(ZENIT News / Rome, 25.04.2024).- Cardinal Walter Kasper, former Prefect of the now Dicastery for Christian Unity, expressed himself in favour of reforming the tasks of the College of Cardinals. Taking as reference the Synodal change in the Church and its decentralization, he suggests that Cardinals have a new ecclesial role.
In a talk given on Wednesday, April 18 in the Arch-Abbey of Saint Peter in Salzburg, Austria, Cardinal Kasper noted that it would be good to relive the tradition of the early Church of the Provincial and Plenary Councils, to respond to the different cultures in each region. Cardinals could function as Presidents of Plenary Councils in the region.
During his talk, entitled “Cardinals at the Service of the Church and the Papacy,” Cardinal Kasper said: “In modern times, Cardinals have become increasingly functionaries of the Curia, parallelly to the Prince-Bishops that still exist. And, he added, the opportunity given would be to “return to the origins of the College of Cardinals: evangelization and Eucharistic Celebration in communion with the Bishop of Rome.”
According to Cardinal Kasper, the Cardinals’ jurisdiction has always changed, but connected in the Liturgy with the Pope as sign of the Church’s unity. In other times, they have served as politicians, moving in the game of powerful Roman families. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Cardinals were increasingly dragged into decadence, and Rome’s decadence.”
In the symposium, whose theme was “The Benedictines as Cardinals,” he showed that the Cardinals’ leadership in the regions, for example, would establish something similar to the bicameral system of a Synod of Bishops and a Council of Cardinals.
He also pointed out that, at present, Cardinals are functionaries of the Curia and their function of ecclesiastical leadership was relegated until Pope John XXIII and Vatican Council II reinvigorated it..
Some of the Cardinal’s proposals already exist, as it’s common for Cardinals to head the Episcopal Conferences in countries and, to occupy the direction of Dicasteries in Rome, confers on them a decisive role in the vitality of the Church. Perhaps Kasper’s proposals intend to give Cardinals more evangelizing impulse above their bureaucratic role.
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