Roman Catholics: Changing the Old Guard

• Share

Three months after being elected Pope, Paul VI announced that he intended to modernize his Curia, the Vatican's 1,000-man bureaucracy, by bringing in younger clerics, including many more non-Italians. Last week the Pope took a major step toward that goal when he accepted the resignations of two venerable members of Rome's Old Guard.

The more notable retiree is Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, 77, the near-blind head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church's chief agency for rooting out heresy. Although a kindly man in person, Ottaviani was a symbol of repressive Catholic conservatism and a leader of the stand-fast minority at the Second Vatican Council. Ottaviani's successor is Yugoslavia's Franjo Cardinal Seper, 62, the Archbishop of Zagreb. As his country's unofficial primate since 1960, Seper (pronounced "shaper") has pursued a course of accommodation with Tito; at the recent Synod of Bishops in Rome he was overwhelmingly elected by his fellow prelates to head its commission on theology.

Joining Ottaviani in retirement is Arcadio Cardinal Larraona, 80, the traditionalist head of the Congregation of Rites. At the same time, Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro, 76, the Archbishop of Bologna, resigned his additional duty as head of the Council-created consilium for liturgical reform—thereby allowing the Pope to combine the two overlapping jobs and give them to another non-Italian: Benno Cardinal Gut, 70, a Swiss Benedictine abbot who favors more changes in the Mass.