apr 1 2005 19:49 utc | 11

Deathwatches are not crass, I propose… they are human… We are pattern discerning beings… For those not in the know… Neil Young is recovering from brain surgery for an aneurysm… In honor of Neil Young

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Apr 2 2005 5:32 utc | 12

A good piece by Josh Marshall about the legacy of the outgoing Pope.

Separate from all these individual points John Paul II has simply been a towering figure — a perception that I imagine will grow as he recedes into history. And that is a striking thing in itself since he was a compromise candidate; and the Cardinals probably didn’t have a clear sense of what they were getting into when they chose him.
Yet in recent years especially (and this isn’t to say that the traditionalist dimension of John Paul’s pontificate hasn’t been there from the beginning — witness his special relationship with the deeply reactionary Opus Dei) his focus on family and sexual traditionalism has seemed to push most of this to the side, even to override it where they came into any tension, creating a papacy which viewed the whole world through the prism of a few key questions surrounding reproduction, sex and death and in some cases, in my opinion, verging or lapsing into a theological obscurantism.

Posted by: b | Apr 2 2005 8:23 utc | 13

dunno where else to put this… Muslim Refusenik
am interview with a firebrand Muslim feminist from Canada who is trying — singlehanded if need be — to undermined Islamic literalism and fundamentalism.
harks back to our thread about revanchism and why it seems so resurgent today; her point is that Islamic revanchism started a long time ago and is continuous, i.e. it did not start yesterday. the parallels between Constantine and the Caliph are interesting.
she claims that the “battle of civ” is not between xtians and muslims but between fundies and moderns w/in and across all faiths (freethinkers and atheists mostly hangin’ with the moderns, of course, since it’s not safe to hang out anywhere else).
interesting prespective on fundamentalism, defiance, heresy, samisdat, etc. — at least I thought so.

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 9 2005 1:22 utc | 14

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