by KWEI QUARTEY
The startling resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is the first since 1415, when Pope Gregory XII stepped down to help resolve a schism in the Catholic Church. At 85 years old, Pope Benedict cites his advanced age, failing health, and lack of strength as the reasons for his departure. Notwithstanding speculation that political pressuresmay have forced his hand, the Pope’s frail state has been evident in his recent public appearances.
Benedict’s legacy falls short of John Paul II’s, whose reign set a high bar in papal leadership, political activity, and world travel. The shy Benedict has been seen more as an academic and less a man of the people. His tenure was sullied by scandals within the Vatican and his failure to firmly address the disturbing and pervasive sexual abuse of children by countless Catholic priests. On HIV/AIDS in Africa, Benedict XVI made remarks that were potentially damaging to the fragile outreach efforts being made on the continent to fight the deadly disease: “If there is no human dimension,” he said, “if Africans do not help, the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it.”
Pope Benedict’s resignation has spurred discussion of a successor from the Global South. Catholicism has declined in increasingly secular Europe and America while it has risen in Africa, Asia, and South America. According to NPR’s data editor Matt Stiles, Africans made up only 6 percent of the world’s Catholics in 1970, but that number rose to almost 16 percent by 2010. In contrast, Europe’s corresponding numbers showed a precipitous drop from 40 to 24 percent respectively. It would make sense to appoint a pope who represents a demographic that’s a growth area for the church.
But Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson rejects statistics as the primary criterion for the selection of a pope. “It doesn’t go by representation…those type[s] of considerations tend to muddy the waters,” he said. Turkson has garnered much attention in the past several days as a possible papal successor. Born in Ghana’s Western Region, he is (by ecclesiastical standards) a youthful 64, a good age to begin a long papal tenure. He studied and taught in New York and Rome before being ordained to the priesthood in 1975. Apart from English and several Ghanaian languages, he speaks French, Italian, German, and Hebrew. Affable and even charming, he is well known to Ghanaians through his weekly religious TV program.
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