Further 'internationalisation' likely in Vatican Curia

Non-Italian for top Rome job
SURPRISE changes in the upper ranks of Curia hierarchy could herald the arrival of a nonItalian secretary of state, it was predicted in Rome this week.
The three tipped as candidates to take over from Cardinal Agostino Casaroli as the Vatican's number two are Cardinals Roger Etchegaray, 67, French President of the I ustitia et Pan Commission, the Spaniard Eduardo Martinez Somaio, 62, a former Secretary of State substitute, and Belgian Jan Schotte, 61, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops.
The predictions follow Pope John Paul II's nomination this week of North Italian Archbishop Giovanni Battista Re as the Secretary of State substitute for internal affairs to replace Archbishop Edward Cassidy, the Australian who has held the post for the shortest time on record of about 18 months. He will move to the presidency of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, replacing the retiring 80 year old Dutch Cardinal Johannes Willebrands.
The appointment of Archbishop Re as "Home Affairs Minister", alongside Archbishop Angelo Sodano, "Foreign Affairs Minister", and under Cardinal Casaroli, means that the top three posts in the Vatican's administration are all held by Italians.
Sources said such circumstances could not long resist the Pope's programme to "internationalise" the Curia.
They also suggested that Archbishop Cassidy, the former Papal Nuncio to the Netherlands, may have asked to be removed from the Secretariat of State because he had failed to come to grips with "curial mechanisms and undercurrents" on his re-call to Rome.
Since the Curia remains largely Italian, the Pope felt the dynamic Archbishop Re of Brescia, north of Milan and a former assessor, or undersecretary of state, would be better equipped to handle internal Vatican affairs than the "pragmatic Anglo-Saxon".
In his new role, Archbishop Cassidy's first task is expected to be mediation with the Russian Orthodox church towards full restoration of the rights of the Ukrainian Catholic Church,
forcibly annexed to Orthodoxy in 1946 under Stalin. The Archbishop had already taken part in a delegation to Moscow to this end before Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Rome on December L Despite the winds of change at the Vatican vortex, Cardinal Casaroli is expected to remain as Secretary of State well into the New Year. The Pope refused to accept his resignation on age limit on November 24, the Cardinal's 75th birthday.
Cardinal Ethegaray, however, is emerging as the eventual "favourite" for the post. He is already the Pope's personal envoy to the world's trouble spots and some of his principal ecclesiastical mediation missions have been in Lebanon, Vietnam. Namibia and Ethiopia.