Of all the write-ups about the consistory this past weekend, this one by NCR’s John Allen may be the sweetest and most sincere, as he sums up the new cardinal, John Foley. One snip:

Each year the North American College in Rome bestows an award upon an American churchman during its annual Rector’s Dinner, and in 2004 the honor went to Foley. Instead of cataloguing his accomplishments or dropping names, Foley instead spoke directly to the seminarians that night, telling them that not a day has gone by during his career that he doesn’t thank God for the gift of the priesthood. That’s Foley in a nutshell — at his core, he thinks of himself as a priest first, a potentate second.

On a policy level, one can certainly raise critical questions about Foley’s 23-year tenure as the Vatican’s point person on social communications. For the most part, they concern not so much whether his heart was in the right place, but his capacity to do the political heavy lifting necessary to shape institutional policy.

For example, after Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg, Foley candidly admitted that the episode, in which a passing reference to a 14th century Byzantine emperor triggered a global firestorm, illustrated the need to “foresee possible reactions” to papal statements, and thus to avoid language that might spark undesired blowback. When I asked if he felt the lesson had been learned, he replied: “It should be. Whether or not it has been, I don’t know.”

One might have justifiably protested, “But it’s your job to know.” For whatever reason, Foley was always better at modeling communications strategy himself than at bringing the institution along with him. (Granted, the latter task is difficult for anyone; even the more politically-minded Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the former Vatican spokesperson, could only make so much headway against an institutional culture than can charitably be described as “ambivalent” with respect to the press.)

In the end, however, what makes Foley remarkable is less about what job he holds, or how well he does it, than who he is. Few figures have ever succeeded at putting a “human face” on the leadership of the institutional church as well as John Foley. At 72, and in basically solid health, Foley can look forward to many more years of activity, and one hopes that Benedict XVI can find ways to use him as a “goodwill ambassador” for the Vatican and for Catholicism.

In the person of John Foley, Saturday’s consistory marks a long-overdue triumph for the nice guys, and that alone makes the occasion worth celebrating.

Read the rest. It will make your morning. And make you feel better about the Church, too.