Reply #16: Cardinals break taboo to talk of Pope's resignation

[emad]

Times
From Richard Owen in Rome



A VATICAN debate over whether the Pope should resign erupted into the public domain yesterday.

As the 84-year-old pontiff failed to preside at Ash Wednesday prayers for the first time since taking office in 1978, top cardinals voiced conflicting views on whether he should become the first Pope since the 13th century to step down.

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, backed Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State (Prime Minister), who caused astonishment on Monday by declaring that resignation was “a matter for the Pope’s conscience”. Previously the Vatican had dismissed any idea of the Pope resigning.

Cardinal Lustiger said: “The Pope is capable of taking a decision in accordance with the will of God to complete his mission.” He told French Radio that the Church was not governed by a “superman” like Arnold Schwarzenegger: “The Pope is a suffering man.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1477582,00.html

LUSTIGER must be heading for the funny farm....or has Arnie ever played Superman????