One of the Red Birettas,Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi

by BonnieBlueFlag

This morning Drudge ran a headline of "Pope front-runner; Italian, 71, may get top job..." with a link to The New York Daily News. The article proposed that Cardinal Tettamanzi may well be the next pope.

Actually, it would seem that as the best of the Italians to fill the vacancy of Pope, it would only happen based on the large contingent of voting age Italian Cardinals, 20 out off a total number of 38, thus leaving the other 18 to campaign for a return of the Papacy to the Italians before the Conclave begins next Monday the 18th.
Cardinal Tettamanzi has been criticized in the past as weak and overly cautious, he has also been described as having a passion for being "non-committal;" all of which are not necessarily good qualities in a Pope.
Ordained at age 23, he has been a priest for 48 years. Of those 48 years, 32 were spent in Milan and Rome teaching in or running Seminaries, so Cardinal Tettamanzi has spent very little time away from Italy and has a very limited knowledge of foreign languages.

He is described in the New York Daily News as Moderate to Conservative, but, his views on many social issues caused the Italian newspaper "IL Foglio" to label him a Communist. Tettamanzi has voiced his belief in placing in common the welfare and the goods of all, material and spiritual, which many would see as his support of a Soviet-style Communism. However, he is very conservative in his opinions on church doctrine concerning abortion, stem cell research, etc.

He is likable with very few enemies, and at a convenient age of 71 (He would not be likely to reign as long as Pope John Paul II did with 26 years). If the Italians do manage to hold sway over the Conclave, because of their numbers, Cardinal Tettamanzi could emerge as the next Pope by a slim margin, not because he is the popular "Front-Runner" that the New York Daily News would have you believe.

Written by BonnieBlueFlag