On June 28, Pope Benedict XVI named the 69-year-old Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, as the new Archbishop of Milan.
At one level, it’s tempting to read this as a lateral move. Venice actually produced three popes in the 20th century (Pius X, John XXIII, and John Paul I) to Milan’s two (Pius XI and Paul VI), so it’s not like Scola’s transfer to the See of Ambrose lifts him out of obscurity. Among insiders, he was already considered an ecclesial heavyweight and top-tier future prospect….
…Milan isn’t just a job — it’s a unique vote of papal confidence, and a platform for global leadership. Church-watchers usually assume that when a pope sends someone to Milan, he’s pointing him out as a possible successor. Benedict XVI is no naïf; he’s aware of that calculus, which means that at a minimum, he has enough confidence in Scola to put him in a place where the papacy is a live possibility.
Read it all (from the long queue of should-have-already-been-posted material).
Pity no one is interested enough to comment here. But there is one small feature of the article as published that is worth pointing out and that is the Italian-language title of ‘a prominent liberal Catholic movement in Italy’ referred to. Of course it isn’t possible to know if John Allen Jr. chose to put it in Italian or if the NCReporter editors chose to leave it in Italian, but ‘Noi Siamo Chiesa’ is nothing more or less than ‘We Are Church’. Some may recall, that is a US grass-roots movement started by Call to Action and Sr. Maureen Fiedler about 15 years ago, that was going to get 1,000,000 signatures on their petition….and got 37,000. It has exported itself into some European countries. It is not important, but you wouldn’t know that from the consideration it is given in this coverage.
I think it somewhat dubious that Scola is just Ratzinger on steroids, since Germans and Italians are so, so different. But it is reassuring that another Communion and Liberation adherent/beneficiary will be Archbishop of Milan and it will be interesting to see how much influence his previous time as Patriarch of Venice has on the new ministry.