[1]Preoccupied for months by the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Pope on Wednesday shuffled the Vatican bureaucracy before heading off on vacation. His most significant appointment: the head of a new office designed to fight secularism in the West.
Pope Benedict XVI tapped a trusted Italian, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, to head the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelisation, a new Vatican department designed to reinvigorate Christianity in the parts of the world where it is falling by the wayside.
Pope Benedict has made rekindling the faith in Europe a priority of his papacy, and the appointment of Monsignor Fisichella served as a tacit acknowledgement that his efforts to date needed more focus and heft. Also on Wednesday, Pope Benedict named Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet to head the powerful Congregation for Bishops, which vets bishops nominations worldwide.
Ouellet, the 66-year-old archbishop of Quebec, replaces the retiring Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, and his new high-profile job ups his ranking as a possible papal contender. The Pope also moved his New York-based UN ambassador to Poland to serve as papal nuncio and named a new head of the Vatican’s bioethics advisory board, the Pontifical Academy for Life. The long-rumoured appointments were announced as the Pope wraps up key Vatican business before going on vacation for the rest of the summer at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, in the hills south of Rome.
Pope Benedict announced the creation of the new evangelisation office earlier this week, saying it would promote Christianity in countries where the Church has long existed.
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[1] http://archive.asianage.com/int2jpg-051