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Subject:
The next Pope? the Ukrainian wild card ? Has All the right stuff
ThoughtLeader
4/6/2005 8:27:23 PM
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Throwing one more red hat into the (unofficial) papal race
link
Vatican Correspondent
jallen@natcath.org
There is no formal process for nominating papabile — no petitions to file, no bumper stickers to print, no primaries to contest. Theoretically any baptized male Catholic could be elected as the successor to John Paul II. In fact, however, the next pope will almost certainly be a member of the College of Cardinals under 80, and within that group of 130 there are a few names who stand out.
My aim . . . is to put Husar’s red hat in the ring.
This week I want to introduce a new papabile, or candidate to be pope, to the world. He is Lubomyr Husar of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine, a smiling, humble man whose life experience and theological outlook might just add up to the right stuff.
Cardinal Lubomyr Husar of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine
There is no formal process for nominating papabile — no petitions to file, no bumper stickers to print, no primaries to contest. Theoretically any baptized male Catholic could be elected as the successor to John Paul II. In fact, however, the next pope will almost certainly be a member of the College of Cardinals under 80, and within that group of 130 there are a few names who stand out.
Anybody who follows church affairs could rattle off five: for example, Tettamanzi and Re of Italy, Danneels of Belgium, Hummes of Brazil, and Arinze of Nigeria. Chatter in the press has created a buzz around them.
My aim this week, therefore, is to put Husar’s red hat in the ring.
I first met Husar, made a cardinal by John Paul II in February, during the pope’s June trip to Ukraine. I was impressed by the devotion Husar inspires among the 5.5 million Greek Catholics in the country, and by how deftly he manages the complex relationship with the Orthodox. I was also struck by the fact that in sessions with reporters I never saw him duck a hard question. Intrigued, I spent long hours talking to people who know Husar and his church.
I sat down with Husar again last week in Rome, where he is taking part in the Synod of Bishops. We spent part of a hot afternoon sitting in a park in front of the Governatorato, the civil administration of the Vatican city-state, talking about ecumenism, collegiality, and the experience of his people in the twentieth century. I came away freshly convinced that Husar should be on papal short lists.
He was born in 1933 in L’viv, in western Ukraine. His family fled to the United States in 1944, seeking refuge both from the Nazis and the Soviets. He studied at Catholic University and at Fordham, obtaining a doctorate in theology at the Urbanian University in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1958 in Stamford, Connecticut, for the Ukrainian diaspora. In 1973 he entered a Studite monastery in Italy.
The legendary Cardinal Josyf Slipyj, exiled head of the Ukrainian Catholics, ordained Husar a bishop in a secret ceremony in 1977. Rome, fearful of upsetting Paul VI’s Ostpolitik, a policy of outreach to the Soviets, refused to acknowledge the ordination since it would have angered the Russian Orthodox. Hence Husar spent more than a decade with all the burdens of being a bishop but none of the privileges.
After the collapse of communism, the Ukrainian Catholics came out of the catacombs. In 1996, Husar became an auxiliary bishop to Cardinal Ivan Lubachivsky, and in 2000 succeeded him as head of the church.
This experience has inoculated Husar against obsession with ecclesiastical honors, since he knows that often the most faithful servants are the least decorated. He never walks around in ecclesiastical finery if he can help it; often he wears a gray shirt and a pair of suspenders that would look more at home in a general store or a barber’s shop than a chancery.
Husar is refreshingly candid. I asked him about the current state of relations between the Catholic church and the Orthodox. No project has been more ballyhooed in recent years of John Paul’s pontificate.
Herewith Husar’s sober diagnosis: “The situation does not look very good,” he said. “To my mind, there is no real desire for unity, even on our side to some extent.”
Husar explained that the Catholic church remains unwilling to adopt the structural reforms, above all in favor of local autonomy, necessary for reunion to be a realistic option.
As for the Orthodox, Husar said that a Bolshevik-era psychology of fear and suspicion make it impossible to trust anybody.
“When we look at these people today, they are good people, and they wish good for themselves and their children,” Husar said. “But they have been so maltreated by that system that they are victims of it. Before we can talk about unity, this generation has to die out. It is a sad truth, but it is the fact.”
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