Pope Benedict XVI named a new archbishop for the Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest see.
The Vatican announced the appointment of Auxiliary Bishop Odilo Pedro Scherer of Sao Paulo in a March 21 statement.
The 57-year-old archbishop fills the see left vacant since October 2006 when Pope Benedict appointed the city’s former archbishop, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, as head the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy.
Born of German descendants in Sao Francisco, Brazil, Archbishop Scherer has strong ties to Rome. He studied philosophy and theology at Rome’s Pontifical Brazilian College and the Pontifical Gregorian University, and worked as an official for the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops from 1994 to 2001.
Ordained a priest in 1976, he served as pastor in the Brazilian Diocese of Toledo. He taught and served as rector of a number of seminaries and religious institutes in southern Brazil.
Archbishop Scherer was named auxiliary bishop of Sao Paulo in November 2001, and in May 2003 he was elected secretary-general of the Brazilian bishops’ conference.
In December 2006, Pope Benedict named him adjunct secretary-general of the fifth general conference of the Latin American bishops. The conference will be held May 13-31 outside Sao Paulo in Aparecida. The pope, who will officially open the conference, is expected to visit Sao Paulo when he travels to Brazil May 9-13.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Zen is asked to stay on:
For at least a second time Pope Benedict XVI has rejected a request from Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen to accept his resignation as Bishop of Hong Kong. Zen expressed his desire to step down from his responsibilities at the diocese, in order to allow him freedom to focus fully on the reunification of the Church in China and the reestablishment of active Vatican-Chinese diplomatic relations.
According to Cardinal Zen’s press secretary, the Holy Father replied to a recent resignation proposal with a letter asking Zen to stay the course as ordinary of Hong Kong, while continuing his work for the whole Church in China.
"The pope has already verbally told him to stay on the job some time ago," Dominic Yung, Zen’s spokesman, told The Associated Press. "It’s just a formal letter this time."
In an open letter to all Catholics in Hong Kong and obtained by the Union of Catholic Asian News, Cardinal Zen said he received a letter on March 19th, the Feast of St. Joseph, signed by Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for Evangelization of Peoples, in which "he informed me that the Holy Father has decided not to accept my repeated request to be relieved from the office of the Bishop of Hong Kong."
In the letter, which is to be published in the March 25 issue of Kung Kao Po, the diocese’s Chinese-language weekly, Cardinal Zen says the Pope has decided that "I carry on as the Bishop of Hong Kong and, in that position, do whatever I can to participate in the concerns for the Church in China in collaboration with the Holy See, until it will be arranged otherwise."
Read Previous Post