Pope Benedict has appointed Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as the Vatican's new Secretary of State. Cardinal Bertone, at present Archbishop of Genoa, will succeed 78-year-old Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who has held the post for 15 years.
The new appointee has no background in diplomacy and considering that the post is equivalent to that of a Prime Minister, his appointment has been seen by Vatican observers as quite "controversial". Indeed according to reports, this latest move by Benedict XVI has not been enthusiastically welcomed by some officials of the Secretariat of State.
Has the Pope committed a blunder or does he have other plans in mind for the Secretariat? In a letter explaining the appointment of Cardinal Bertone, the Pope wrote that what led him to select the man for the post were his characteristics of "a faithful pastor, particularly able to combine pastoral care and doctrinal preparation". The Secretary of State is entrusted with directing and co-ordinating the work of all departments with other nation states.
No doubt, the fact that Cardinal Bertone worked for eight years alongside Benedict XVI when the latter was head of the Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith has a lot to do with the appointment. The two men know each other quite well and obviously saw eye to eye on crucial doctrinal issues. This fact has led some critics to doubt the wisdom of Bertone's choice, fearing that he is "reactionary" (just as they used to see Josef Ratzinger) and therefore not fit to head the Secretariat. Others however, say that he is able to combine "a robust orthodoxy with great warmth and charm".
Tarcisio Bertone, who is a Salesian, is a keen soccer fan and has a great sense of humour. As Archbishop of Genoa, he has dedicated a great deal of his time to helping young people. One of the first things he did when as archbishop was to visit a discotheque and he even allowed himself to be photographed on the dance floor.
Commenting on his appointment, The Catholic Herald wrote that "Cardinal Bertone embodies Benedict XVI's dream of a Roman Curia governed not by tentative diplomats but by dynamic evangelists", and that the Pope "is convinced that his new Vatican Secretary of State will not allow political considerations to muzzle the proclamation of the Gospel. The Cardinal faces several challenges. He will quickly have to master the inner workings of the Secretariat of State, maintain a critical independence from the diplomats he had been appointed to oversee and implement a robust new Vatican foreign policy on religious freedom that will cause friction with some of the world's most insidious dictatorships."
The UK Catholic weekly sees Cardinal Bertone's appointment as another proof of Pope Benedict's plan "to effect a quiet transformation of the way that the Vatican is governed and acts in the wider world." And this he has managed to do "with astonishing speed and sensitivity".