The prospect of a “black pope” has long captivated the imagination of the world’s media, helping to make Arinze a much-discussed possibility. He grew up a member of the Ibo tribe in Nigeria, and converted to Catholicism at age nine.
Would he still be papabile without this headline-making factor? Maybe.
Perhaps the biggest strike against him is that he has spent the last 20 years in Rome working in the Curia, first as the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, now as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. Hence to the outside world he may be an African, but to many cardinals he’s a Roman.
Arinze is a charming figure, with a broad smile and an acute sense of humor. He is seen as deeply spiritual, sincere, honest, and a man capable of listening to others despite his own strong views. His theological positions range from moderate to conservative, and, in the blunt speech that Africans prize, he pulls few punches. In May 2003, for example, Arinze delivered the commencement address at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. His strong language shocked and offended some listeners: “In many parts of the world, the family is under siege,” Arinze said. “It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce.”
Critics say Arinze is neither a visionary nor an especially original thinker. Those who know him, however, say he does have his own ideas, but they are sometimes eclipsed by his loyalty to the current pope. Arinze engineered the beatification of Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi, a Nigerian Cistercian monk who died in 1964 and in 1998 became the first West African candidate for sainthood to reach the penultimate step. It was Tansi who baptized Arinze and encouraged him to become a priest.
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